Finding Peace When You Can’t Find Your Calling
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Aren’t you tempted to envy people who have known what they want to do with their lives since childhood?
Maybe you are one of those people, but I’m certainly not. Even though I’ve looked everywhere for clarity about my calling, it always seems just out of reach.
Picking up the novel Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, I didn’t expect an epiphany about my life’s calling. And what I got wasn’t exactly an epiphany because the insight wasn’t sudden. Over the course of many months, a revelation bloomed in my mind.
Long after I finished the book and closed the cover with a contented sigh, my mind stayed with Jayber. His story stuck with me because his perspective on life and calling is so unlike the ones I encounter in modern culture.
And the more I’ve considered his words, the more I’m compelled by them.
Calling as a map for the future
I once believed a calling to be like a signpost or a map.
Here I am in the present moment wondering where to go and what to pursue. My calling would tell me which direction to pick. It would dictate my present decisions and my future plans.
If you relate to this idea of calling, then you know we’re not given the option to stop living life while we figure it out. We’re on a conveyor belt of time and we can’t stop it even if we would like to say, “Excuse me, I’m still waiting for my calling, so can we please just turn this thing off until my calling shows itself or I discover it or however it is that one comes to identify it.”
No, unfortunately, we can’t do that.
So in the absence of clear direction, we do the only thing we can. We keep taking small steps, day by day. We work, we play, and we love.
Find your calling in a different place
Jayber’s story caused me to examine the way I think about calling.
He had me asking questions like, “What if calling isn’t discerned by looking to the future but to the past?” And, “What if calling is more about belonging than about doing?”
As I’ve reflected on these questions, read Scripture, and examined the evidence in my own life, I’ve changed my ideas about calling. It isn’t a holy grail that will give my life purpose and direction as I once thought.
I’m called to belong to Christ, that I know. And as I lean into dependence on him, I find myself agreeing with Jayber in his words of reflection: “I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved… I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led.”
If you’re anxious and unsettled waiting to find your calling, know that you’ve already found it if you belong to Jesus.
Yes, there are still decisions to make—decisions about schools and jobs and relationships and places to live. Rather than placing your hope in a calling, shift your focus to the Person who gives us hope.
He will direct you, not by giving you a grand vision for the future, necessarily, but by guiding you step by step.
One day you may look back and see he was leading you into your calling all along.
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Psalm 23:1-3
Read more at The Rabbit Room
When I began writing this, I intended it to be a short piece that would introduce you to an essay I wrote for The Rabbit Room, “Jayber Crow and Naming Your Calling.” It turns out I had more words on the topic than I anticipated! If you want to read more about Jayber and the perspective he gives on calling, be sure to check out the essay here.
For more resources on calling, uncertainty, and peace, check out these posts:
- Motherhood as a calling: Exchanging Frustration for Delight
- How to Make Peace With Uncertainty
- The Art of Living in Biblical Peace: A Book Review of The Path to Peace
*Featured photo by Devin Avery on Unsplash
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