Finding Your Bearings When You Don’t Know Where You’re Going
Perhaps we’re doing everything we were supposed to do. We finished school, got married, and had children. Now we’re paying the mortgage, involved at church, and considered upstanding citizens. But in the quiet moments, a dull ache begins to emerge—one we aren’t quite sure how to make sense of.
It might also be that our lives feel chaotic, as we can never seem to get it together. We drift from one job, relationship, and interest to the next, waiting for some inspiration to finally tell us what we’re supposed to do.
Either way, it’s unsettling to realize that we’re wrestling with a question we’ve sometimes been asking for years: What am I doing with my life?
Not every man has found his direction
For many, there was once a fairly clear plan. But disappointments and setbacks have disrupted the life we thought we were building. Perhaps through divorce, career failure, illness, or the death of a loved one, the story we’ve been telling ourselves has collapsed, leaving us feeling lost.
For others, we’ve simply adopted the conventional script of society, church, or family without ever questioning why. On paper, everything looks good and right. And while we’re not technically directionless, something is missing. We may be fulfilling the expectations of others rather than faithfully discerning and stewarding the desires God has stirred within us.
As our sense of desire and purpose wanes, so does our motivation. We might try to hype ourselves up, only to grow frustrated when the motivation doesn’t last. To be sure, it’s difficult to remain motivated without a sense of direction—without knowing what we’re moving toward. But we’re better prepared to weather the ups and downs of life when we have some orientation toward where we’re going.
Before you find your way forward, get your bearings
Before we busy ourselves with more activity, it’s worth pausing to get our bearings.
Can we notice where we feel alive or deadened? Are there things we’re avoiding or find ourselves envious of? What keeps capturing our attention? What truth do we keep pretending we don’t already know?
Often, finding our way forward isn’t about discovering something altogether new. Many times, it begins by simply recognizing what is already true.
The deep movements of our hearts are informative. This doesn’t mean we should blindly follow them, but they are telling us something important. Our desires may reveal something about what we value, what we’ve neglected, or what we long to become. It is our responsibility to discern these desires before God and decide what to faithfully follow, refine, restrain, or reinterpret.
What is mine to do next?
At times, we may discover a divine assignment or a particular calling God has placed on our lives. But often, the clarity we receive is simply enough to recognize our next step forward. Thankfully, we don’t need a detailed five-year plan to respond faithfully to the next step already before us.
Getting our bearings and finding our motivation again doesn’t require us to map out the full trajectory of our lives.
We may still not know exactly what we’re supposed to do with our lives. But given who we are, what matters to us, the responsibilities we’ve been given, the desires stirring in our souls, and the opportunities before us today, what appears to be ours to do next?
