Trapped.   Stuck.  Burdened.

Are you just barely making it through the week? Hustling to make ends meet?

You struggle to pay the bills, meet the commitments, organize the stuff, make the phone calls, and get things done.   If you’re lucky, you blow off a little steam.  And yet do you still feel stuck?

What if your stuckness was because you are running from something?

What if you are hiding from success.

More to the point, what if you are hiding from a lack of having ability to define success?

Could it be possible that we, as humans, fix our minds on our little messes because we are afraid to reach for something else.

Could that fear arise from our not quite knowing what that something else was?

Could it conceivably be that we don’t do the deep inner work to find out that something else because we are afraid that we don’t even know how to go about the work?

The how is simple.

Seek clarity.

Clarity about you.  About your purpose, your giftedness, your place.  All you really need is enough clarity to take the next step forward.  But you need clarity nonetheless.

This clarity only comes through work.

Through trying things and mastering them.

Through reflecting on what you do and how you feel and how you act.

Through deep listening to those who have gone before.

Through quiet hours of solitude.

Through learning to master your emotions and impulses.

The work of clarity is hard – mainly because it is so personal.  Any given teacher can only help you so much.  We each must figure out how to get this work done in our own way.

Yet we are not alone in the work.   There is grace that sustains us.

You may not believe in God.  Yet God is here.  Not the god of your imagining.  No.

God is indeed here.  The Living God – whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts; God who is intensely personal and close – God with us.  God who nudges in the silence and shouts in the wonders of creation.  God who whispers through truth and beauty and goodness.

God, being God, defines with absolute clarity the purpose for everything – every blade of grass, every supernova, every molecule, and every galaxy.  His eye is on the sparrow; He numbers every hair on your head.

God does not simply give you all the answers. God loves you way too much for that.  God designs for you a life to live, a lifelong curriculum of discovery.

That’s right – the aforementioned work.

The point being – it’s not hopeless work. It’s work that has been pre-designed for us.  We might even say the work itself is the purpose. We invest the time, we will reap rewards.

So, we don’t have to be saddled with despair, anxiety, and doubt. We don’t have to numb ourselves with endless web surfing and retail therapy.

We are artists, craftsmen of our lives and souls.  Now is the time to learn the art of skillful living.  Now is the time to achieve new clarity.

Now is the time to get to work.