Finding Your True Vocation (cont.)
By Ray Blunt
A Job You Can Love
None of this gets the person who is frustrated or disillusioned with their work, sensing they have a purpose they have not found, into the “promised land.” So where to start if you are convinced that there is a place for you that you were made for? What clues do you look for? Perhaps Soren Kierkegaard can be the most helpful here: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”
The essence o f this “backward way forward” is rooted in two beliefs. One is that God has made us unique and “wired” us in a certain way for a purpose. The second is that He has been involved in preparing us for the next step and for eternity right along. Those who hold to those views go well beyond the “follow your passion” or “listen to your heart” approach that comprises much of what passes for self help career guidance.
Two or three sources you may find helpful all take the same tack and would be helpful, including the widely popular What Color is Your Parachute which is written and updated each year by a former Methodist pastor. (By the way, it is worth reading the pink section that describes what lies behind his approach to this book. It’s pretty good theology.) In essence, all three sources begin with the two assumptions about God we have outlined and use your life as the source of clues—looking backward to go forward.
The work they encourage you to do begins with examining all of the instances that you can recall where you enjoyed doing something and did it well. Childhood counts here. The details of each of these “stories”—how you went about doing it, what you found most satisfying when you were doing it becomes part of a more detailed and specific narrative. Then using each of these stories all the way from childhood, through young adulthood, right up to the present becomes grist for understanding your gifts, your strengths, the conditions where you work best, the relationships you most enjoy in working, etc. What you will see is an emerging picture that contains clear patterns which are your clues. The things you do well, enjoy, and are highly motivated to do get you well on your way to a true calling.
In my own life, I found I enjoyed working with small groups of people, teaching, facilitating conversations, interacting. A lot of this came from teaching Sunday school, coaching youth sports, and doing lunch time seminars at work—hardly formal preparation. The work I loved most was when I was teaching in the Air Force or in the VA as a sideline to my ”real” work. Gradually I began to see my next career involved somehow consulting, teaching, and writing , all of which I did as often as possible either at work or in volunteer roles. The focus that gradually emerged for these gifts was that I should give these next years of my life to growing the next generation of leaders. Much of that insight came out of a year of reflection on dozens of questions like the ones posed in these sources and only after an ill-fated time in seminary part time. It took a time of burn out for God to show me that it was not necessary to be a pastor to use the gifts He gave me and that my calling was public service and growing leaders right there.
But for many, such introspection is not sufficient or perhaps even more confusing. Here is where a good mentor—someone older, wiser and who you would like to be—is someone you will want to spend some time with talking, walking, reflecting.
Sometimes an information interview can provide clarity and direction. I remember when my son-in-law was transitioning from a less than satisfying career in industrial sales, he concluded from several months of reflection that the two things that energized him were working with kids and sports. An information interview at a YMCA in the city where he went to college eventually led to his being hired as youth sports director and which ultimately led him to a YMCA vice president and director and later President of a classical Christian school.
Also, God’s call often is found in a community. The people you regularly spend time with in a small group, a class, your spouse or friends, and, yes, even your parents who still are your parents regardless of your age—these are folks who have been observing you for some time now and likely can help give meaning to your search that you cannot.
This is not magic and it does require not so much analysis as reflection on those things where things like passion, connection, gifts and meaning were found along the way.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, you are not alone if you have discomforting questions about your true calling. This may be the impetus to move you off of dead center and into a time of self discovery that God intends for you to have. He is not content to see us “amuse ourselves to death” as Neil Postman famously observed. And He does not want to waste what He has created for a purpose. So if we believe He did create us for a purpose, and that the purpose encompasses all of life—“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever”—then we can begin to see that all of what we have been about is in some way preparing us for what lies ahead. That may also allow us to rest content in where we are now as not a wasted time but as a time to glorify God in difficult circumstances and to learn. That does not mean we are stuck forever or should be content to be so.
Our best clues for moving forward are our own lives and how we are wired by God, discovered in self reflection and prayer, in the work of understanding assisted by our mentors or community, and then taking the steps necessary to move with courage. But our best assurance is His own engagement in our lives from the foundation of the world. Looking back on it some day, we will all understand what He has been doing and we will find it is good. Very good.
FOOTNOTES:
Doug Sherman and William Hendricks, Your Work Matters to God, (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1987).
Finding a Job You Can Love, Ralph Mattson and Arthur F. Miller, 1999; Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot, Max Lucado, 2006; What Color Is Your Parachute 2006: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters And Career-Changers, Richard Nelson Bolles, 2006.
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