Crafting a Calling

According to Annie F. Downs, everyone should know their calling. She refers to it as the thesis statement for your life, which appeals to something deep in my essay-writing heart. In "100 Days to Brave," Annie makes it clear that your job and your calling can be connected, but they are not the same thing. It's the purpose that God has instilled in you that transcends circumstance. Like the wordsmithy magic I learned to pull in AP World History to make a random collection of facts tie back to a single idea, your calling is what pulls together strands of your life that seem at the time to be scattered and meaningless. 

My journey since college has been anything but linear. When people ask me about the past few years, I either give an abridged version or a laundry list of short term jobs that add up to me looking like an absolute commitment-phobe. 

So when I tried to think of a pithy way to sum up what I feel I'm called to do, nothing came quickly to mind. I love working with kids, but is that my calling? I enjoy being a teacher and a librarian, but that's my job, not my calling. I could describe the way I feel when I see a kid reading a book I introduced them to or when a lesson goes perfectly or when someone reads this blog and tells me it meant something to them. But what does that mean? I couldn't think of anything snappy enough. Nothing I wanted to hang on the fridge and build a life around. 

And then I came across a sentence I wrote in my notebook a few weeks ago. I wrote that I wanted people in my life who made my world bigger without making me feel small. As I read those words, something unlocked in me. I realized I didn't just want that from my friends, I wanted to be that person. For my students, for the kids at church, for my friends and my family and my co-workers and all the people who haven't come into my life yet. 

I want to teach people. I want to help expand the way they see and think about the world. Whether that's with research skills or talking about the Bible or just telling people about good books. I want to make other people's worlds bigger. 

And I don't want to make them feel small. I don't want to cut anyone down. I want to teach from a place of grace and empathy, not superiority. I want everyone I come in contact with to feel like their feelings and thoughts and experiences matter. Because they do. 

So I think that's my calling. In my writing, in my day job, in my relationships- 

To make your world bigger, without making you feel small.