This is a question that has been going through my head many times within the past couple months. It seems to come up most when I am having a hard day at work or I am struggling with some situation. More often than not when I am enjoying myself, this isn't even close to a thought because there is no need for the question. So why am I here? What does that even mean? Why am I physically here in Raleigh or why am I in this situation doing what I am doing?
I can't say that I have found an answer to any of these questions yet. However, I do find it interesting that they only come into my mind when I am feeling any sort of discouragement. So why am I even thinking these things in the first place? I will give you an example: I am working and I have some idle time in my day because the task that I was given to manage is being taken care of. I now feel like I am not being useful to my boss or my company, and isn't the whole point of my internship to help bring light to the world as an image bearer of Christ? How am I doing that while I am sitting in my car waiting for my boss to give me another task? It doesn't seem like I am doing that so my feeling of uselessness leads to a feeling of worthlessness. Then I am reminded of the fact that I am not even doing work to help me figure out what my plan will be long term and I feel hopeless. At any point along this emotional down spiral will all these questions come up about "what am I doing here?". I feel like this was supposed to be a step that I was taking to receive clarity about what my NEXT step will be down the road. Not just a step towards the end goal, but really a step to figure out what the end goal is. Why do I feel like this question is not going to be answered for me.
The reality of things are that it is not hard to see why am here. Simply by opening my eyes to what God is doing inside of me to prepare myself for life in every aspect. I often become very tunnel visioned under stress as seen here where I am so focused on not seeing the clarity in my vocational field that I think that God is not shaping me in other ways. Insight into why I am thinking these questions has shown me a lot of my flaws in daily thinking towards God's shaping process. Scripture calls God the potter and us humans his clay. If this is true than many times when we are feeling pain and discomfort as I have talked about, we need not think of it as God punishing us but rather know that His fingers are pressing into us, creating a beautiful masterpiece of His handiwork. So I might go through the next 6 months not being shown what my job will be down the road, but does that make my time here useless/worthless/hopeless/un-meaningful as I often resort to thinking? Absolutely not. God is using each one of my steps here to accomplish HIS end goal. Let me tell you what, it is not the same end goal that I am thinking up in my mind even right now as I write this....and I certainly wouldn't want it to be the same as the end goal that I have in mind for myself. God is going to do something much bigger for me that will provide much more life than I can ever imagine experiencing.
Thanks for reading, till next time ✌️,
Chris Fronczak