What are you going to do with your life?

There was a time when certain things were automatic answers to that question.  There was a time when parents and children presumed that this might have been more about an occupation than vocation but now it would seem both have become interwoven.  What are you going to do with your life?  For starters, marriage and family were almost automatic answers to that question and so did not even need to be said.  When I began as a pastor, I also began asking catechism students if they planned to marry and have children.  At first it was a joke.  Well, duh.  Of course.  Some fifty years ago this was presumed.  While those of that age may not have a clue as to their major in college or their profession or where they might end up working, they at least knew this.  They would marry and have children as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had done before them.

When I last asked this question while teachings a year or so ago, the question of marriage and family was not so universally chosen and certainly not presumed.  Part of that question of what they were going to do with their lives was precisely a question of it they would marry and if they would have children.  While not yet at the point where it was presumed they would be single and without children, it was already at that point when marriage and family were on the table but not yet decided.  How strange it is that in addition to sorting out the maze of college or trade school, major or minor, profession or occupation, now our kids have to figure out if they are gay or straight or some other point on the spectrum of desire, if they are male or female or one of the other letters of the alphabet with respect to gender, if they would consider marriage and if they would ever consider a child.  In other words, what were presumed and unsaid about nearly all kids a generation or three ago has become the big question.

In addition to the whole question applying to things that were once pretty much a given, it seems to imply that the answer is a puzzle to be solved.  What are you doing to do with your life is not some mystery which we must explain or solve, it is simply a question.  Its answer lies not in some heartfelt longing but in the concrete of aptitude, skills, and advice.  We know what we are good at and what things come easy to us.  Our parents and family and friends also know us and they can often see things we do not see in ourselves.  It may not be glamorous or romantic but it might be as simple as looking at ourselves and seeking the advice of those around us.  Though some folks and even Christians sometimes speak of what we do with our lives as some great puzzle or mystery to be solved, it need not be that difficult.  Guided by our aptitudes and skills and armed with the advice and counsel of those who know us best, it can be rather easy.  Occupations do not have to be meaningful to be filled with meaning -- sometimes they are ordinary and routine but they accomplish great things in the support of a spouse, children, and an extended family.

What are you going to do with your life?  As a Christian we already know the answer to that question.  We are to live holy, chaste, upright, honorable, generous, giving, and servant lives -- living in our life what we see in Jesus.  If we can't see this, we will not be able to see anything else.  I could have been a plumber like my dad or any one of a thousand things.  I ended up a pastor.  It was not so much a personal goal as it was being moved along by interest, encouraged by family and friends, and the work of God in and through them.  I will say this -- I did not expect to marry and have a family because I presumed it.  Yes, there are those whose desire for marriage and family are not realized or are realized late in life.  Of course.  God bless them.  But that is not the norm.  The norm is marriage and family.  Everything else may be up for grabs but we need to do our kids the service of encouraging at least this as they unpack their lives and what they plan to do with them.