“The two most important days in your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why.”
That quote was near the end of the production of “Church Basement Ladies” that we closed yesterday. It’s the sixth in the series, so regular audience members definitely know the characters, and enjoy seeing them figure out why they were born.
In the musical, there’s a mid-century mom (played by me!) that doesn’t know her purpose now that her daughter is off to college, and a father silently struggling with the same thing but not allowed to show emotion in their Upper Midwestern culture.
There’s a Lutheran pastor who went into ministry because of his father and grandfather, who now wonders if there were other things for which he may have been more suited. (It turns out he needed to figure out HIS way of being a pastor, but “pastorizing” is in fact his calling.)
There’s also a traveling salesman who keeps changing his pitch and his products, just trying to find his way. An old man wondering whether anyone needs him anymore. A woman who has never fit in, but keeps trying to connect by bringing hotdishes to potlucks, which always turn out to be inedible. Cooking is nowhere near her purpose.
Everyone in the musical has patterns that are well established. Everyone wonders if that’s really what God intended for them. They all evolve in different ways.
That’s true of us as well. Sometimes we have an inkling or wonder if there is something else to explore. Maybe we changed. Maybe the world changed. Maybe we never quite found our place to begin with.
Today, take some time to consider why you were born. I believe that you have a purpose that is so specific and so needed in your community, that it could not possibly apply to a single other person.