So often people ask us who we are and we answer with what we do for a living or where we spend the majority of our day.  I’m a mom, I’m a teacher, I’m a musician, etc.  What you do may be so important to you that you refer to it as a “calling”.  I know a lot of teachers who consider teaching their calling as it is their way to serve others, particularly children.  But what do you do when you feel that your calling has shifted or changed?  I know in my case, I feel a little guilt, like perhaps I wasn’t trying hard enough to do things to keep myself excited about my original “calling”.  However, I heard a woman today who caught my attention when she said, a calling doesn’t have to be for a lifetime.

Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a writer and teacher who, among other things today, talked about callings.  She began as a an Episcopalian priest and then felt called to writing and teaching.  Many asked her how she could leave her “calling” as a pastor but she decided to follow another calling instead and her response was that we can have many callings during our lifetime, that our life is not a train ride where there are scheduled stops but it’s more of a sailboat ride where we go where the wind takes us and we should resist formulas to find callings.  It sounds a lot like allowing myself to be the hummingbird that I am, sipping from flower to flower as I’m led to do.  I wonder if this analogy of the train and sailboard makes some people crazy, especially those who feel like there’s only one track in life to get you where you want to go.

For those of us who are baby boomers, what we view as practicality and loyalty kick in. Once you begin a career, you stay with it.  You’re loyal to your job, your boss, your co-workers and you stay for the length of your working life, even if you no longer love it.  After all, you have retirement, benefits and other things to consider.  Millennials may actually have a thing here as they tend to change jobs and careers whenever something better comes along, and they are actually improving their circumstances in the long run.  And maybe they’re happier – I don’t know.

For me, a calling is just what it says.  It’s what you feel like you were called to be or do in this life as a way to serve others and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a career.  Sometimes stepping into places that make you uncomfortable, places you never intended to go wake up callings in you that you never knew you had.  I never wanted the stress and fear of having premature children, but it has allowed me to talk to other moms who are going through the same thing.  Is that a calling?  I never wanted to go through parts of the childhood I experienced, but it has allowed me to pick up on needs of kids and the opportunity to encourage them.  Is that a calling?  I never wanted to be a college dropout and have difficulty deciding what I wanted to do with my life, but it has allowed me to help others who are struggling with thinking they have to do everything within a certain timeline when in reality, we all have our own individual timelines.  Is that a calling?  Definitely not career options for me, although I suppose they could have been.  Maybe if they were my passions, I could have been a neonatologist or a child counselor or an academic advisor.  So maybe passions aren’t necessarily callings.

I know that my calling is shifting and it’s because of opportunities that have been afforded me during my teaching experience.  Right now my calling is to help people see their purpose in life, whether it’s through leadership or advocacy or learning where their strengths are.  I’m already doing some of that but feel so strongly about it that I’m making plans to do it on a more professional level.  That’s how I know this is a calling.  It’s pulling strongly enough that I’m taking steps to become better at it so I can make more of a difference in people’s lives.  It’s something that’s worth the potential fear of something new or different, it’s something worth the effort, the possible discomfort, the financial investment and the time.

So while teaching has been good to me and was my original calling, in a few years I see a time to say goodbye so that I can say hello to a new calling and I’m getting excited.  What is your calling and what are you doing to make it a reality so that you can do what you were meant to do for others?