Purpose

I attend a 12-step support group called Adult Children Anonymous (ACA) on Monday nights. I have found it to be the most helpful thing I've done for my healing and recovery. Each Monday, we get together and work our way through a book for the first half of the meeting and then can talk we need to on any topic for the last half of the meeting.

We have been working out way through the book Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melodie Beattie. Last night, we were reading through chapter 10 and came across this quote:

I believe there is an enjoyable, worthwhile purpose -- besides taking care of people and being an appendage to someone -- for each of us.

Figure out a purpose for my life has been something I've struggled with a long time. In fact, it has been on my mind again in the past week. I often have trouble with being "just a mom". Even though it is the life I've chosen and I usually enjoy it, I still feel like there is something missing.

One of the things that hurts me in this area is watching Extreme Makeover: Home Improvement. My kids see the wonderful homes and bedrooms that they make for the families and want to apply. I tell them that we wouldn't get picked. Why? Because nothing really bad (like a death or horrible disability) has happened to us nor have we become pillars of our community, supporting everyone else while our own house has fallen apart around us. In fact, we practically don't volunteer in any capacity. We aren't special enough. And that's the problem for me.

Growing up, I always wanted and dreamed of being one of those special people. I didn't want to be a teacher, I wanted to be THE teacher. The one who inspired their struggling students to aspire to and succeed at becoming great. I wanted to be a female Jaime Escalante only I'd be able to tell which of my students were neglected and abused and inspire them to greatness rather than the ghetto poor. I'd be their role model and mentor. I wanted to be THE doctor. I'd become a world-renown cardiac and neurosurgeon. People would come to me from all over the world and I'd fix them. I wanted to be the CEO of my own very successful corporation, sitting up in my corner office on the 20th floor. I'd be slender, hot, and sexy in my designer power suits. I'd use my incredible intelligence, business sense, and sex appeal to my advantage. At the end of the day, I'd return to my gorgeous home where I'd be the perfect wife and mother to my perfect family.

Today I'm nobody special. I'm a lower middle class mom of three kids. I spend my days cleaning, cooking, homeschooling two of my children, getting frustrated by my toddler's tornado-like ability to make a mess, running errands, paying bills, and reading/writing blogs. And I don't do any of those things particularly well. I'm not a teacher (in the sense I imagined), a doctor, or a CEO. I do not have that hot and sexy body; I'm 50 pounds overweight. And I have none of that prestige that I crave.

So, what am I to do? I think and think and think and come up empty. I find that I have nothing that I am passionate about. Without passion, I know that anything that I'd attempt would become just another of my unfinished projects.

Until I figure it out, I'll just have to be resigned to being mediocre.

Or I can find a way to accept a more positive view of my life: that being the mom I am already IS the purpose God had intended for me. That all I really need is some minor tweaking here and there, not a major overhaul. I've successfully changed my perspective in other areas of my life so I can do that in this one, too. Maybe, through that, I'll find success that I can be happy with.