Perspective

Purpose in My Heart

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

I woke up one morning last week with a purpose in my heart. Do you ever have that feeling? The one that feels like some of the thousands of tiny pieces you’ve been trying to fit together finally fell into place in your heart while you slept? It’s a weird one, for sure, but also… one of the coolest.

It was like all the sleepless nights I have spent trying to figure things out, all the working dreams I have had, and all of the things (big and small) that I have done and accomplished over the past several years FINALLY paid some dividends.

There was no real Aha! moment. Nothing that I woke up thinking was new. In fact, it was a bunch of thoughts I have all the time. Wishes I make regularly. Dreams I dream every day and night. So what was different?

This feeling.

I woke with a purpose in my heart to do the things I have been wishing and hoping and praying for my whole life. I felt filled with the knowledge that I was meant for it. I felt certain that it was one of the reasons I was put on this planet, that it was my way to make this world just a little bit better place to be, and that somehow, some way it was going to give me the life I’ve always felt I was meant to live. I felt confident that I was ready to move forward.

Sacrifices, compromises, and a lot of time and sweat equity will be required, but I’m finally ready to make them. I’m finally ready to pursue the things that have long felt like pipe dreams, wishful thinking, or a child’s naïveté.

And when those thoughts creeped in…Who am I to do this? What makes me qualified? What if I fail? What if I make a fool of myself? I answered myself.

Why not me? I have the education, the experience, and the interest.

What if I never try, never just do the darn thing, never put myself out there? I would regret it, and I would always wonder what might have been. I would never know how it might have changed the course of my life in ways big and small.

And honestly, I need to find a way to get back some of the qualities of the girl that I was growing up because that girl beat to her own drum and did not give a rip if it didn’t make sense to other people. It made sense to her; it made her happy; and that’s all that mattered.

Even if I fail or it doesn’t work out or it leads me down a path I never expected, at least I will know I did so by stepping out on a limb, hoping it can bear the weight of a lifetime of dreams. I will have done so trying. I will have learned and grown and ended up somewhere new. My Quality of Failure will get an A+. And that is a much better life than playing it safe and always wondering where it would have led me.

So what is the nagging idea that resurfaces in your sleep and in your daydreams? What distracts you when you’re busy doing all the things you “have to” do and makes you think, I could be doing so many other things, like ______ and is always the thing that fills in the blank.

If I were a betting woman, I’d bet something just popped into your head. What is it? Are you ready to listen to that voice yet? Are the pieces starting to fall into place in your heart?

Maybe they are, or maybe you still need some time to work your way around it before you can zero in on that thing in the center. This process is good and necessary. It leads to the Aha! moments that feel a lot more like the truth you’ve always known making itself perfect clear – in neon.

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My How Far We’ve Come: Perspective from a New Year

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

Over the holidays, I had the chance to catch up with one of my best friends. She is living abroad for a year for her job and is traveling as much of the world as she possibly can. It’s a dream come true for her – quite literally. She has been dreaming about and working toward this opportunity for several years.

It finally paid off.

Now, that is not to say there weren’t a few bumps in the road or obstacles that needed maneuvering. There were several. As someone who was along for the ride through all the ups and downs, twists and turns, I feel uniquely equipped to remark on just how far she has come in a year.

Of course, if you’re anything like me, this time of year typically involves a certain amount of retrospection as well as introspection. I take stock of the goals and resolutions I had set for the year and assess how many I actually achieved. I had just done a bit of this inventory when I met up with her. Like me, she is one to look back and take stock of the changes each year brings.

We ate at one of our favorite restaurants one night with another of our closest friends and caught up on all the latest news since the last time we’d all been together. We talked about her work and her travels. We talked about the differences (big and small) of living in a foreign place, where the language, food, culture, and customs are just that – foreign. Then we each went in different directions until we can be together again.

I went home and kept thinking over the next couple days about all the things we discussed going on in each of our lives. Between the three of us, there had been changes in work, travel, relationships, marriage, relocation, and the thought of kids.

Then, it occurred to me just how much had changed in 365 days, how much we had changed. While we could only steal a few hours here and there, the difference was evident, and I told her so.

My how far we’ve come. It seemed what we gained most from the past 365 days of experiences was…perspective.

As we like to remind each other, “The Man has a Plan, and He knows what He’s doing.” And He does. While it may not always be clear to us or easy to trust and put all of our hopes, dreams, and faith in, what we gain in the end is the perspective we need to see just how far we’ve come. If we’re lucky, we find ourselves in a better place, and we see exactly how and why we arrived when we did rather than when we thought we should.

All the hell we had been through to get here (whether in the past year or many years) makes much more sense to us now. It was all preparation to guarantee we were truly ready, in every way, for the things ahead. That process ensured we truly appreciate, enjoy, and savor them in a way we couldn’t have had we not gone through a bit of hell to get there.

It may have seemed chaotic at the time, but looking back, we can see how every bump in the road or obstacle that made us change course acted as a stepping stone on the path toward reaching our goals and dreams  – or at least brought us much closer to them. All those obstacles we maneuvered had led us here. Thankfully, “here” is a good, perhaps even better place than we’d originally been trying to reach. The road may have been long and winding, but we got there all right.

So as we start this New Year, we do so “looking down from 30,000 feet” and realize “life’s been good to me.”