After all, how fun would it be if everything went right all the time? Our dependence on God requires trials and difficulties. We were never promised a challenge-free life. We can also experience joy in our everyday activities accentuated by the WHY. As Christ followers, we can experience joy in knowing our ultimate fate. Fulfillment does come from why we do what we do. We don’t necessarily find happiness in our jobs every day, but we can feel fulfilled by our work every day if it makes us feel part of something bigger than ourselves. We don’t necessarily like our kids all the time, for example, but we do love them all the time. The difference between happiness and fulfillment is the difference between liking something and loving something. Simon Sinek, best known for “Start with Why”, said this. I find much more fulfillment in this in-between life when my focus is on the God of Love, not the god of me. The WHAT and the HOW come when I look for the fork in the road that points to love. My WHY, has become much more important than the WHAT or the HOW.

I’ve developed a relationship and an intimacy with Him which has brought me to a place where I want to yield control. Yes, we should want to serve Him – but not out of obligation or guilt – but out of love for Him and His people. I misinterpreted scripture to be more about doing than being. If I served on enough committees, gave enough money, got perfect attendance in church, and a host of other to-do’s, I would be accepted by God. So much of what I learned in my early years oriented me towards works. The future may be difficult, easy, fun, challenging, or engaging but I’m eager to see what tomorrow brings. Even if it felt and looked like it was for naught, God used the “wasted years” to form me into the person I now am – more grounded in my relationship with Him and my identity secure in His purposes for me. But I finally concluded that nothing was wasted. The activities of life that focused more on me than on what God had for me – those opportunities squandered that would have advanced my spiritual formation and preparedness for what God ultimately intended for my life. When I think back on my earlier days it feels like so much time was wasted on the mundane and insignificant. The “why” has everything to do with the legacy we leave and the influence of our dash.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” That dash on our tombstone – you know, the one that represents the life we lived between our start date and our end date? What we do during that time has eternal implications.

In the dash poem