You know you’ve found your life’s calling when what others find infuriating and odious about a task is precisely what you find fascinating and compelling. When the work’s complexities fire your imagination and its contradictions keep you awake at night pondering its solution, then you know you are on the scent of your calling and vocation. What’s more, somehow in the doing of it you sense something sacred and holy working itself out in you and in your work. It’s you, but also it’s not you. You stand to preach, you sit down to rewrite, you sit at the wheel before a lump of clay, and you discover that you are being changed (and healed) as much as others are being changed (and healed) by the work that you do.

Parker Palmer reminds us that vocation does not come from a voice outside calling you to be something or someone you are not. Rather vocation comes from a voice within calling you to be the person you were born to be. Vocation is not about doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s about becoming the person God created you to be.

Who are you? What are your passions, your talents, your values and your commitments. What do you enjoy doing, so much that you lose all sense of time when doing it and feel “renewed” somewhat in doing it, that you would do it for free if you could?

–Renita Weems