Discovering Your Calling, Slowly

Denis Haack is a wise man, and over at The High Calling he recently wrote about discovering your calling, slowly:

I didn’t know Margie was a writer when I married her. If I had known, I would have still married her, but still, I had no idea. Neither did she. I knew she was creative and intelligent, but the writing came later. It turns out to be one of her gifts, an essential part of her calling, but it was hidden or unnoticed back in the Sixties when we dated.

Some people seem to know from the beginning what they want to do in life. I’ve met people from a remarkable array of vocations who tell that story. They seem to be rather decisive, aware of their gifts and interests and what work is most fulfilling to them, and they go for it. Not a bad way to go through life, I suppose, but not a standard for everyone, either. Still, in a society like ours where extroversion is the cultural ideal the prejudice that everyone should be like this seeps into the church as well. It’s worth resisting.

I don’t know about you, but I so identify with this. I still feel as if I’m just beginning to really understand my calling – or really, my callings, as a teacher and a writer and an editor and a thinker and a friend and a wife. These are tricky things, and it’s good to know that I don’t have to figure it all out right now, nor do I really need to figure it all out a decade or three decades from now.