Julia Marie Hogan Werner - A Work in Progress: Embracing the Life God Gave You

Embracing the Life God Gave You

Julia Marie Hogan Werner, LCPC

Except where noted, the Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 1965, 1966, 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2022 by Julia Marie Hogan, MS, LCPC

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1. SELF-HELPPersonal GrowthHappiness.

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P RINTED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA

For Johnny.

Theres no one Id rather be on this journey with.

Does it ever seem like life just happens to you? Do you get that feeling that everyone else around you knows the script, and youre left in the dark, trying to catch up? How does everyone else seem to be so sure about their lifes purpose? What is the secret to being confident about living your life and making good things happen?

We are all looking for purpose and engaging, meaningful experiences in life, especially as young adults. When that purpose isnt immediately apparent, we feel adrift and unsure. Were tempted to take a passive approach to life and just hope it will all work out. The result is that we feel anxious, directionless, and unsure of what to do with ourselves. Many of us waste precious time and energy pursuing and following the wrong purpose. In fact, young adults today (whether you are Generation Z or a Millennial) report that they feel uncertain about the future.

Consider the following questions:

• Does not knowing where your life is headed cause you anxiety?
• What would a meaningful and authentic life look like for you?
• What steps would you need to take, or what skills would you need to learn, to create that life for yourself?
• What role does God play in your plan for your life?
• Do you have a sense of what God is asking you to do with your life?

If you feel uncertain about your answer to any of these questions, you are not alone. I wrote this book because weve all asked ourselves these questions in some form at different points in our lives. Sometimes the answers are clear; often they are not. A Deloitte study found that Millennials are looking for a purposeful life that includes creating, sharing, and capturing memories earned through experiences that span the spectrum of lifes opportunities. The challenge is figuring out how to make that creating, sharing, and capturing memories a concrete reality. Many adults in their twenties and thirties feel like they have lost the script to their lives if they ever had a script in the first place. They feel directionless, unsure, confused, and never really prepared for whatever is going to happen next.

The buzzword adulting emerged a few years ago, attempting to capture young adults struggle to find purpose. The term often referred to completing tasks associated with adulthood, such as car maintenance, home repairs, and bill paying (tasks many of us never encountered as carefree kids). But there is so much more to our adult life than creating a budget or completing household chores. Its not so much what you do with your life but how you do it. If you know your purpose in life, you will live in a radically different way than if you dont know it. And this sense of purpose will certainly impact how you perform basic life tasks, including paying your bills.

Yet the reality is that, as adults, we often find that our childhood dreams have been consigned to daily realities (and realities about ourselves and our limits that we may still struggle to accept). The plans we had for ourselves arent working out the way we thought they would. We look around and wonder how we missed out on the secret to being successful, happy, and fulfilled in life while others (or everyone!) around us seem to succeed. Were you sick the day they covered this at school? Is there some best-selling book that you havent read yet? What does everyone else know about doing life that you dont?

Think back to your childhood for a moment. What did you want to be when you grew up? Maybe you wanted to be a superhero, a detective, or perhaps the president of the United States. At different points of my childhood, I wanted to be a veterinarian, an architect, an astronaut, and a fiction writer. Yet as I discovered (and as most of us find as we grow up), the hopes and dreams we have for ourselves often change or pan out differently than we expect. Sometimes thats for the better, and sometimes it can be incredibly disappointing. And for many of us, as we seek to make sense of where our lives have ended up, we find ourselves confused, battling uncertainty, stress, and disappointment. Yet we still have to go about the business of being adults. Even if you are content with your current situation, you might find yourself thinking, Is this really it? Or perhaps you just feel like something is missing.

I once had a client, Jessica, who came to my office hoping to find a sense of direction and purpose in her life. I feel so stuck, she told me. Its like I have all of these things I want to accomplish both in my career and in my personal life, but I just cant seem to do them. Time goes by so fast, and I never seem to be able to start working toward my goals. I feel like everyone else is looking at me thinking, Shes such a failure. And I feel like a failure. She felt hopeless, unmotivated, and bombarded by self-critical thoughts (all of which are possible symptoms of depression). Her sense of disconnect between her lived experience and her expectations for her life were affecting her mood and ability to function on a daily basis.

Jessica isnt alone in feeling this way. Many of us place extreme pressure on ourselves to be successful, in whatever way we define success, and to have it all figured out. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the American Psychological Association found that todays young adults have increased expectations of themselves and others. They view achieving these expectations as a sign of personal success and worth. Conversely, if they fail to meet these expectations, they believe they have failed. The trouble is, many young adults today have unrealistic expectations about life. As a result, they end up setting themselves up for constant disappointment and frustration.