Measuring Success

What is success? 

What does success equal or look like to you?

How would you define it?

A couple or a few summers ago I was struggling with the "what is my purpose in life?" question. It was gnawing at me very loudly. 

Here I was, in my early 20's recovering from adrenal burn-out. All the emotional and physical pain I had been in, coupled with some other factors, had caught up with me and worn me down to a point of chronic fatigue. 

I was sitting outside under a mix of sun and shade on one particular day that summer when I noticed ants scurrying about so busily all across the pavement. 

I started to wonder about them, and watch them intently. 

As I watched them it made the gnawing pain I was feeling worse as I compared their capacity for activity to mine.

But before I could get much further my thoughts were soundly interrupted by a Gem that has contributed to the literal saving of my life. 

And that Gem is this: 

I remember thinking, "my faith?! That is what you care about God? That is how you measure the success of my life and living?!"

But faith is so non-concrete. So intangible. So, seemingly un-substantive. 

Oh but in the unseen world -- in the real world that is counting and accrues for all eternity -- in that world -- a faith response in life and all its circumstances is the greatest thing a soul could exhibit. 

Faith in God through all things. In all things. During all things. With all things. 

As that Gem sank deeper and deeper from my head down in to my heart that day I realized that it was a-okay for me to be sitting out under the sun and shade not scurrying about like the ants, because in that moment I was right where God wanted me to be in life and doing just as He wished for me in that moment. And that was to just practicing "being". 

Wow, has this been a hard Gem for me to embrace. But through it I have found some of the greatest freedom I believe I could ever know this side of eternity. 

What do you think?

 Is the paraplegic's life without purpose because they cannot physically move about?

 Is the mother who is pregnant and on bed rest for three months failing God in some way by not being up and on her feet? 

Was I "nothing" because I could barely do "anything" at that time? 

Faith. 

Resting in God in the circumstances He has placed me in. 

That is what pleases Him; that is what success is to Him. 

And because what things are to Him are what count the most. . . 

That is what I want to be caring about and accruing.