Living by ‘The Purpose Driven Life’

This Week’s Winner

Anastacia Lim graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Sto. Tomas in 1960. She worked for 22 years in the Medical Record Department of St. Luke’s Hospital, 10 of those years as head of the department. She retired in 1986.

I read The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren three times. It is a book to return to and read over and over again, and feel renewed each time. It definitely gives a positive outlook to one who is negative like the schizophrenic that I am.

The Purpose Driven Life has 40 brief chapters which one is supposed to read in 40 days. The author chose 40 because the number signifies transformation. After reading the book for 40 days, one is supposed to be transformed.

After many years of being treated and not knowing exactly what I was sick of, I was finally told pointblank by my latest psychiatrist (after I spent 13 months in a mental hospital) that I was suffering from schizophrenia. When I heard this, I was afraid and disappointed at the same time because of what the term connotes and because I had thought my illness was not that serious and that I was not sick at all.

I am grateful to my psychiatrist for being frank with me. Psychiatrists tend to shield their patients from knowing their diagnosis, but I think there is a positive effect in knowing what one is sick of, particularly if one accepts the fact. For one thing, it explained the puzzle that is myself – why I think and feel differently, talk differently, act and react differently from other people. The important thing is for the patient to accept her illness, and start the process of healing from there. It explains why I am uptight most of the time, why the most trifling things bother me, why I am easily affected. It explains why thinking about certain activities and events upsets me, why I am stressed about doing most things, why I feel dissociated and unreal at times. It is difficult for me to integrate into the milieu. I feel alienated, misplaced, displaced and always insecure and at a loss. Fortunately, I am a pious person. My religion often solves my problem for me. It puts things in their proper place. I am 66, not young anymore. I’ve missed a lot. My life has been interrupted, as it were, by the times when I had relapses. I miss getting married and being in the company of children. I’m not particularly happy about living; often I wish it would be the end for me. I’m weary of doing the same things every day, exerting extra effort to do the barest necessities. Everything seems hard. This could be the effect of taking medications. One has a feeling of unease, discomfort and heaviness, which makes the barest activity difficult. I am always anxious and fearful. The prospect of the littlest problem scares me.

I don’t have a social life to speak of. But I don’t miss it. I’m content by my lonesome. I’ve come to the point where I know myself quite well, as well as my limitations, and do not crave for what is beyond my reach. I have come to terms with my illness and take it as a matter of fact with all its implications.

The Purpose Driven Life is all about being a good Christian, a person who has a relationship with God, a God who is not an abstract concept but a living and loving personal Being, the Creator and Redeemer personified in Jesus Christ, the God-Man who is not a matter of speculation and rationalization but of revelation – who has revealed Himself to man in the Bible, a God who sought man out, spoke to him and told him about Himself and revealed His purposes for him.

Even after reading the book, I still experience the crosses and tribulations as a result of my illness but they take on meaning and purpose.

The book enumerates five purposes of life, namely:

1. We are planned for God’s pleasure; we are made to worship God, to glorify Him, to be His friends. We were created for Him. He is our everything. We are to think about Him all the time. We are to find our happiness in this.

2. We are formed for God’s family, to belong to a community in fellowship with other believers.

3. We are created to be like Christ, to share in His sufferings as well as His triumphs and to grow and mature into His living images.

4. We are shaped to serve God, to become aware of our talents and abilities so as to use them for His service.

5. We are made for a mission – to share the gospel with our fellowmen, especially those who do not know Him. I may not have the opportunity to go into the fields to proclaim His Word but I can offer my travails and tribulations as a penance for the conversion of sinners.

When I’m feeling low, defeated and at a loss I turn to the Purpose Driven Life for inspiration and renewal. It never fails me.