When Existing Becomes The Goal

by Michele D. Anderson, MA – Christian Counselor and Master Certified Coach

There are people all around us who are functioning but not really living.

They get up. Go to work. Take care of responsibilities. Raise families. Pay bills. Answer messages. Show up where they’re expected to show up.

From the outside, they may look perfectly fine.

Inside, they may be exhausted.

Not simply physically tired.

Soul tired.

Many people have become remarkably good at surviving.

We learn coping skills. We find distractions. We stay busy. We lean on relationships. We go to counseling. We may take medication. We exercise, travel, work harder, accomplish something new, or simply grit our teeth and make it through another difficult season.

There is nothing wrong with getting help.

Counseling matters. Medical and psychiatric care can matter. Healthy relationships matter. Sometimes we absolutely need others to help us carry what has become too heavy to carry alone.

But there is another question worth asking.

What am I living from?

Because learning how to manage life isn’t necessarily the same thing as knowing who you are within it.

Survival can quietly become our way of life.

Get through Monday.

Make it to Friday.

Get through the crisis.

Get over the relationship.

Survive the disappointment.

Find something that makes things feel better for a little while.

Then begin again.

It can feel like running on a treadmill—constantly moving but never quite arriving anywhere.

And somewhere along the way, we can lose sight of our own value.

When we don’t know who we are, almost everything gets an opportunity to define us.

Rejection gets a vote.

Failure gets a vote.

Trauma gets a vote.

Our mistakes get a vote.

Our accomplishments get a vote.

Our diagnosis gets a vote.

Other people’s opinions get a vote.

And sometimes those voices become so loud that we begin believing the hardest things about our lives are the truest things about us.

They aren’t.

For Christians, this is where identity in Christ becomes so much more than a religious phrase.

It becomes a foundation.

Jesus said in John 10:10:

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (NIV)

That doesn’t mean Christians never struggle.

Christians experience depression.

Christians experience anxiety.

Christians experience grief, trauma, rejection, loneliness, disappointment, and fear.

Christians sometimes need counseling, medication, physicians, support groups, and people willing to walk beside them through difficult seasons.

Faith does not make us immune to suffering.

But faith gives suffering something it cannot give itself:

Pain can be part of our story without becoming our identity.

Rejection can hurt without determining our worth.

Failure can happen without becoming our name.

A difficult season can be dark without convincing us that darkness is all there is.

And this is where Christians need to be especially careful with people who are hurting.

Someone struggling emotionally does not simply need to be told to “have more faith.”

Someone carrying trauma does not need Scripture used as a bandage over a wound no one has taken the time to understand.

And someone who does not believe what we believe does not need to feel like our latest project.

People need to be seen.

They need to be heard.

They need compassion.

They need safe places to tell the truth.

Sometimes they need someone willing to sit beside them in the darkness long enough that they begin to wonder where hope might be found.

Perhaps one of the greatest ways Christians can point people toward Jesus isn’t through winning an argument.

Maybe it is through becoming people whose lives quietly demonstrate that there is another way to live.

Not perfectly.

Hopefully.

When life shakes us, we have somewhere to return.

When people reject us, our value doesn’t disappear with their approval.

When we fail, our identity doesn’t have to collapse.

When the future feels uncertain, we don’t have to believe that uncertainty is the end of the story.

That’s the difference between constantly fighting to create an identity and learning to live from one that has already been given.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply:

How do I feel better?

Maybe there is another question underneath it:

What am I living from?

Fear?

Rejection?

Achievement?

Approval?

Trauma?

Disappointment?

Someone else’s opinion?

Or something deeper?

You may be in a season where getting through today feels like enough.

Sometimes it is.

But don’t confuse survival with the full measure of the life you were created to live.

There is more.

There is meaning.

There is purpose.

There is identity.

There is hope.

And for me, that hope has a name.

Jesus.

Not Jesus as a quick answer to complicated pain.

Jesus as the One who knows the whole story.

The One who sees what others cannot see.

The One who knows who we were before the wounds, before the failures, before the labels, and before the world began telling us who we should be.

Maybe freedom begins by asking a different question.

Not simply:

How do I survive this?

But:

Who am I becoming, and what am I living from?