You Are Your Avatar: Finding Purpose in Your Pain

“So then, let us [who minister] be regarded as servants of Christ and stewards (trustees, administrators) of the mysteries of God [that He chooses to reveal].” 1 Corinthians 4:1 (AMP)

Dear Oikonomos (Steward),

We are often told that if we want to discover our purpose, we should look at our strengths. What are you good at? What are you passionate about? What comes naturally to you? What expertise have you developed?

Those are important questions, but I believe there is another question we do not ask nearly enough: What have you survived?

A while ago, I was making a few changes to one of my social media accounts and came across the option to choose an avatar. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But later that evening, when I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore, I heard something so clearly in my spirit: You are your avatar.

Immediately, I knew this was about more than social media. I felt the Lord showing me something about purpose, assignment, business, and the people we are called to serve.

For those who have been asking, What is my purpose? Who am I supposed to help? What am I supposed to build? Who is my ideal client? perhaps you have been looking for the answer only in your strengths when part of it may actually be hidden in your story.

Sometimes the clearest picture of the person you are called to serve is the person you once were.

Look Beyond Your Strengths

I absolutely believe in identifying your gifts, strengths, passions, and expertise. But I want to challenge you to explore something else. Explore your pain.

A few years ago, I felt the Lord tell me, Camille, do not despise your pain. That stayed with me because if we do not understand the assignment of pain, we can easily misunderstand everything we have been through. We can spend years wishing we could erase certain chapters instead of asking God what wisdom, compassion, discernment, or assignment was being formed through them.

Scripture tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose. If we truly believe that, then even the things we would never have chosen—the failures, rejection, disappointments, losses, obstacles, tears, and painful seasons—can be redeemed.

That does not mean everything that happened to us was good. It means God is able to work even those things for good.

So instead of only asking, “Why did I have to go through this?” perhaps we need to begin asking: “What is this supposed to bring forth from me?” What wisdom is buried here? What did I learn? What did I discover about God, myself, and others? What can I see now that I could not see then?

There may be more purpose hidden in those answers than we realize.

You May Be the Ideal Client You Have Been Looking For

When people build businesses, ministries, programs, books, courses, or services, we are often told to identify an avatar or ideal client. We create profiles describing who that person is, what they need, what keeps them awake at night, and what problem we can help them solve.

But what if you already know that person intimately? What if you were once that person?

Go back to a difficult season of your life and remember who you were then. What were you searching for? What questions were you asking? What did you desperately need but could not find? What kind of support, teaching, community, resource, or person did you wish existed?

There may be clues to your present assignment in those answers.

I know there were seasons in my own life when everything could look fine from the outside. I could be joyful, productive, committed to prayer, walking with the Lord, and functioning well in many areas of my life while inwardly there were still wounds that needed healing.

There were things in my soul that I had carried from childhood. I was still wrestling with rejection, abandonment, grief, anger, offense, and unresolved pain that had accumulated over time. I did not necessarily have language for everything I was carrying, but I knew something inside of me needed attention.

Eventually, I reached a point where I knew I needed help. But I also knew the kind of help I was looking for. I didn’t simply want someone to motivate me, hype me up, or give me good advice. I wanted someone who could help me address what was happening within me through the truth of the Word of God. I wanted someone who could pour the water of God’s Word over the wounded places of my soul and help me understand what I was experiencing through the lens of my faith.

I struggled to find exactly what I was looking for. Yet God met me there. He began walking me through my own process of healing, understanding, growth, and restoration.

Looking back, I can now see something I could not see then: The woman I was searching for became part of the woman I was being prepared to become. The resource I needed helped reveal the resource I could one day become for someone else.

Your Pain Can Become a Service

There are parts of our stories we would rather bury. We don’t want to revisit them because they were painful, embarrassing, confusing, or simply ugly. But what if there is gold buried there?

I am not suggesting that we glorify suffering or build our identity around our wounds. Pain is not our identity. But once God has brought healing, wisdom, and perspective, our experiences can become resources in our hands.

The very thing that once made you cry may eventually help you recognize someone else’s tears. The questions you spent years trying to answer may become the questions you know how to help someone else navigate. The road you once walked in darkness may become a road you can illuminate for someone walking behind you.

This is why I believe we have to learn to extract the lesson from the experience.

Don’t merely remember what happened. Ask what you learned. What did God reveal? What did you discover about yourself? What do you understand now that you desperately needed to understand then? What resource would have changed that season for you? What support did you wish existed?

There may be an assignment hidden inside those answers.

Be Who You Needed

This is perhaps the simplest way I can say it: Be who you needed.

If you needed a teacher, perhaps you are being prepared to teach. If you needed a mentor, perhaps part of your assignment is mentoring. If you needed someone who understood your experience without judgment, perhaps your story has developed the compassion necessary for you to become that person for someone else.

If you searched for a resource that did not exist, perhaps you are supposed to create it.

If you desperately needed someone to put language around something you could not explain, perhaps God has spent years giving you the vocabulary that will help someone else finally understand what they are experiencing.

Purpose does not always begin with asking, What can I do? Sometimes it begins with remembering: Who was I when I desperately needed help? And then asking: What did I need that I can now become, build, write, teach, or provide for someone else?

This is also at the heart of why I wrote Let Your Pain Speak.

I have learned that there are things pain can teach us when we are willing to stop running from it long enough to listen. Our painful experiences do not have to become our identity, but neither should we automatically discard them once the season is over. There may be wisdom there. There may be revelation there. There may even be an assignment there.

Sometimes what you survived gives you language for someone who still cannot explain what they are experiencing. Sometimes your healing gives you compassion for someone who is still hurting. And sometimes the very place you once wanted God to erase from your story becomes the place He uses to reveal whom you are uniquely equipped to serve.

That is the invitation behind Let Your Pain Speak: not to remain imprisoned by what happened, but to allow God to show you what can be redeemed from it.

If this article is causing you to revisit your own story and ask what your pain may have been preparing you to carry, I invite you to explore the book: Let Your Pain Speak

Don’t Waste the Story

There is beauty that can be retrieved from painful places. There is wisdom buried beneath disappointment. There are lessons hidden inside failure. There is compassion that can emerge from suffering. There is discernment that often comes only after walking through something we never would have volunteered to experience.

We have to be willing to dig.

Go back through your history—not to live there, not to allow your past to become your identity, but to recognize what God has already brought you through.

Map the journey. Notice the patterns. Remember the questions. Identify the lessons. Extract the gold. Then ask God, “How can what You have taught me become useful to someone else?”

You may not receive the entire blueprint for your purpose in one moment. You don’t need to. Start with what has already been placed in your hands: your experience, your testimony, your wisdom, your lessons, your compassion, your perspective, and the version of you who once desperately needed someone to come alongside her.

Perhaps someone is praying for that person right now. Perhaps someone is asking God to send them the teacher, mentor, resource, book, community, coach, leader, or voice that you once wished you had. And perhaps, after everything God has brought you through, you have become part of His answer.

You are your avatar.

Do not despise your pain. Let God redeem it. Let Him extract the wisdom from it. Let Him show you how the places that once hurt can become places from which you serve. Because your pain does not have to be wasted. It can speak. And what it has taught you may be exactly what someone else needs to hear.