Finding Your Own Calling

It all seemed so small. This calling to friendship.

Have you been following my series on callings? If so, you’ll remember that even the people who are spending their lives overseas, giving, sometimes wonder if they’re “called.” I’ve talked about how callings don’t necessarily come from a booming voice from above.

I’ve told my own story of moving around all the time as a kid, feeling like a nobody, longing for friendship. And how that longing turned into a calling, and hopefully the calling will turn into beauty.

And yet still. Could I really have a calling for friendship?  It seems small…and…so human. It came from my own need, after all. Could I really give out of my own lacking, out of the things that had been missing in my own life?

And yet it drives me, this desire to find other Nobodies, to hear their stories, to connect my life with theirs, to offer His life for a far better one.  I may not be healing the sick or feeding the hungry or freeing the oppressed, and yet, I guess in its truest sense, I hope to do just that. And somehow, sometimes in the process, I am the one healed. I am fed. I am rescued.

Because it isn’t about me anyway.

So, what about you? Have you wondered if you have a special calling to do something important? Do you worry that you’ve missed something along the way? Here are four questions you can ask yourself to help move from confusion to calling.

   1.       Is there something you’re most afraid to try, but secretly, most want to do?

   2.       Have you been hurt deeply, but are now realizing that it has created a desire for healing—not just in yourself, but in others in that same area?

   3.       Do you see needs or problems in areas that no one else notices?

   4.       Do you ever feel like you just fit in a task or situation, even if you don’t feel adequate to do it?

So, maybe callings aren’t huge visions but rather small glimpses. Maybe feeling “human” in our calling is the right place for us to be when dealing with divine plans. And maybe callings come more from our longings, our needs, our struggles, our inadequacies than from our degrees or our positions or our skill set.

Maybe it’s time to do the “small” in order to be part of something big.

photo credit, D Sharon Pruitt, Pink Sherbet Photography,