Are YOU Made For More?
I crave greatness. My appetite to achieve, accomplish, do, perform—it is insatiable. For a large part of my life, I had little awareness that character and internal growth was part of that process, and something to be valued. Mostly, I measured growth by outward indicators. Bigger, better, faster. “Made for more.”
There’s nothing wrong with bigger, better or faster, necessarily. The problem is not that we want to matter. The problem lies in the sometimes misguided or shifty ways we try to find it. And when someone doesn’t approve, or even worse has something negative to say, we can begin to doubt, self-bully or scramble. Ever had someone tell you, “You were made for more!”? Did it always feel like a compliment or an encouragement? Or was it couched in condescension because “they” didn’t think you were doing it bigger, better or faster enough?
God has designed each of us with great purpose and He has promises available to us every day. God’s purposes and promises are just deeper and richer than we often live out day to day. They are beyond what I can see.
Life is not linear. It’s not always up and to the right. Life includes many twists, many turns and even the occasional, obscure, obedient place. The season that is mundane. And if you’re like me, it’s there again you hear the voices around you whispering, “You were made for more.”
But who are “they” to tell me what I am made for? Who are “they” to command what I should or should not do? Are they suggesting that I am not enough exactly where I find myself today?
I think I get the sentiment, mostly. I understand it might be meant as some sort of encouragement or compliment, as clunky or ill-fitting as it might be at the time. I get catchy phrases and motivating words. I have t-shirt drawers full of them. But sometimes, “You were made for more,” falls on my heart less like an answer, and more like an anvil.
But what if the secret place God has me in right now is exactly where I am supposed to be? What if being hidden at home, caring for kids, is His perfect plan for me right now? What if His next right step for me is to be still and slow and set apart from the rat race?
Life is seasons and it’s not always Spring. Of course, God wants us to come out in summer—tasting all of the delicious fruit. But living in the never-ending glory of the sun would leave any of us burned. It’s okay to be hidden, unseen. That is not inauthentic to one’s calling or oneself. When God calls you into hiddenness, hiddenness IS your calling. In that moment, “less” is exactly what’s best for you, not more.
Obedience to God’s leading is always the truest place you can be. In my early twenties, I traveled the globe, on a mission to see the world changed for the good. I spoke in other countries and led large events in urban schools. I facilitated camps for students and was “changing the world”–bigger, better, faster. And then? Then I became a hair salon receptionist.
For two years, I sat in a salon, greeting people and chatting it up with stylists from behind a receptionist’s desk. Was I made for more? Yes, in a manner of speaking. More accurately, I was “made more.” That moment in time, hidden behind a phone and facial product displays, God was leading me into a next step. I didn’t know it then, but that season of stillness was a moment God was doing something very special.
That is the season I became a wife and embarked on the adventure of marriage. That was a season I learned new and hard things. God drew me (and grew me) out of the spotlight.
I was made to sit in that moment, behind the front desk, in that chair of obscurity. And it was there where pride was crucified in me. The hidden place is where God revealed more of Himself to me.
So who is anyone to say, “I was made for more,” when it was God Himself who had called me into the hidden place?
Was I made for more when I was having kids—home wiping and cleaning and cooking and crying on wash, rinse and repeat? Was it not enough in that season to care for these precious gifts, birthed in the image of Christ? That mundane is where God met me and let me know my work was not my worth. Should I be robbed of this season by wishing I was in some bigger or better place? Robbed of the very season that He gently spoke to me, “Here. Invest here. Everything else you do will be out of the abundance of this gift.”
I am talking about simply being you. You were created on purpose, and FOR a purpose. But MORE? That is the part we are wise leave to God. My extrinsic drive and hustle so often came from a place of needing “your” approval. It came from a longing for the crowd’s applause.
But I have fallen more in love with God through this process of pain—the pain of the hidden and unseen seasons. I care less and less what “more and more” might mean to you. My loss has created a desperation for more of God that some find weird. Some don’t approve. Few people will allow themselves to truly live for an audience of One. But I have learned to cherish the seasons of hiddenness, because I was never hidden from His view. It was there He had me all to Himself.
Health coaching has been this journey for me. There have been moments when I was embarrassed to admit what I did for a living. Coaching was never a dream for me. It wasn’t the title or position I ever wanted to pursue. I have at times asked God, “Why? Why so obscure? Why so far outside the way I thought things were supposed to be? Why so often hidden and misunderstood?”
But all my embarrassment revealed is that my highest goal was actually to preserve the image I had tried to hustle for myself. And when it finally dawned on me, this awareness drew me into surrender—a vulnerability to hide myself in God—to exchange my rawness for His strength. He has hidden me in Himself. And in that process, as I have fixed my eyes and my identity in Him, I have grown a for-profit business that advances Kingdom purposes. I never saw that coming.
God was leading me into a next step. I didn’t know it then, but my seasons of stillness were the moments God was doing something very special. He was making something more in me.
Life is seasons. And their beginnings and endings are in the hands of God. When He calls you into hiddenness, hiddenness IS your calling. In that moment, “less” is exactly what’s best for you, not more. He welcomes you into the hidden place with Him—where He can have you all to Himself. And where He can reveal in intricate detail the hustle you may now set down so you may wholeheartedly hold onto more of Him.