Vocare: To Call

Yesterday, I had the blessing of working together with one of my closest friends at Panera Bread. It is blessing enough in itself to have a friend with whom you can be fully yourself, and she can do the same. Everyone needs one or two of the type of friends who will sit with you in a coffee shop, lap top in tow, and work alongside you just because they like your company.

I felt especially blessed because we discussed our callings. I disclosed to my friend that in the past year, God has had several people whom I trust deeply each affirm a specific calling in my life, independently without knowledge of the others. It's one of those things as Christians you would think that we would shout from the rooftops. But I haven't, the number of people I've told include my husband, my mother, and one other friend.

"Why?" you may ask. Well, as my mom jokingly said, you can understand how it makes me feel a little like Pat Robertson claiming that the world is going to end on Wednesday. So, I whisper what I have been told only to those who I know will not doubt it. I hedge it with "Well, we'll see if that happens..." and "Oh, I don't know.." I worry that my whispering offends God. It's actually unusual for me to be secretive about anything. I've always marvelled at mysterious people who live their life internally, such as my brother or my husband. Those mysterious, internal people attract me like a bug to a light on a summer night.

And when I undertook this sort of confession, my friend confessed to me her own calling, its development, and the sources of her own doubt. To me, the calling she speaks of seems so clearly fitted to her. It's so much easier to see in others their gifts and God's work in their lives than it is to do so about ourselves, in our own foggy minds and sense of self.

I always have had difficulty hearing the small still voice of God. I most often learn about God through other people. That's why I so strongly believe in the value of the priesthood of believers as a community. Aside from the fact that it's scriptural and historical, I know it and I've experienced it.

It saddens me that my friend and I, two passionate, strong, loving women of faith, whisper our callings in small conversations with each other. While such interactions are important and powerful, why do we hesitate to announce this powerful work of God in our lives? In our cases, I think some of it has to do with gender. In our conservative evangelical tradition, we have each experienced the invalidation of our gifts and callings purely because of our gender at times, in ways that wound and hurt. But, I think we're struggling with more than that.

There come all the doubts, the fears, the Moses-like feelings of, "Who? me? God, I think I'm going to horribly disappoint you." There's also the sacrifices that I must make, having had parents who were involved prominently in our community, I know the struggles that come with parents that are watched. Some of my hesitation stems from the fact that it's hard to reclaim a dream that you have let go. When a dream is deferred, you mourn its loss, feel the grief, and have to let it go. Similar to how the followers of Jesus had to reconfigure and evaluate their entire existence when he rose from the dead, when a dream rises from the dead you have to tear down all the new ones that you've built in order to embrace the old one. The overwhelming joy is mixed with a sense confusion and disbelief. It's a gift for your birthday, 5 months and 14 days after the date...it makes no sense, but you're unbelievably grateful.


A Dream Deferred
~Langston Hughes~

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?