If you are in a church setting long enough, someone at some point has probably mentioned receiving a calling. People feel called to all sorts of amazing things...I have friends who are pastors, teachers, missionaries, artists, mothers, fathers, firemen, soldiers. The list goes on and on.
Can I tell you something? I have struggled with the concept of a calling for a while now. Not because I don't believe in it, because I really do. I've just had a hard time reconciling the idea after becoming a wife and mother. Everything I do now is filtered through the lens of being a wife and a mother. My heart walks around daily OUTSIDE of my body because that is the only way I can describe how much I love my family. So, then, what does a wife and mother do with the places in her heart that God has reserved for something outside her family? When I was young and single it was a lot less complicated to run after what I believed God was calling me to do because the cost was relatively simple. Now it's a little more complicated because reckless abandon isn't as appealing if it puts my loved ones at risk. If I am completely honest, I've used that seemingly difficult complication as an excuse. But I am tired of excuses.
I heard this sentence a couple of weeks ago, and it has taken my 'complicated' excuse and dismantled it.
Your calling is simply where your burdens and your gifts collide.
Your calling isn't this ethereal voice in the sky directing you to this or that (though sometimes it can be). Your calling is laying down your God-given gifts, fully and completely in the places your heart ALREADY dwells. God did not knit a single one of us the same. My heart's burdens will always be unique to me, and your heart's burdens will be unique to you. God placed gifts and talents inside of each one of us that are completely our own. And it is that beautiful mess of a combination that makes each one of our purposes or callings so wonderfully multi-faceted and diverse.
I'm done believing that a calling is limited to a vocation. I want God to use my gifts and my burdens together to change this world. A beautiful part of that is being a wife and mother, in a way that only I can be a wife and mother to my family, but God has made room in my heart for more. I won't ever be any good at being someone else or at emulating someone else's gifts. But I can celebrate how God has knit me together and pray He uses that for the benefit of my family and others. Not everyone's heart rends for the poor and marginalized the way mine does, and that is okay. I don't have to apologize for what stirs my heart, and neither do you. There is an entire world out there waiting for us to move toward what burdens us exactly where we are and being exactly who we are.
I don't know what it is that God has placed in your heart or what talents He has hidden in you. I'm just beginning to figure some of mine out, and dust off others that have laid dormant. I believe with my whole heart that God is raising up people to live boldly in who He created them to be in new ways. I believe He is calling a lot of us to influence our communities, our culture, and our nation with the gifts He has placed within us. I believe the time has come for us to stop saying yes out of obligation and start living in the freedom of what He has placed within us. Your calling is where your burdens and your gifts collide. I am longing to see what that collision will look like in my own life, but what a pleasure it is to watch it unfold in the lives around me. Let's be dare to be adventurers.
Here is a little printout I made to help remind me that sometimes it isn't as complicated as I like to make it. =)
Jenni, I am absolutely LOVING your blog (and the printouts), your words are a gift and I am so glad you are sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the encouragement, Anna! This is a journey of obedience, and it blesses me so much that you are receiving something from my words =)
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