What I Got Wrong About Christian Calling

Reframing my thinking on career, calling, purpose, and passion.

For 3 years of my college experience, I worked in my college’s Career Services office: 1 summer and 6 semesters after that. I loved the people I worked with and found their skills, insights, encouragement, and mentorship to be some of the most valuable relationships I built during my college years—years that were fraught with my fair share of existential crises and career confusion.

During my senior year, I watched as my peers secured impressive jobs or grad school acceptances, all while I wondered about a very big question: what was God calling me to do? I was interested in and excited about so many things—ministry, higher education, design, writing, non-profits and small businesses, the arts, the outdoors. For a variety of reasons, my 21-year-old self viewed finding the right career in a similar mindset as finding “the one”—that there was a job out there that was not only just right for me, but also in alignment with God’s purpose and plan for my life.

After two somewhat humiliating rejections from post-graduate fellowship programs, I opted to hit the Indeed streets and began applying for jobs. In March (two months before my graduation) I interviewed for and accepted a position for a marketing role at a Christian nonprofit. The mission was commendable and the work sounded interesting. Plus, it all seemed like something that God would be pleased by. However, less than 2 months into the role, I couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling that the job and organization were not a fit. I decided to quit and take a role with the healthcare company I had interned with the summer before.

In some ways, I felt lame to take the health care job. My role there was more interesting than most (I was in the “Creative Services” department) but still, I wondered if by taking it, I was selling out. I imagined that I’d feel super on fire for the mission of whatever organization I was working for; I thought my creativity would be poured into something that was artistic and unique and make me into a person that was more artistic and unique (because that was the goal, right…). Above all, I thought my calling would be, well, clearer.

In my first 5 years out of school, I held 5 different jobs. I was a marketing associate at an inner-city Christian ministry, a project coordinator for a healthcare company, a fellow at a Christian nonprofit in Nashville, a project manager at a small design studio, and finally, I boomeranged back to my healthcare job in February of 2020, and it’s where I’ve been ever since.

In many ways, I think all those career changes were my attempt to find “the one”—that elusive job or career path that would finally feel like God’s perfect plan. While I don’t regret all the things I tried and the moves I made, I think I can say now that I was wrong about so many things about what work is for or should be, about what role creativity and expression play in a meaningful life, and about how and why God calls us into certain places and roles. Ultimately, I was limited to a shallow and unimaginative understanding of how God faithfully forms me in all facets of my life. I was missing out on being present in the life God had me in because I was so fixed on finding the life I thought I should be in.

I really like my current job, and the people I work with are truly some of the best colleagues anyone could ask for. I get to be creative, and I rarely feel stressed. But here’s the other thing: I don’t wake up with a sparkling feeling that my job in corporate health care is what I was made to do. And you know what? I think that is perfectly fine. I think for many years, I believed that my job would be the ultimate way to fulfill my Godly purpose, but now, I see it as just a part of it.

I like how Tim Keller frames this in his book Every Good Endeavor:

“Work is not all there is to life. You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life. If you make any work the purpose of your life—even if that work is church ministry—you create an idol that rivals God. Your relationship with God is the most important foundation for your life, and indeed it keeps all the other factors—work, friendships and family, leisure and pleasure—from becoming so important to you that they become addicting and distorted.”

My understanding of my “calling” has expanded to include things I thought were more trivial—parts of life that I believed mattered less to God than what I was paid to do. Things like cooking and hosting, my health and schedule flexibility, my geographic location, and my capacity and access to my family and friends are all things I now see have a great amount of value, purpose, and influence in how I believe God is working and moving and blessing my life. There’s not just one area of expertise to excel in, one career path to take, one city to move to, or one chance to get it right or else I am living outside of the will of God. That’s just not how God works.

For months, I’ve been thinking about this quote I heard in a sermon: “One of the greatest giftings we have is our availability.” As I’ve reflected on the trajectory my life has taken, including the direction my career has gone, I can’t help but feel grateful to consider how much availability I have been gifted. I don’t know if I’m right, but I wonder if being available is (right now) my highest calling.

I never would have chosen this version of my life when I was 21 years old and applying for jobs. I would’ve maybe expected more out of myself, or imagined that my calling would be to a life bigger than the one I am living. As I consider that, I think about these sentences I wrote a few years ago that still resonate:

“Maybe, just maybe, God cares less about my potential than he does about my presence — my presence with him, my presence in his church, my presence with the people he’s placed in my life. I don’t think God has a cosmic bucket list with my name at the top. I think he really just wants me to experience what it means to be content with Christ. To be attentive to the life I actually am experiencing right now instead of fixating on the ideas of what could’ve been or was or could be.”

What has it looked like to be attentive and available to the life I am actually experiencing right now? Or to say it a different way: what has it looked like to live into my calling? Well, it’s looked like:

• Sitting with my nephew as he poops on the toilet.

• Baking bread for a friend with a newborn.

• Eating soup with friends on a Friday night and talking about how to love our families through difficulties.

• Editing a photo in Photoshop and taking screenshots of encouraging Facebook comments.

• Booking plane tickets to be with family in California.

• Sending up a follow-up text to check in about that hard thing that’s been happening with a friend.

• Putting a sticky note on my mirror for a prayer request.

• Going for a run and thanking God for my health.

• Greeting someone who I had a falling out with and seeing the mercy of God in a small interaction.

• Walking my parents’ dog.

• Marking a birthday on my calendar.

• Sending color pages in the mail.

• Taking a moment to be quiet.

Maybe finding our Godly calling isn’t about finding the one big thing and making it our way to please God. Maybe it’s about finding God in all things and believing that he is working in ways we can’t even see right now and may not see for months, years, or even in our lifetimes. And most of all, maybe it’s about realizing that God already loves us before we do any work.