the tension of purpose.

Abby P.
Aug 21, 2017
2 min read

There's something about feeling an urgency to do more. To live louder. To create beauty and change. To become. To bloom. It fills you with a sense of purpose, yes, but then jarringly, the to-do lists start building up, and all of a sudden, the passion shifts into burden.

That's the place of tension I've been in at the moment: the igniting passion to do, to become, and to live more intentionally and fully - and the sobering burden of all that must be done to fulfil this. What that means is that I'm already weary... before I've even begun. I'm already envisioning myself exhausted and spread too thinly, and so naturally I've become the queen of procrastination. Pushing the deadline ever far to a time where I am blitzing through everything, a smile plastered on my face, and barely breaking a sweat. Yet the reality is, that's not how it works. Not when purpose is in play. Because purpose does mean being exhausted, breaking a sweat, and sometimes grimacing more than you smile. It means working hard for seemingly minimal results right now, and watching the blocks building up, one brick at a time, painfully slowly at times. It means looking at the impossibility and knowing that even a slight chip every day for a year will bring you ever close to the vision. It's toiling painfully. It's angry questioning prayers. It's wondering if you got the vision wrong somehow. It's frustration and tears. And it's the want to give up (more times than you'd like to admit). Yet in all this it is choosing to push through, knowing that one day you get to look back at it all one day and be glad you never gave up.

It's self-love - of yourself right now, in giving yourself the gift of personal growth that trials and tests afford in pursuing purpose; but also love of the woman or man you are to become, who gets to one day reap all you've sown.

So, for that woman I'm blooming into, I'm choosing to make a solid effort to chip away at the fears, doubts and anxieties, and chip away, one intentional task at a time. I owe her that. It takes grit, determination and sacrifice to live a purpose driven life. Because the truth is: no one ever became great or overcame, through sheer hope and want. Instead, they dug in their heels and put the vision to work.