FINDING YOUR “WHY”

In 1999, our family made our first-ever Amazon purchase. It was a book called Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. I’m not sure you could have convinced 1999 Chantel that one day she'd not only be buying all her books on Amazon, but everything from batteries to cleaning supplies and even socks!

Paco Underhill, the book’s author, predicted that “online shopping would never overtake retail.” Boy, did he get it wrong! On Amazon, in addition to books, you can now purchase more than twelve million products.

There’s so many things we’re sure of when we’re young—we play games like M.A.S.H. that predict who we’ll marry and how many kids we’ll have and what kind of car we’ll drive. We go to college and think we’re prepared for work when we graduate. When you’re 22, you’ve got the whole world figured out.

In 1999, Gavin worked as a consultant for a large technology-based consulting firm, and I had just applied to medical school, not knowing that nine months after that I’d be giving birth to our first-born daughter.

Sometimes I think about the life we might have had—if Gavin had continued on the “partner” track at his big company and I had gone to medical school and become a big-shot doctor.

Thank goodness those predictions didn’t come true!

I used to think the “good life” was predicated on these “What do I want to be when I grow up” decisions, but the reality is the exact opposite:

A good life is born from a question of “who,” not “what.”

And what I mean by that is this:

Whether or not I went to medical school was irrelevant.
And whether or not Gavin stayed on the partner track was irrelevant.

We decided that who we were going to be together would always trump what we did with our lives. And our lives would never be the same.

By 2001, with another kid on the way, I knew for sure I’d never do the medical school thing.

And in September of that same year, when Gavin quit the consulting firm, a lot of people thought he was crazy, too. He had gotten a glimpse of his future—at men twice his age who spent the majority of their lives on the road, who’d been married two or even three times, and who barely knew their kids—and he finally said, “This isn’t for me.”

We never looked back.

Even though we didn’t know that one day we’d add two more kids to the mix.
Or that we’d fall in love with ministry.
Or that I’d start a nonprofit.
Or that we’d move to a place called Canton.

When we got married in 1996 we never could have guessed that the life we have now would be so beautiful and rich and full. And in 1999, when Gavin ordered Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, not only did he have no idea that that first purchase would be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with Amazon, but he had no idea that this book would inspire a whole host of questions.

Because why do we do any of the things we do?

For love?
Or for ambition?
Or because we don’t feel like we have any other choice?

Read this post: Could your definition of success be too small?

What We Really Want

If we’re intentional about our lives, there is always a choice. We could have kept going, “kept our eyes on the prize,” so to speak, but for us, the prize was never the big house or the fancy car; it was always a purposeful, meaningful life together. We wanted margin to be creative, and we wanted to do work that felt meaningful. We wanted to be able to serve, but more importantly, we wanted to be able to love people well.

In 1999, we were buying a version of parenthood that we thought would serve us well. I’d be a stay at home mom for a year, then start medical school, and Gavin would continue consulting at his high end technology firm. We could figure out the logistics later.

But remember: in 1999, Paco Underhill didn’t think internet purchases would ever outpace brick-and-mortar retail, either.

He didn’t know what he didn’t know.

And neither did we.

I’m not sure you could have convinced 1999 Chantel that this life would be a better life.

But it is.

We did the best we could with the information we had at the time.

That’s all we can ever do.

Don’t beat yourself up for not being able to see into the future, but wherever you are, with the information you have, make the best decisions you can.

Sometimes I get annoyed when people ask me if I’m just a mom, and I think Gavin chuckles a little when people assume that as a pastor he only works one day a week. If we cared what people thought, we wouldn’t have been brave enough to do the work we’re doing now.

I think it all worked out okay.

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