Your calling has already found you.

I was meeting with my spiritual director recently and I said, “I feel like my calling chose me – like: it has me; I don’t have it.” I was describing the experience of feeling carried by something larger than myself, for a greater purpose (which is a huge blessing, by the way), and not having ultimate control in that process.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since, how I’ve come far enough now in life to understand that our vocations and callings are not something we have to struggle to figure out. I think we’re born into a purpose and that just by living our lives authentically, we can walk our way right into it, discover that we’re part of something larger, have been placed here for a specific and worthwhile reason for being.

A lot of the time we resist, insistent on trying to accomplish the way of our own choosing. I’m sure that sometimes the two are in alignment – what we want for our life’s mission and what life wants of us – but other times, and especially if our path is not meant to be a traditional one, not the way of the crowd, we try and go another way. The way our culture, parents, peer group, or schooling dictates for us. From the time we’re born, voices are constantly shouting “This is who you are.” Part of our life journey is to discover who we really are, what we have been created for, and what life wants to create for and through us. Then to have the courage to say to the world at some point, “This is who I am.”