From Conformity to Authenticity: A Quest for Self-Discovery and Sacred Purpose

Maybe this is a common occurrence, but I feel my life has been a sort of quest for my people. At first, my nuclear family was my people. That eventually marched out to cousins, and I’m not sure if it was proximity or close ties but, cousins for me were my momma’s clan. My cousins were my first best friends. They were the ones who knew the secrets I don’t know anymore. They are the ones I learned how to tear a house apart with, the ones who taught me how to risk my life, the ones who taught me to dish it out and take it. Cousin days were fun and free, and as far as I can remember, I never got enough of them.

As I aged, my people became whatever group I identified with through the stages of my development into adulthood. There were church friends and school friends. Later there were drug friends and single mom friends. The latter two were the next in line to know my secrets.

People filtered in and out, at first open and honest until either something about me, or something about them, or the providence of God would build a wall. I knew Christians were my people but had to learn the specific ones I grew up with might not be. I came very close while raising my children to finding those Christians, but in the same way I had during my developing years, with a revolving door of connection and separation. The long drought of the covid years alienated me from almost everyone I held dear, but it brought me back to the core of who I am, and now I am starting to feel like the sprout coming out of the stump of a tree that was previously cut down.

How have you changed since covid? I know I’m not the only one who feels drastically different than I was 4 years ago. Back then I would have described myself as a right-leaning Christian, but now I have no idea.

As a mother, things get exponentially more complicated the older your kids get and as I had to start preparing my daughter for adulthood, I realized a lot of the values I thought were ok for me, I didn’t want for her. One of my current obsessions is watching documentaries about all these people coming out of cults that have oppressed and used them for so many years. I was never part of a cult, but the “keep sweet” mentality, where you are expected as a female to quietly submit to the authority of men, I bought into that hook line and sinker. That is until I had to teach it to my daughter.

I love to read, so I spent some time in a book club with a group of Christian women. I adored the fellowship I had with these ladies. And a few of them helped me learn to set boundaries in my marriage for which I will be forever grateful. But the vast majority of the books we read by female authors were self-help. I was already drowning in the “knowledge” that I wasn’t good enough and each new self-help book showed me new ways I wasn’t measuring up. By the time my daughter was entering her turbulent middle school years I had worked my way through nursing school, and now was trying to juggle marriage, parenting, a full-time job, and church service in the music, as well as various children’s ministries. Thankfully about this time the Lord brought Nancy Pearcey’s book “Total Truth” into my life. 

She was an author with so much more depth than all those self-help books. Over my life, I had consumed so many male theologians, and I learned so much, but this was the first female author I had come across who was writing with such depth. She introduced me to the cultural mandate, and it completely validated why I felt so exhausted and trapped in the way I was trying to live my life for the Lord.

“Most of us absorb the idea that serving God means primarily doing church work. If we end up in other fields of work, then we think serving the Lord means piling religious activities on top of our existing responsibilities-things like church services, bible study, and evangelism. But where does that leave the job itself? Is our work only a material necessity, something that puts food on the table but has no intrinsic spiritual significance?”

When I read those words I felt a heavy weight lifted, and remembered that Jesus had said His yoke would be easy and His burden light. This doesn’t mean we will not have hardships, but I have come to realize it can be a barometer to remind us to take a step back and question if all this business is the Lord’s work, or only keeping us from our sacred purpose.

Going forward I will be examining a lot more of the things I used to believe. Examining my relationship with the creator, and what my own sacred purpose is, apart from the modern-day church. Maybe I will return. We shall see.