The Three Questions in Life

You have to let go of the past so you can have a future,

But if you are going to take away one thing from it, let it be inspiration.

I just got married not even two weeks ago.

We are having our “newlywed marital bliss” phase right now.

So this post may seem odd.

We had been dating off and on (mostly on) for nearly five years,

But a few years ago, we broke up for awhile.

At this time two years ago, we weren’t together.

We weren’t even talking really.

Someone else was trying to woo me that summer.

Obviously, he failed because I just married my husband and not that guy.

But there is something valuable I can take away from

my contact with the “other suitor”.

An old classmate from college found me on Facebook.

We hadn’t really interacted in school at all,

As he had been very shy and an introvert

But he’d recently come out of his shell and turned into

A self-motivated businessman and he seemed to like me

So we began talking.

He lived two hours away so I only saw him a few times on weekends.

Fairly quickly, however, I learned that it wasn’t an innocent case

Of “a boy with a crush on a cute girl”, like it had been with the man I married.

This guy was very motivated but it was to an overbearing point

And he seemed to want to pour his overflowing cup of happy success juice

on whatever unsuspecting lady or other person got close to him.

He’d launched a business from home doing graphic design,

And according to him it was flourishing so well,

He was “making tens of thousands, soon to be hundreds of thousands of dollars”

And “getting all these contracts that soon he’d need to hire people to help with.”

I saw samples of his work, so maybe he was indeed telling the truth.

He was still living with his parents, so that probably saved him a buck.

His determination to succeed at a business was admirable,

But what got under my skin within in a few weeks

was his constant uppity behavior and egotistical attitude.

It was almost as if though just because he’d read one good book

For getting “business minded” and gone to a couple of seminars in California,

That he’d somehow become the “god of business”.

And the bible warns about making something else your god besides God.

Every conversation we had turned back to him and his plans to “rule the world”.

Soon, every conversation turned to how I needed to try harder.

If I was made of playdough and could be completely re-shaped at will

And he had control over me and my future,

I would quit my job, launch a graphic design business from home

Under his mentoring, be spending 70 hours a week on it,

And make $1,000,000 in my first year.

I’d go to conferences all over the country,

And I’d try to make everyone else do what I do.

Not one part of that was realistic.

Or right for me.

Around that same time, I’d returned to church

And I’d returned to seeking what God willed for me.

And I knew He didn’t will for me to get a big head about

potentially making a lot of money doing something

risky that I attempted to build from the ground up.

I knew it in my heart.

I knew He had other plans for me.

And if I stayed close to this young man,

Eventually becoming his significant other,

I would become a slave to money who was forced

to worship an entrepreneur who wrote a best-seller as my idol,

and he’d be the slave driver making sure

I didn’t miss any of those worship sessions.

I broke off trying to bond with him soon after.

There was one valuable thing to take away from this,

besides a very raw example of “who not to date”.

He wanted me to listen to a motivational speaker in his car.

I would have been happy listening to “Back in Time” by Pitbull.

(They remixed it for Men in Black III, and I liked that movie.)

He popped in the tape and it felt like we were sitting in a fancy arena,

The surround-sound seeming to project the voice from an

invisible stage somewhere in front of me.

I don’t even remember most of the words.

Have you even watched a Peanuts cartoon?

When Charlie Brown talks to teacher and teacher talks back,

All you hear is a muffled “blah blah blah blah”.

That’s not what I heard that afternoon, but it’s all my brain recorded.

Except for one crucial part, which is what he wanted me to hear.

And absorb. And that I did.

“Ask yourself these three questions:  One. What makes you come alive?

Two. What would you do if you couldn’t fail?

Three. What would you do even if you didn’t get paid?”

I don’t know if that’s even the correct order of the questions. But it doesn’t matter.

We were driving across town, and about the time the speaker concluded his speech,

That was when we pulled into the Barnes and Noble parking lot.

Inside, he wanted to show me a few books he liked about business.

Also, I had a notebook in my bag and he wanted me to bring it along.

I think I’d been using it for notes at church.

He wanted me to make some notes from “his church”

Which was basically that guy talking on that tape in the car.

I scribbled down the questions. But I didn’t really have the answers.

A few weeks later, we stopped talking.

Not long after that, I was friends (again) with the young man I would marry.

I was just relieved to be back with the one who never pressured me

To try to be a genius at something I couldn’t even spell correctly.

And who never cared if I made a lot of money because he didn’t either.

I tried to shake off the funk from being

constantly assaulted by fake-happy for a month.

But the very valuable life-defining questions stayed with me.

It wasn’t their fault that I learned them from an ego-maniac.

One. What makes you come alive?

Two. What would you do if you couldn’t fail?

Three. What would you do even if you didn’t get paid?

The course of my life would help me answer them

During the next 2 years.

That was more of a “God thing”.

That fall, I began to realize I wasn’t just a good cook,

I was a great cook.

“One. What makes you come alive?”

“Meals big enough for 80 people, and no one complains” great.

“Meals fit for a king but getting served to a poor family

who has a sick dad and can’t afford to buy food” great.

And I wasn’t doing it so 1,000,000 people would worship me.

I was doing it because it felt right to serve my community.

That was the “treasure in heaven” you always hear about.

I also found other niches.

“Two. What would you do if you couldn’t fail?”

I liked to collect items to gift to needy people.

I liked to hand-make gifts.

I liked to plan things, like holidays and parties.

I liked to get invited to everyone’s baby shower and housewarming party

And bridal shower because it meant I got to learn party trends

And I also got to network and meet more like-minded people:

Christian women who loved to use their gifts.

I was happiest when I got to do things for a Christian reason,

Not a selfish one.

I was good at decorating cakes, I would make complicated ones

And I didn’t even care if I never got compensated for it.

“Three. What would you do even if you didn’t get paid?”…

About a year later, the following fall,

My mentor assigned to me from church recommended me a book.

I finally bought the book after a few other people mentioned it too.

“Kisses From Katie”.

A Christian memoir about a dynamic missionary girl.

This story warmed my heart a lot better than those of the

Self-made millionaires.

Katie was only a new high school graduate when she received her calling.

She always had a heart for African people, specifically Uganda.

Instead of college, God was tugging on her heart strings and pulling her

into a year of living there to help orphaned babies.

She said goodbye to her comfy life, her family and her boyfriend.

She said hello to living for His purpose.

And instead of a year, it became an indefinite period of time-

But Katie didn’t cry or pout. She fell in love.

With orphans. With Africa. Loving. Teaching. Living.

God put that in her heart, money didn’t.

When I first read it, I knew that God was trying to tell me something

Through her message.

And I’ll admit, at first, I got very, very scared.

I was falling in love with my now-husband all over again,

And I truly madly deeply wanted that to be God’s plan for me.

The thought of finding out His plan could be for me to leave him

And leave everything I have here behind

To go to a foreign place

Was utterly terrifying.

But this was not His plan at all.

I think he wanted me to take a few days to realize what He could do with my life.

But then he showed me what he would do.

He would give me a servant’s heart like hers.

Note that I said a “servant”. Not a “slave”.

But he would also give me what I desired most.

A few months later, my husband finally got his life together

And he proposed. It wasn’t new. It was something we discussed before.

But it had never felt right in the past. Like it wasn’t God’s timing.

This time, it was.

And this time, it all came together in about 6 months.

So what does “Kisses From Katie” have to do with

The three questions?

Even though I planned a wedding and got married

And celebrated my “one and only”,

I didn’t forget my “number one”.

We went over this in premarital counseling.

God first.

Husband second.

Kids/family third.

So on and so forth.

I still want to serve God by serving my community.

My gifts didn’t change.

All that changed was that now I need to factor

My husband’s needs and spending quality time with him

Into the other things I do.

And include him.

Always include him.

Pray for God to send opportunities that we can do together.

But if not, pray for wisdom to balance my time between the two.

Even before the wedding, I was missing my volunteer work.

I had to put it on hold.

Now I could finally get back to it…to Him.

That was when I finally put 2 and 2 together.

It was only very recently.

I had just spent an entire evening doing what I love most.

Bonding with my husband on multiple levels in between

Exploring my favorite subjects on the internet.

I had been social networking on Facebook, which makes you connect with people.

I had been on Pinterest, which makes you acknowledge visuals of what excites you.

We had also been watching documentaries about strange animals.

So my mind was swirling with nature, recipes, love, friends, memories, ideas, DIY crafts,

Love, God, love, family, love….

It was past my bedtime, and I was due to wake up early.

But I couldn’t sleep.

My mind was too “busy.”

This was different from past experiences though.

There have been times that it was churning with a grueling portrait of fear and anxiety.

This time, it literally felt like fireworks were going off in my head.

(And no, other than a partial glass of red wine, I wasn’t under the influence).

I closed my eyes, and I could see the images of the things I had been looking at

All evening. I could see the fireworks. The bright flashes of color.

And it all summed up into a word.

“Alive.”

There it was, hovering in front of my mind’s eye.

The word that described what  I felt.

I was buzzing mentally because of mostly things that God placed before me

To use as tools and to use my gifts on to make the world a better place.

(Just like Katie!)

And because I was buzzing, I felt alive.

Then I saw in my mind the notebook laying open on a table at the book store,

The page turned to my notes on “how to be successful”.

“One. What makes you come alive?”

And that’s when I realized something:

Those questions might have been used in a seminar about business,

But they weren’t business questions.

They were God questions.

IF applied to the life of someone who wanted to serve God and follow Christ,

They could be answered with gifts he put in that person’s heart.

Loud and clear.

There would be no fumbling around in the dark with it,

The way people do when “daddy wanted me to grow up to be a _______,

But I don’t want to”. Or when the only job that would hire you

Was one that paid the bills but didn’t excite you.

(No, I’m not taking a stab at my job, I’m just making up an example).

The questions might apply to some people’s careers I’m sure,

But for me and for people like Katie from the book

And people at my church who love being mothers

And people at my church who love being photographers

Or teachers or youth ministers…

The questions applied to God’s personal calling for them first.

And it had nothing to do with how much money they can make.

“Store up treasures in heaven”, says the bible, in the book of Matthew.

“what you have on earth can be eaten by rust and moths.”

I almost feel sorry for “Mr. business ego” now.

He might be rich in dollar signs and ideas for logos to overcharge people for,

But that is all he has.

And those things will fall away in time.

And he will realize he missed the bigger picture.

And I won’t be there but I’ll pray for him.

So let me repeat those questions one more time.

One. What makes you come alive?

Being a wife. Being a daughter. Being a friend. Making my new last name a good one in this town, because God is good. Cooking. Gardening. Nature. Art. Creativity. Networking.

Two. What would you do if you couldn’t fail?

I would be a wife. (I am!) I would be a daughter. (I am that too). I would be a friend (Always working on that one). I would make my name a good one in this town because God is good. I would be a chef. I would be a gardener. I would love and defend nature. I would do and encourage art. I would create whatever I desired, but mostly DIY crafts to give people as gifts. I would continue to meet new people, and share these gifts.

Three. What would you do even if you didn’t get paid?

I would be a wife. (I am!) I would be a daughter. (I am that too). I would be a friend (Always working on that one). I would make my name a good one in this town because God is good. I would be a chef. I would be a gardener. I would love and defend nature. I would do and encourage art. I would create whatever I desired, but mostly DIY crafts to give people as gifts. I would continue to meet new people, and share these gifts.

Maybe someday, I would be a mother too. Maybe.

You won’t see my face on the cover of Forbes Magazine.

And I’m perfectly okay with that.