It takes time, effort, and attention to develop clarity on your calling. Rarely if ever do the heavens part and a voice bursts forth telling us what to do when. What’s the fun in that anyway? And if it did, would we really listen? Would we even believe or trust it?

More typically we dream, strive, ere, achieve, coast, grieve, climb, celebrate, fail, flail, and flounder our way through life. (As if there’s any other way?) As we do this, we begin to get a sense of ourselves in the story. We begin to wonder, “Is there more to life?” We may even come to recognize that Life is asking us to participate in a particular way. A nudge here. A word there. A burning bush way off in the distance catches our attention and we decide to mosey over and see what it has to say. If we are paying attention, we recognize when it’s time to get off the well-traveled road paved with good intentions and step into the wilderness. We begin a dialogue about what our life has been, is, and can be. We begin to crave a calling. We begin to think about meaning, purpose, significance, and legacy.

We often mistakenly look to external structures like institutions, philosophy, family, culture, and theology for answers to these specific personal questions. The general answers we find in those places confuse us and cloud the question itself with generalities.

Calling is not easily definable nor easily discernible. It takes wisdom, attention, and patience. Here are ten truths to help encourage you in your discernment and naming of your Personal Calling.

1. Calling comes to us. We can’t self-create it. We come to agree with it.
2. Calling is revealed over time. It’s a process, not an event. It’s made clear the more we seek it, work at it, and work in it.
3. Calling is connected to our passions. Our passions are shaped in our wounds. In this way, calling is intensely and uniquely personal. Your wound is your why.
4. Calling is the thing you must do even if you will likely lose and/or fail. It’s the game that is worth playing with all our hearts even though we know we can’t win.
5. Calling is expressed in the context of community. It’s affirmed by others and often doubted/challenged by those who seem to think they know us really well. Calling is most vibrant and potent when it is used in maximum service to others.
6. Calling is practiced in our unique abilities. These gifts and talents are the unique combinations of traits and talents that you alone can offer the world.
7. Calling has little to do with money and only sometimes works.
8. Calling is discerned by sensing it — listening for it, looking for signs, wonders, and omens to direct us on our path. If we are not sensing, we will not see the signs.
9. When we step into Calling (or the next phase of it) we have some beginner’s luck. Then It Gets Hard. This is the proving ground where we are made worthy (sanctified and purified) for the nobility of that for which we were made.
10. Calling is intensely spiritual. In the quest for it and practice of it, we transcend ourselves, make sense of our lives, and recognize our connection to our common humanity and the awesome otherness of GOD.

Going Deeper

• Is there a time in your life that you have felt that you were in the midst of your calling?

• As you discover bits and pieces of your calling throughout your life, what bits and pieces have you
  discovered about your calling thus far?

• Which of the three avoidance strategies do you find yourself practicing?

If you are struggling to make meaning in your life, contact Sage Hill Counseling to set up an appointment with one of our counselors. We’re here to help.