Formation is the process where preference shifts from exercising power to choosing purpose.
I didn’t arrive at that sentence by thinking my way into it.
I arrived by living long enough to notice what I reached for when no one was watching—when things were tense, when outcomes mattered, when control felt close enough to grab.
For a long time, I reached for power.
Not domination. Not cruelty.
Competence. Capability. Momentum. The ability to make something happen when it needed to happen.
Power worked.
It solved problems. It earned trust. It kept life moving.
It made me useful.
And usefulness, for a while, felt like purpose.
What Power Promised
Power promised safety through motion.
If I could act quickly enough, decide clearly enough, perform well enough, then uncertainty wouldn’t swallow me. If I stayed ahead—of emotion, of conflict, of failure—then things would hold.
So I learned to fix.
To optimize.
To carry weight without naming it as weight.
Power trained me to believe that responsibility meant intervention.
That leadership meant direction.
That love often looked like making things better.
And in many seasons, that was necessary.
Power is not evil. It is adaptive. It helps us survive.
But survival is not the same thing as formation.
How Power Trained My Preferences
Over time, something quieter began to happen.
I noticed that I didn’t just use power—I preferred it.
I preferred control over presence.
Answers over accompaniment.
Movement over meaning.
Even my care became efficient.
Even my concern had momentum.
I could feel myself becoming very good at responding to the world…
and less practiced at remaining in it.
This wasn’t a moral failure.
It was a formation issue.
Because formation isn’t what we say we value.
It’s what our instincts trust.
Where Power Stopped Carrying What It Created
The breaking point didn’t come as collapse.
It came as mismatch.
Power kept producing outcomes I could not emotionally or spiritually hold.
Relationships grew thinner. Presence shortened. Fatigue lingered even after success. I could solve things and still feel strangely absent from them.
Power could move life forward—but it could not stay with what it moved.
That’s when I began to sense the cost.
Not burnout.
Dislocation.
The quiet realization that something essential was being outrun.
When Purpose First Felt Heavier
The first time I felt this wasn’t in leadership or faith.
It was earlier.
I remember finding out about the pregnancy.
There was no plan. No clarity. No sense of readiness.
Power would have looked like distance—delay, control, escape.
Purpose looked like staying.
I didn’t feel strong.
I didn’t feel called.
I just stayed.
And something in me learned that day that choice can come before confidence.
Looking back, I can see that moment more clearly now.
Alignment isn’t agreement.
It’s order.
The soul chooses first—what matters, what stays, what is worth carrying.
The mind follows, deciding how to move within that choice.
The spirit lives it out, imperfectly, in real time.
And the body witnesses the truth of it—the cost, the strain, the staying.
Formation, for me, has been learning to trust that order again.
Preference, Not Perfection
Formation didn’t take power away from me.
It changed when I use it.
Power stopped being the reflex.
Purpose became the choice.
This wasn’t moral progress.
It was reorientation.
I still feel the pull of control under pressure.
I still know how quickly power returns when fear rises or outcomes feel urgent.
Formation doesn’t erase that pull.
It trains a different preference.
Formation Is Still Happening
I’m not finished.
I don’t think that’s the point.
Formation isn’t arrival—it’s posture.
It’s what I reach for now when belief is no longer enough.
Sometimes I still choose power.
But I notice it sooner.
And I return more quickly.
That return—that willingness to choose again—is part of the formation too.
A Closing, Not a Conclusion
If power asks, What can I make happen?
Purpose asks, What am I responsible for carrying?
Formation is learning the difference—
and choosing the heavier answer.