Purpose

We define accomplishment and purpose in so many different ways. . .in people seen, articles published, students taught, miles run, projects completed, pictures edited, weddings shot, goals accomplished, boxes checked.

I have worked so hard to walk away from the check boxes, from the goals, from the measurable accomplishments. I spent the last 11 years of my life being graded every month – on my knowledge, my interpersonal skills, my compassion, my ability to see the big picture. Every email was another checklist, another metric of how I was doing.

Through it all, David was the person pulling me away from that – valuing the beauty in light through the tree, a rambling, deep conversation with  a friend, a good podcast, the providence of another day. He sees things differently – not as life goals to be measured, but life to be taken in as it unfolded. He has a startling capacity to show people how wonderful he is without being concerned with what they think of him – to walk forward in purpose without agenda. He sees beauty where no one else does and finds a way to make it real for other people. He bucks convention not because he is making a statement, but because it makes sense for what is next. Instead of looking to rules and social standards, he lives life step by step and adventure by adventure.

And it has been so good for me.

It is a little more difficult to live a nebulous life here without definition. We feel like, in some capacity, definition must justify our decision to move half way around the world.

So we struggle with a need to define versus a call to trust, to sit, to be.

One year ago, we drove into Kijabe with 13 bags and much anticipation to an empty house. Today, we sit in our home with community and friends in all corners of the world. But, on days like today when painting the bathroom and tracking down passwords for board certification seem like all we can accomplish well, we struggle not to feel a bit lost. And, I find myself encouraging David to walk away from checklists, and he wonders if definitions are necessary. Our roles reverse one way and then back again.

And we search for the light through the trees, and the beauty in uncertainty. We seek to see life as it is unfolding before us. . .ever challenging, never simple.

But even in that, it is good.