I saw you at the neighborhood bike path and I couldn’t get you off my mind. You were pushing two strollers at the same time. A little boy who couldn’t have been more than a few years old bounded along behind you. I wondered if this was a day that felt like an invitation to discover your calling in life, or if you were merely grinding through the motions of another long day.
The sun was casting blinding white rays onto the concrete, and in your eyes, I saw something more than a squint to avoid the glare. I saw a tired woman who just wanted some sunshine. I saw a woman pushing forward with relentless determination and grit. You looked like a woman in the thick of her calling.
I spent the whole day thinking about your motivation and wondering just how you managed to keep both strollers moving in the same direction for miles. Anyone who has attempted the feat of pushing two strollers at one time understands this struggle. The struggle is real.
You Discover Your Calling by Beginning Right Here
I also spent the day thinking about the idea of a calling. I wondered what your life looked like before the babies and the strollers – before leaving the house took a full hour and had to be scheduled precisely between feedings for the baby.
Part of me wondered if you were enjoying your calling to pour into the little ones and if you missed the freedom of the life you once knew.
Are you among the throngs of women who grieve as they lay down careers, hobbies, and passions for a season of fully investing in little ones? Do you miss the days when you lingered long over dinner with your husband by candlelight? Did you walk away from a career you loved? Are you fulfilled in this current calling?
Most of us take a hard look at the idea of a calling at some point in our lives, and then we devise an elaborate plan about which colleges will receive our applications, where we’ll find part-time work in the meantime, and how we’ll align our goals like scaffolding that scales the mountainsides of our greatest dreams.
What if we have it all wrong?
What if a calling isn’t about some mountaintop career path or a doctoral degree that will take six years to earn?
Your Calling is for Today
Could it be that my calling is for today, not just for the future?
The Bible makes it clear that planning is wise, but in the midst of our planning, our greatest focus is to be on how we live today: “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:33-34).
Your calling is less complicated than you might imagine. Jesus’ disciple John reminds us of our primary calling with these words: “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11).
With these things in mind, we have the assurance that determining a calling is not as difficult as we often make it out to be. Determining a calling begins by realizing that the best way to prepare for what is next is to live out the calling of love today. Here are a few suggestions for anyone wrestling with a calling:
1. Your calling is to love the difficult people in your life today
Extend grace. Offer forgiveness. Go out of your way to help the friend who rarely says thanks. Be kind to the acquaintance whose moods change like shifting sands.
2. Your calling today is to raise the kids who live under your roof
The calling of parenthood can feel small. We know all the right answers. We know this is the highest calling there could ever be. But when we’re on the sixth load of laundry, nothing about parenthood feels like a high calling. Sometimes living out the highest calling looks like going the very lowest in serving others.
3. Love the people in the office where you work
The same old faces with the same old idiosyncrasies can be the most difficult to love. We should remember that we, too, have annoying habits to which we’re completely blind. You will discover tomorrow’s calling when you love the one in front of you today.
4. You will discover your calling when you serve in the community where you live
Along with planning for the next short-term family mission trip to an impoverished country (which can be a life-changing and God-honoring experience), or maybe even instead of planning for this kind of trip, begin by rolling up your sleeves and volunteering in your own community. Give the gift of your time at the community food bank, soup kitchen, or homeless shelter. Visit a nursing home. Bake cookies for a lonely neighbor. Changing the world begins directly out of our backdoors.
I don’t know just how the mom on the bike path actually feels about the calling on her life. What I do know is this: My calling is for this very day. It’s an assignment to love those in front of me right now. Today’s assignment might feel small, but the visibility of an assignment isn’t an indication of its importance.
F.B. Meyer said it well with these words: “I used to think God’s gifts were on shelves – one above another so that the taller we grow, the easier we can reach them. Now I find that God’s gifts are on shelves, one beneath another, and the lower we stoop, the more we get.”
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Stacey Pardoe
Featured Image by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
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