When You Get the Answer You Didn’t Want

A couple of months ago I did an online aptitude test, it was recommended as a tool to help highlight my strengths and weaknesses. HA! Like I need help with that, my weaknesses are oh so very apparent without the need for a test!

However, in a revelation that I did not see coming, another weakness was revealed, a rather troubling one.

The test concluded, not gently, that I lacked purpose.

Once I recovered from my shock, I was miffed. That’s the polite word.

No I’m not “driven,” but to say I lack purpose is an insult to everything I stand for.

I stewed on this new revelation over and over and over. I even re-took the test, I think in the hope that it was some kind of glitch.

It of course was not, and I received the same result. I was so offended that I deleted the link to the survey and the email results, basically any proof that showed this test ever existed in my world. So mature.

I felt inexplicably ashamed.

Then I decided to ask God what He thought of the results.

“Bek,” He said, “your purpose can’t be measured by the precepts of man. The world will never ask the right questions, they will never understand. But I do.“

This piece is my say, my very capped answer to the question that the world will never ask.

I am a woman who has walked the path of self-destruction and become intimately familiar with all its pavement. I’m familiar with its back alleys, its seedy street corners, its gutters and its infested sewers. I wear, hidden on my body the literal scars of self-destruction. Scars made in desperation, with the use of a pulled apart disposable razor.

By sheer grace I was scooped up and carried away from that path by a Savior whose body also bares scars, scars inflicted by my sin.

I live each day in awe that I don’t recognize the person that I used to be, because I have been so transformed by the miraculous work of Grace.

I live each day recognizing pain in the eyes of those who are hurting and those who have become numb. I live waiting and praying for the divine opportunity to speak words of life into their deadened souls.

I live each day praising God for the gift of a husband who adores me, and is determined to love me in every state he finds me, despite my efforts to push him away when I feel he has become too close.

I live each day trying to teach my son to be that kind of man.

To be a man of honor and integrity. To treat every girl he ever meets with respect and the recognition of who she was created to be, whether she yet displays it or not.

I teach him to discover, responsibly, who it was he was created to be, walking the path that Father God has laid before him, regardless of whether or not his peers accompany him or even approve of his journey.

I live each day teaching my daughters to wear their beauty with dignity and grace, with the knowledge that it is merely a transient, external adornment of the breathtaking, servant-hearted and compassionate beauty that lies beneath its flawless surface.

I teach them to honor themselves and to recognize that their worth can’t be measured by the opinions or approval of others.

I live each day teaching all three of my children how to hear the voice of God, and how to respond with humility and courage to what He is saying.

I live each day with the vision of a legacy that will be remembered for generations, not because of who I am but because of who He is!

I live each day praising God for the grace and double portion of favor that I KNOW in faith my children will receive, because they’re going to need it in a world that can’t possibly recognize their true value.

I live each day knowing that I was created by God because He wanted me. He designed my personality with all its quirks because that’s exactly who He felt like being in relationship with.

He delights in my company and I delight in His. I live each day knowing that I’m God’s favorite. You are too by the way.

I live each day knowing that if I let Him, He will use me to release into His freedom those who walk the path of self-destruction. He will use me to be a light that shines where darkness has ruled, blinding with its brightness those who have ruled there.

No, I don’t have a five-year business plan.

No, I don’t see myself as the CEO of some grand and successful company. Instead, I live each day knowing that I have a purpose, an eternal significance. There is a plan for my life that was mapped out in the heavenly realms long before I breathed my first.

So why am I surprised that an online survey doesn’t recognize my potential, can’t encapsulate even a snippet of who I am?

And why should I care?

I no longer do, and nor should you.

Bek Curtis is an Australian-based blogger.