Najah’s Journey to Living Purposefully

Can you look at your life right now and say that you are honoring and investing in the people and things that are most important to you?

More times than not, we as women have a hard time saying “yes” to this question. We are notorious for taking on way more than we can handle at a time. We try to be master jugglers and superwomen only to feel overwhelmed, overworked, and overcome by the demands of life. Our health suffers, critical relationships suffer, and our dreams and passions suffer. Yet, we stay on the hamster wheel and keep moving as if this is the way of life. But is it really? Is this the life we were designed to live?

I’m honored to share with you the journey of Najah Drakes, an inspiring woman who has learned the value of reducing overwhelm to live more purposefully. We shared a very insightful and honest conversation that will leave you inspired to lead a more intentional life. My interview questions are shown below in bold, and Najah’s responses are shown in italics. You can read more about Najah and find ways to connect in her bio at the end of this interview.

NAJAH’S DECISION TO LIVE PURPOSEFULLY

What led you to make a decision to become purposeful with your life?

My journey to living purposefully was not very purposeful. It was not some intentional strategy, game plan, or vision that I had in place. What really happened was that God broke me all the way down. And when I broke down, in those moments of desperation, I asked, “Lord, how did I get here? What’s next? Where do I go from here? How do I move forward?” Asking the Lord those kinds of questions led me to a point where I realized that I had not been listening. I hadn’t really given God the space for me to hear him because I was on the move all the time.

I’m a mom of five boys, so life was always crazy and hectic. I worked outside of the home for a good portion of my career. So, when I was on the go, it was hard to hear. When I was broken down, everything came to a halt, and I realized at that point that I needed to be intentional about some time alone. So, I decided to go to a silent retreat that was run by the Catholic monastery here in Georgia. It was a three-day silent retreat where the focus was on boundaries. They did have some seminars throughout the day, but most of the day was just simply spent in silence or in prayer.

At the end of that retreat, I had such clarity from God that my priorities had been out of order. That was how I ended up in that broken-down state. What was supposed to be the main thing was really the last thing. So, God really had to impress upon me that things were out of order, and if I wanted things to get back on track, I had to become purposeful about that order, because God is a God of order.

Before we go into how you came to establish order in your life, let’s unpack the part of your journey leading up to the “break down.” Will you share what being “out of order” looked like for you and how you functioned in that state?

“Out of order” for me looked like my calendar not lining up with those words that I was saying were most important to me (i.e., God, husband, family). Nothing was working properly. My mental health was in an unhealthy place. My marriage was not thriving. It was barely holding on by a thread. I felt like I was giving the leftovers of myself each and every day to my family and the best of myself to every other area of my life.

I managed the same way my mama functioned, my grandmama functioned, her grandmama functioned…we pushed through. That’s what we do – double down and push through. It was a time when I didn’t understand the power of pulling back. I got through it by powering through until I just couldn’t power through anymore. And that was the place where I just didn’t have the energy or the strength to push past that wall. And it was a blessing. It was a blessing in disguise.

Through this process, I realized that everything is not meant for you to power through. Sometimes, that wall is intentional. It’s not designed for you to figure out how to get around it or how to get through it. If you think about it, the way God uniquely designed each one of us was with a distinct, specific set of limitations. Without the limits, when would we ever need him?

THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF LIVING PURPOSEFULLY

Once you left the monastery after sitting in silence and gaining clarity on your priorities, what practical steps did you take to establish order and begin moving in a purposeful direction?

I left the monastery with seven priorities I believed the Lord was calling me to do. I wrote them on a sheet of paper and pinned them to a wall in my office because I wanted to keep them in front of me. Over time, they have evolved.

My first thing was spending time daily, alone with the Lord, hearing his voice so that I could stay in his will daily. That was number one because, at the monastery, I recognized the power of listening.

The other thing I did that I learned from the monks was to read the Bible intentionally and purposefully. Like the practice they shared with me, when I read a verse, I ask the Lord, “What one word here do you want to emphasize to me?” When he reveals the word, I spend time thinking about it. As I begin to focus on a scripture over time, there are different words that the Lord wants to emphasize to me.

How do you overcome mindsets and expectations that try to shift your focus away from pursuing your priorities?

First, I have to manage the unrealistic expectations I place on myself. I think so often as women, we try to compress 12 years’ worth of work into 12 hours of a day. And then we’re frustrated because we don’t understand why we didn’t get 12 years’ worth of work completed in 12 hours! So, for me, there is so much power in adjusting my expectations of myself.

Practically, when I sit down each morning, I ask myself, “What are the top three areas I’m focusing on today?” That’s it. Although I have a much longer list of things to do, I only focus on no more than three things each day. Then, I time block based on my availability for that day because another thing I’ve found is that we think we have way more time than we actually do. When I take time to think about what I already have to do (take my child to school, commute, eat breakfast, pick up my child, be at church, be on a conference call, etc.), there really isn’t that much time left. Misaligning our understanding of the time we actually have available versus what we perceive as available causes a lot of friction, disappointment, and frustration.

We have to first get accurate about what is really happening. That’s why I’m so accountable to writing things down on paper so that I can visually see what’s really going on – not what I think or perceive, but what is actually happening. This helps me manage my expectations of myself. Then I can more accurately manage the expectations others have of me because I can look at my schedule and get an accurate picture of what my life looks like for real.

STAYING COMMITTED TO LIVING PURPOSEFULLY

How do you establish boundaries so that you stay committed to a purposeful life?

Because I know that I’m in alignment with what God is calling me to do, I don’t have to wonder if I need to be doing more. It’s caused me to say “no” to more things – great ideas, great opportunities. I have to ask how opportunities impact the priorities God has given me for my life.

How does what I’m being asked to do impact my faith walk? How is it going to impact the time I set aside each morning to be in God’s presence? Maybe this is not the opportunity for me.

How will it impact my self-care? Am I going to be thrown in a million different directions? Am I going to be physically stressed and overwhelmed? Maybe this is not the opportunity for me, or maybe it’s not the right time for this opportunity for me.

How does what is being asked of me impact my priorities? How is it going to impact my family time?

We have to protect what God is calling us to do and not allow anyone to just come in and move our priorities out of alignment. When you prioritize those areas God is calling you to, those areas God is saying are most important to him (and therefore, most important to you), it puts you in a position to be protective of what he is asking of you.

Life is unpredictable, and the processes we initially put in place may not work in every season. How do you adjust and maintain a purposeful lifestyle through the hard and rocky seasons?

We know that we will have trouble. It’s not something that is optional. It’s something that is going to happen. So, for me, I plan what I can, and I trust God with what I can’t because we can’t “out plan” every challenge. There are certain enemies we can kind of predict, like being consistently late or kids having meltdowns at certain times every day. That’s something that we can investigate and develop a plan to help address. But there are sometimes going to be enemies that just catch us by surprise. When that happens, we have to go back to what we know. We can feed on God’s faithfulness. I go back to every way that God has been faithful to me. I try to think of how I have seen God be faithful before – worst situations, similar situations. How has God always shown up?

What do you know? Go back to what you know when you don’t know. That’s how you withstand the storm when it comes.

THE IMPACT OF LIVING PURPOSEFULLY

How has becoming purposeful impacted you wholistically, and what difference has that decision made in your life?

It just makes my heart smile to have the order of my life aligned with God’s order. There’s nothing more beautiful. The changes I have seen in my personal family are like “taking a 180!” My husband and I are celebrating 22 years of marriage this year, and not just that, but we’re happily married. My mental health is a priority, and despite the fact that I still struggle with depression and anxiety, I’m in a position now to not allow them to overtake me. Because there was a time when the depression and anxiety would overtake me, and I would be at its mercy. Now, because I’m intentional about it, I have a plan and tools I can use to confront it so that it doesn’t stay long.

So for me, becoming purposeful has really changed the way that I do life. Life is not something that I passively wander through. It’s something that I intentionally and purposely plan because a purposeful life doesn’t just happen. It requires purposeful pursuits. It requires a purposeful mindset. It requires purposeful priorities. A purposeful life is built one purposeful day at a time.

As you reflect back on your life BEFORE and SINCE committing to living purposefully, how would you say the Lord has kept you?

I think that the biggest way that God has kept me is that he never gave up on me. Every time I’ve fallen short, every time I’ve fallen down or fallen out, he has always shown up and never given up on me. If I was me, I would have given up on me a long time ago. That’s the human response, but God is such a Keeper of those who fall short of his glory – every single one of us. He keeps coming back to us. He’s the One who comes back for the one, and I’m just grateful that he always comes back for me.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR LIVING PURPOSEFULLY

What encouragement would you offer to women who are trying to do “all the things” but are feeling tired and sensing a need for change? Are there any resources you would recommend?

I would ask her to ask herself, “Why am I doing all the things?” The only one who’s supposed to do all the things is Jesus Christ himself. We aren’t designed to do all the things. So, I would ask her, “Why do you feel compelled to do all the things?” Because in that “why” you will find some lies, and you first have to identify those lies that are keeping you doing things that God isn’t even asking you to do.

I always go back to the story of Mary and Martha – the idea that Martha was doing many things, but Jesus didn’t need her to do all of those things. She thought she was doing the right thing, but just because you think you’re doing the right things doesn’t mean you actually are. You don’t want to do the right thing. You want to do the things that God wants you to do. Going back to that story and watching how Mary chose to do one thing – and that was to sit at Jesus’ feet. So take some time and just sit there.

Mother’s Day is coming up, and this is a time when people get perfume, beautiful bathrobes, and all kinds of things. I would encourage you to make your requests known to those who love you – what you actually need. Maybe you need some quiet time to sit and listen. The best gift somebody can give may be space for you to sit and hear uninterrupted – time at a hotel, or an Air BnB, or on a beach. or lakeside. Then, come back and implement what you heard because right now your hearing is impaired. If you’re doing all the things, your hearing is impaired. So, you’ve got to get to the point where you open up those channels. You’ve got to get some things out of the way, slow some things down, get some things off your plate so that you can sit and hear. Then, you will be in position to carry out what God actually wants you to do.

I think that one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is learning to set a standard and a boundary for what we will and what we will not do. There are two books I’d recommend for every woman to read: “The Disease to Please” by Harriet Braiker and “Boundaries” by John Townsend and Henry Cloud. I also have a 30-day Overwhelm Challenge that gives practical tools on how to combat overwhelm and set boundaries. Click HERE to access the challenge.

CONCLUSION

This concludes my interview with Najah. I would like to thank her for sharing her journey to help us assess our lives and properly align with God’s plan. I hope that you leave this post with a renewed perspective and take steps to be still, listen, and follow God’s priorities for your life. No matter where you are right now, know that He’s sustaining you and that He has an abundant life planned for you through Christ. Take this fresh opportunity to receive the blessing of doing life His way.

I strongly encourage you to connect with Najah by clicking the link to her website below. She is willing to walk alongside you as you make the decision to become more purposeful with your life and take better care of yourself. My life has been enriched by her ministry, and I have no doubt that yours will be, too!

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