Are you doing enough with your life? Have you accomplished enough this year? How much money have you saved? How many calories have you avoided? What are your action steps for the next job promotion? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 

I can answer all of those questions in a single sentence. By all standards of the American dream and my restless, internal drive: I’m not doing enough.

But am I supposed to do more?

That tension between ambition and reality has led me to questions I didn’t bother pondering in college. I blithely assumed that my purpose was to glorify God by … accomplishing as much as humanly possible. If you grew up in a Christian school, you probably heard the phrase, “Strive for excellence!” And whether we were intended to or not, we interpreted this as a just cause to pursue the best life could offer.

It’s not even that our definitions of achievement failed to fall in line with good Christian principles. We wanted to succeed in our careers. Foster and adopt. Open businesses. Run soup kitchens. Mount crusades of Billy Graham proportions.

But if the transcendent purpose of life is to squeeze in as many accomplishments as possible between our first and final breaths, then why on earth does God make us sleep? 

We spend roughly a third of our lives unconscious, incapable of moving the ball down the court. And if we refuse sleep, we fall apart like a middle school basketball game in the fourth quarter. Most of us stop three times a day to prepare a meal and refuel. Sickness can take us out of the game entirely. We need money, but our day jobs keep us from pursuing our “passions” and our “passions” make our day jobs necessary. 

But nothing, nothing, shatters our grand expectations for a to-do list like child-rearing. Piglets can walk almost as soon as they’re born, within eight hours they have full control over their motor skills, and my eight-month-old still has a hard time getting the cheerio into her mouth. 

Why are our little ones so dependent for so long? They consume an inordinate amount of our time with their neediness. We literally spend years rocking, feeding, cleaning, teaching, comforting. 

Surely we could get more done if we could simply shed these basic human needs. Why all the limitations, God? My grumbling stomach derails my attempts to do more for you. 

All humans share the need for sleep and food, and these limitations don’t even touch on the many of us who struggle with debilitating illness, depression or anxiety, dysfunctional home lives, or less than inspiring SAT scores.

So which is it? Am I called to bring radical glory to God or just survive? Sometimes it’s a struggle to get through a long day of work, laundry, dinner preparation, and toy-picking-up without losing my cool when my husband cracks his knuckles. The great American novel languishes on my computer for another month, another year.

And yet…

In this moment, I am no further from God’s purposes than if I were smiling at you from the cover of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People issue.  

To be a Christian is to experience an incredible superimposition of an extraordinary calling on an ordinary life. It’s a mystery. You are both extraordinary and quite ordinary, one not lessening the other, without contradiction or falsity.

We exist as antinomies of creation, much like other great spiritual truths. How is it that God softens and hardens a human heart and yet we’re still morally responsible before him? How can God eternally exist as three Persons? We hold the deepest truths with open hands, constantly learning at His feet, because His ways are impervious to human attempts to package them into neat, comprehensible boxes.

We are asked to give up our lives and make disciples of all nations, and live quiet and godly lives with all dignity (Mat. 16:25; Mat. 28:19-20; 1 Tim. 2:2).  These purposes appear to war in contradiction, two reasonable conclusions drawn from valid principles. 

How?

Because ultimately, He does the work, and He decides when and how to use us. 

This is not to say that at some point God won’t call you to do something extraordinary by human standards. He may very well lead you to sell your house and move overseas to a people who desperately need him. He may compel you to open your home to foster children or give away your rainy day vacation fund to a single mom without a working vehicle. He may lead you to start a business that transforms lives.

He very well might.

Or your life’s quest might be to endure trials and heartaches while faithfully loving God and loving your neighbor, submitting your will to your Creator’s, until you leave this earth.

I wrestle daily in this tension. The call to Christianity is neither a call to complacency nor a demand to run ourselves ragged. We lay down our life so we can find it abundantly. 

God knows us intimately and designed us intentionally. It seems He often uses our individual, unique abilities and talents for His glory and within our own stories. You don’t cease to be you within His kingdom. Scripture doesn’t command us to set our dreams on fire, shunning everything we love, everything that brings joy, in a misguided attempt to be abstemious and pious. We pursue our God-given dreams. But the Gospel creates a crucial distinction from our natural instincts: If called upon, we lay them down.

Because we’re not the point. He’s the point.

Though I dream about the future, it ultimately remains opaque to me. I don’t know if I will accomplish “great things,” but I don’t think that’s the point. 

I’m asked to be faithful, “bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Col. 1:10) I’m called to pray without ceasing “your will be done.” (I Thes. 5:17; Mat. 6:10)

I’ve been working on this blog post for weeks. At a dozen different points, I’ve attempted to wrap it up only to be derailed by these human limitations. Even now, every word I write is punctuated with a yawn. I might not find all the words tonight. I might give in to sleep. 

But this, even this, is enough.