We all look for heroes. Whatever our interests, from video games to carpentry to parenthood to medicine, we seek others who have “been there, done that.” They motivate us and guide us.
Growing up, my family loved to talk about our goals. Though we were striving for different dreams, we all needed motivation. It was a beautiful touchstone that made me who I am today, and I am grateful.
Curiously enough, the soundtrack of my youth is intertwined as closely with the motivational speakers of the day as the amazing soft rock hits of the ’80s. Among those voices were Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar. Their maxims have stuck with me.
What other 10-year-old encourages their friends by saying, “I don’t want to just see you at the top but over the top!” (That was a Zig Ziglar line.)
In the formidable crucible of college, however, I started to question if the self-made man theory really held water. Where did motivation come from? Was boot-strapping really a thing? Would achieving my goals ever give me a sense of true fulfillment?
This questioning was concurrent with embracing my Catholic faith as my own – it was becoming not just something my family did, but a real part of me and my life. And, if life was only about motivating myself to achieve my goals, where did that leave everyone else – those that I was called to serve, in my unique and unrepeatable vocation?
Meet the saints
Enter the most amazing motivational speakers I’d ever meet: the saints. They understood and lived the truth of theology of the body even before St John Paul II’s teachings articulated these long-standing truths for the new audience of a millennium turning the corner. The saints knew that to find who they were, they had to give themselves away.
How easy it was for me to become distracted from that goal in order to focus on myself: my goals, my future, my dreams. Bit by bit, I began to ask God: “What goals would you have me accomplish? What are your dreams for me?”
As I look back on that time from my current vantage point as a wife and mom of six, the call of the Lord was to live not only for myself but to daily give myself away. It has been a blessed journey of unexpected twists and turns. The CliffsNotes version goes something like:
- During engagement, coming to understand God’s truth regarding human sexuality through the lens of theology of the body, which led my fiancé and me to trust in the Church’s stance against artificial contraception;
- Again, placing our trust in how we were created when we welcomed our first child about three weeks before our first wedding anniversary;
- Making sacrifices to care for our child with everything we had, including feeling a most scary call for me to scale back paid work so I could be with our child, and soon with our multiple children;
- Walking with various family members through the ups and downs of life – illness both mental and physical – and gaining the patience and fortitude that only God can give.
The saints were there to encourage and guide me – my journey, uniquely mine, as yours is. The saints let me know that goals are great, but only if they are centered on that key principle emphasized by St. John Paul II: giving ourselves away, to, paradoxically, discover who we were meant to be.
Every time I gave myself (and my goals) away, they were replaced with a fulfillment I couldn’t have dreamed of, despite the difficulties I encountered.
Saints were people like me, who said “yes” to God more than they said “no.” And I console myself with the thought that just one more “yes” than “no” is a goal, because saints also were not perfect. They were on the journey, just like me. Even Tony Robbins sounded very TOB when he said, “Your past does not equal your future.”
Are goals bad?
No!
Achieving goals can help bring others to Christ. But I am advised by St. Therese of Lisieux to never to forget the ultimate goal (kind of the mic drop of the saintly motivational seminar):
“Let us go forward in peace, our eyes upon heaven, the only one goal of our labors.”