:: on purpose ::

So this is my search for purpose. Not meaning. I know I have value and meaning apart from anything that I do.

That's why euthanasia is unethical, why Aunt Helen makes almost no sense most of the time and does very little besides sweep up crumbs on the dining room floor, but no one would ever speak of her lack of value or importance. She is a human being.

That's also why people on life support or with down's syndrome or who have other "limiting" situations are not sent out to pasture. There is no pasture. But there is an important difference between living and letting life happen to you.

I just got off the phone with Curt. I cried. It was quite a miserable conversation on many counts.

First, he is ready to plan my life out for me. I couldn't even book a wedding one year in advance much less decide in a 30-minute conversation what my new life path will be.

Second, he says things to me like: it would be a waste for you to go to the mission field, or work as a nurse, or (insert other vocations I've considered for what looks like their intrinsic value). No, that would not be right for me. Other people, they can do that. Those jobs anyone can do. But someone with organizational skills, now that actually matters. But I'm wondering -- how on earth could I come up with some little nonprofit business in a few minutes or hours or weeks that could somehow be of more value than the years of people's lives that are spent doing "those things," those things that anyone could do.

AHHHHHHH.

Third. I don't remember what's third, I just know that it's the intangible that made me cry. He said I need to be thinking, to stay in a place with nice Christian guys because, you know, you're not going to find a guy by hiding in a cave. It's a numbers game, after all; probability. If you don't talk to guys, it is very unlikely that you'll find one who wants to marry you.

So I feel like someone just took my journal, photocopied its pages, and passed it out to a group of suit-donned type-A's who were given five minutes to dismiss every dream I've ever had.

I know he means well. Above all he means well, otherwise he wouldn't even bother. He's a man paid for his time and advice ("its what it's worth to them, not what it's worth to you...") taking time to give me advice. If he thought I'd fail, he wouldn't bother. If he thought I was just like "everyone else," you know, all of those people who are fine to just go ahead and do regular jobs without multiplying themselves, then he wouldn't have spent an hour convincing me that I can change the world. And I can do it with a brochure and a nice website and someone to make a nonprofit out of it all.

I don't know what I thought I'd realize by writing, but it feels a little better just to have it out there. So here's to feeling better about not having a plan, feeling threatened by other people's plans, and sitting on a blue couch at midnight trying to understand when I'll start understanding life.