Finding Your Purpose in Life

As I sit here with this New Year, a clean slate so to speak, in front of me, I can't help but think back on the past year.  The lessons I've learned and how it has clarified life for me.  Often times we run from thing to thing, keeping ourselves so busy that we never understand our purpose in life or the things that truly matter the most.  I lost my mother a little over a year ago, my aunt a month after my mother and one of my lifelong best friends this fall.  Death clarifies things for you.  It's as though there is this imaginary line in the atmosphere moving around with you.  You never cross it until someone you love passes away.  On the other side of that invisible line your vision becomes 20/20.  It's like the scales have fallen off of your eyes and you suddenly understand things you never did before.  And from that point on you never see the world the same again.

I've been purposely absent from writing for a while but for a very good reason.  Whenever I stared this blog it was for one purpose only.  To share my life and feelings with others.  To hopefully make them laugh and cry and realize that life is not perfect for anyone.  It was to keep an account of my life and the happenings in it.  Somewhere along the way I got lost.  I was approached more and more to write sponsored posts for other people or companies and at first I liked it.  And then it became something I felt obligated to do.  And finally, I began not wanting to check my email because there might be another request for me to write for someone or something I wasn't passionate about.  And that's when it dawned on me:  I needed to write about what mattered to me.

So, starting off with this blank canvas of a year in front of me I have decided that write for me and hopefully somewhere along the way people will be interested in what I have to say.  And perhaps they will also attempt to find their purpose in life.  I also decided to take up a new mantra this year; The Serenity Prayer...The unique version below.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can 
And the wisdom to know the difference

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace
Taking, as Jesus did, his sinful world as it is, not as I would have it
Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
                                                                     AMEN
                                                                Reinhold Niebuhr
 courageouschristianfather.com