Live into Your Purpose

For most of my life, I was told a certain story about who God said I was, how I was to behave, and who I was meant to be if I wanted to be a godly woman with purpose. This story (which felt more like step-by-step instructions) went something like this:

The Path to Biblical Womanhood

Dress modestly (no spaghetti straps, no skirts above the knee, no bra straps showing)
Learn household management skills like cooking, cleaning, sewing, hospitality
Be a good listener, speak with a quiet voice, don’t contradict authority
Serve your father to train to be a wife one day (bring him coffee, be helpful around the house)
Wait for a young man to become interested in marrying you
Marry the young man if he checks out
Have children
Have grandchildren

The problem with this story, at least for me, was that it didn’t work out according to plan. I tried to do all the right things and wait patiently for God to bring me a husband, but it just didn’t happen like that.

Why would God ask me to check all these boxes and then not provide the reward of a family of my own? I was an expert at checking the boxes. I mean, if “biblical womanhood” was karate, I would have had a black belt.

With the plan falling apart, I started to feel like maybe God didn’t love me. I felt purposeless, hopeless. I felt lost. I was following the path that had been set before me, but I didn’t sense that God was there with me.

It took me years to realize that this waiting and depending on others for my future was not God’s purpose for me. I was meant to live now, not in some hypothetical future. I had Jeremiah 29:11 memorized, this promise of a blessed future: “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (NRSV).

But I had failed to think about the following two verses: “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me” (Jer. 29:12–13 NRSV). God wanted me to seek him in the present, to follow him on whatever path he had for me as an individual. There was more to my purpose than I had been told.

As women, we receive a lot of messages about who we should be and how we should look and behave. But our worth does not come from following a checklist of so-called “biblical womanhood.” Each of our lives will be different, and we will find purpose in different ways because we are more than a stereotype. Along the way, we might be sisters, wives, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, single, divorced, widowed. We might stay at home or have careers or serve in ministry. These are all ways to be a woman and to serve God.

What’s important to remember is women are people too, and we have inherent value. We don’t need to fit into a box of conformity to be purposeful. In fact, that box we’re trying to fit ourselves into is actually inhibiting our purpose.

Since I finally decided to step out of the box and explore God’s true purpose for my life, I have experienced the liberation of following God. In this freedom, I have earned a college degree, worked in education, started a career in publishing, and written to advocate for abuse survivors. I am also married to my best friend, and I’m an auntie to fourteen adorable nieces and nephews. I still experience times of loss and hardship and struggle, but I also find fulfillment in pursuing my calling in all its various forms.

If you are struggling to live into your purpose, or if you are being held back in pursuing it because of toxic voices in your life, remember these things:

You bear the image of God.

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27 NRSV).

Women are not secondary in the eyes of God, but equal to men. We are created in God’s image just as men are. Because of this, we have value and purpose. We are inherently creative beings. Our ideas and dreams and callings matter because we matter to God.

Your power is not an exception.

If you want to look at a “biblical woman,” there are plenty of women in the Bible to learn from: Miriam, Rahab, Esther, Deborah, Hannah, Mary, Phoebe—all women of strength and leadership who risked social norms and expectations in their pursuit of God. I have been told that women like Deborah, who led an army to victory, were an exception to the rule of men as leaders. While this might have been technically true in the patriarchal society of ancient Israel, this doesn’t mean that this was or is God’s plan for women. God has always intended for you to live into your purpose.

Women are just as capable as men of exhibiting strength, leadership, and wisdom. For you, this might look like staying home with your children, or it might look like developing a creative strategy for your company or ministering to a congregation. Use your power to live into your purpose wherever God has led you.

God sees you.

When Hagar was desperate and alone in the wilderness, God comforted her and gave her hope. After this experience, Hagar gave her God a name: El-roi, or God-Who-Sees (Gen. 16:13). She had been abused, and she felt broken and lost. But knowing that God saw her for who she was and that he understood her pain gave her the strength she needed to keep going.

Jesus went against the cultural norms of his time in speaking to and encouraging women as his disciples. He gave the Samaritan woman at the well living water and encouraged Mary to learn from him (in a time when women weren’t allowed to learn from rabbis). He even appeared to Mary Magdalene first after he rose from the dead, giving her the task of announcing his resurrection to the other disciples.