Faithbook: Goal Setting with God - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

Goal Setting with God

I remember learning about goal setting in middle school. My sixth-grade teacher had us write down long-term goals and short term goals. I think my long-term goal was to miss no more than two words on spelling tests all year, and my short-term goal was to help set the table every day that week. How simple things were.

When you're a kid, self-betterment is pretty much built in. For one, you're growing, which certainly helps with the whole "feeling-like-life-is-going-places" thing. ("What did you do over the summer?" "Oh, I grew two inches, you?") The kindergarten through senior year trajectory provides a clear-cut set of expectations. Life gets gradually more complex. (Every teacher's mantra: "We'll tolerate this now, but get ready, it's not going to fly in the 7th grade.") It's all building up into that culminating moment: entrance into the Real World.

Well, here I am in the Real World, sort of. I do my own laundry, so I guess that counts, but I still don't own an iron or know what kind of job I want, so maybe not. Each day, I have little mini-goals: finish a draft of the Milton paper, read two acts of Henry V, learn to play the difficult six measures of our new song in band. But I'm completely at a loss with those long-term goals that were so easy in sixth grade. I feel like I'm floating in a gray hazy area. I have a vague and fluid picture of my future: sometimes I'm walking down a busy city street in a white button up and a pencil skirt with a briefcase full of interesting documents (what the documents are about, I'm not sure.) Other times I'm wearing glasses and my hair hasn't been brushed for days and I'm lecturing a group of enthralled college students on the importance of literature as an experience. Still other times I'm dashing to the mile mark, clipboard and stopwatch in hand, to tell the frontrunners on my cross country team they've gone out too fast and need to back off the pace. So. I have no idea where my life is going; thus, how can I really know what I should be doing each day? Suddenly the charade falls apart.

My friend Will came over to our room the other night and announced he wants to apply to Teach for America after graduation. He was so excited and said he finally feels centered. With a goal to work toward, even one three years away, he felt like he was finally doing something with his life. I still don't have that feeling, really, besides my rough visions of what the future may hold. However, there's at least one hour a week where everything is clear.

When I'm at church I feel like I know my purpose. "And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord." The best goal we could possibly aspire to is right in the Book of Common Prayer. It's short term, long term, and eternal. When I'm in church I realize it doesn't matter whether I want to be a professor or a magazine writer or a woman in a business-y skirt with a briefcase of documents. It's all the same, as long as I love and serve God along the way.

Unfortunately, this clarity fades when I exit the church door and walk back to my dorm and open my e-mail full of "Internship Opportunity!!" and "Exec Board Elections; Run for Club Office!" Suddenly I've hopped back onto that resume hamster wheel, and there's no space on the page for "How would you rate yourself as a faithful witness of Christ our Lord, on a 1 to 10 scale?" A serene Christian angel sits on one shoulder and a frighteningly intellectual department head from a top graduate program sits on the other. "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work." The angel quotes Ecclesiastes and I relax. The department head reminds me I have four papers due before October 6th and reminds me that letters of recommendation are the most important part of the admissions process, so I'd better start impressing my professors now. I don't even know if that's what I want, but it scares me anyway. I wistfully remember my hour in the sanctuary, and decide I should probably get back to work.

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Goal Setting with God

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