Hurtgen: From road maps to life goals: The art of a meaningful assessment

I’ve always loved road trips. Selecting a destination, plotting a route, choosing what to stop and see along the way, and finding those little oddities that dot the landscape. Getting your photo in front of the house that inspired Grant Woods’s American Gothic. Standing beneath the towering statue of the Jolly Green Giant or visiting the home of Popeye, the Sailor. These and more are those little oddities, and more make for an epic road trip.

A critical key to an epic road trip is a pre-trip assessment. Oil levels, fuel, tire condition, seat comfort, a good route, and a great playlist are essentials for an excellent road trip. If you do not assess your vehicle, you have a greater chance of ending up broken down on the side of the road.

The same type of assessment necessary for a road trip is also vital for your life. Taking a life assessment creates an opportunity to take stock of the quality of your life, your relationships, what your time is going towards, and where you would like your time and energy to go.

Some ways to conduct a personal assessment include writing your eulogy and identifying those things you hope others say at your funeral. A less morbid tactic is writing down twenty-five things you would like to do, prioritizing them, and then focusing on the top five. Another way is to ask for input from your spouse, your friend, or God.

Psalms 139:23 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts.” The psalmist is requesting a divine assessment of their life. To expose their desires, fears, and motivations. When we look at navigating a thriving in an unknown future, taking inventory of who you are is helpful.

Asking God to search you and try you can reveal your priorities, dreams, and fears, trapping you in your comfort zone. God’s inquiry can also reveal whether your desires are in alignment. For instance, you cannot be present and engaged as a spouse, parent, or friend and simultaneously be away from home for seventy to eighty percent of the year – your desire to be successful in one area conflicts with the other.

Prayerfully picturing and planning for your future begins with a divine assessment. God, who sees and knows your heart more than you do, can draw out what is hidden.

Robert Hurtgen is a husband, father, minister and writer. Read more of him at robhurtgen.wordpress.com.