Presentiment of a Purpose Driven Life

I was recently going back over my old spiritual journals and I found a series of entries prompted by Rick Warren’s wonderful book The Purpose Driven Life.

I came across this incredible book at a turning point in my life, when I was trying to understand how God wanted me to use my life to serve him. At the time I was mired in confusion and Rick Warren’s wise words helped me to find a way through the labyrinth of my own insecurities and aspirations.

One of the exercises that Warren’ encourages you to do is to write a life purpose statement based on life’s five greatest questions; what will be the centre, character, contribution, communication and community of our lives.
When I read what I had written all those years ago about the communication of my life, I felt a shudder go down my spine. I wrote these words many years before a cancer diagnosis turned me into an author.

At the time I was working in charity communications and had no idea of the pain I would pass through on my journey or how God would use this experience to help others. Yet my thoughts about my own life purpose have proved almost prophetic.

This is what I wrote.

What will be the communication of my life?
To take my experience of the world; of people, of joy; of pain and of beauty and to use this to demonstrate God’s love.

I will value my hurts as my greatest message will come out of my greatest hurts and weakness. I will not hide my weaknesses as they will bring me closer to God and others.

I will use my own fears and healing to help others show the way to God’s love; to express my story in a way that speaks to others’ fears (because everyone is in some way afraid) and shows the way to God’s love.

My best-selling book Sea Changed, which takes the hurt of cancer and turns it into a message of God’s love, is available in Christian bookstores and Waterstones throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide.