Christina's Blog

The lab tech can measure your sodium levels, and the glucose in your body. The neurologist can see which areas of the brain light up when you’re happy or sad. The mechanic can measure the amount of oil in your car. Your boss can measure your performance. Yet, you are the only person that can measure the quality of your thoughts. You are the farmer. You decide the soil, the seed, and if you’ll water it. The brain doesn’t care if you plant strawberries next to deadly night shade, but you should.

We think purpose comes neat. A degree, a promotion, or a mission statement on the wall.

It doesn’t.

All purpose begins in pieces.

The crack comes first.

Sometimes it’s sharp. The layoff, the diagnosis, or the “I can’t do this anymore” moment.

Sometimes it’s soft. A sunset that stops you mid-sentence. A song that makes you cry on the way home. Or the first time you hold a baby, and feel the weight of forever.

Either way something shifts. The life you built can’t hold you anymore.

It feels like the end, but it isn’t.

Those pieces? They’re raw material.

The broken parts make you soft enough to notice. The wonder cracks make you open enough to receive. Both wake you up to ask the questions that matter.

Look around.

Oprah got fired before she became Oprah. Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple before he change the world. Malcolm X found his voice after prison. Nelson Mandela sat in a cell before he led a nation.

And even the sacred stories echo it. Moses fled to the wilderness before he heard his call. David’s heart broke before he wrote the his songs. Peter wept bitterly before he became the Rock. Even Jesus let himself be broken before he made us whole.

The break is not your punishment.

The break is the beginning

Because all purpose begins in pieces.

What if the most ethical medicine is not: Here’s the hard truth. There is no hope. Instead, here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know. And here’s where possibility still lives. Possibility is not the same as false hope, it’s an open door. Framing things in terms of possibly instead of finality reminds the doctor, and everyone else in the room that they’re not the ultimate authority over life, death, and meaning. Possibility reminds us that everything we know today was, at one time, unknown.

Where the heck is the map? How do we know if we’re only given a small clue, feeling, hunch, fire, itch, or as some might say nudge? It’s like being stranded in the woods with only a dull pen light. You know the one I’m talking about. The small light the doctor uses to assess your pupils, but with this one the battery looks to be running out. There’s just enough light to see your feet, but most certainly not enough to see where you’re going. What do we do when we are faced with such a decision, but have limited information as to when, where, how, and the outcome? Do you stay on the well established highway or do you risk it, and create a new road with just a dull pen light?