Calling

We had a small group leader’s meeting at church on Sunday and they gave us a book: Strengthening The Soul Of Your Leadership. I’m not normally into leadership books but this one is resonating with me. It’s thesis is that your solitary times with God need to be the foundation of your leadership. Really, it needs to be the foundation of anyone’s life. And it’s an obvious message, but for some reason, the way it’s presented is really hitting me. Part of it is, each chapter ends with practice for solitary time, and it includes poems and prayers that I’m jiving with. One simply said “Don’t give up on me, God”. Honestly, that’s something I find myself wanting to pray all the time.

One chapter asks us to reflect on times when we felt God’s call and how we obeyed, so we can use that to discern how He might be calling us now. This was a tough one for me. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever in my life really felt a sense of God’s call when it comes to vocation. I feel like I’ve stumbled through everything that’s happened to me, and I can see Providence only when I look back. I entered college intending to be a doctor; I started taking programming classes when I happened to see Eddie doing his CS homework and it looked interesting. I stuck around to get a master’s because I had nothing better to do. I went to my first job because of a classmate. Stuck around too long because I didn’t know any better, then went to Yahoo! because of Lee. Then Facebook because of Blair. I still remember thinking it was just another Friendster; he persisted in recruiting me. Went to Branch because of Daniel. Each step of the way, things happened to me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a clear sense of call or mission and then pursued it wholeheartedly.

The only thing I’ve learned to do is to say yes when things come my way, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense. That’s the only thing I can kind of take credit for in my life. Everything else has just kind of happened to me.

Since this has been the pattern my whole adult life, I’ve been operating under the same mentality for what to do next. I haven’t been proactive in pursuing things. I’ve just been waiting for things to come to me, and ready to say yes. But I’ve been wondering a lot if this is right, or if I’ve reached a point in my life where I really need to figure out what I’m supposed to do and make it happen as opposed to waiting. It’s just difficult because 1/ it’s against my nature 2/ I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and 3/ I’ve never felt a sense of call for my vocation so I have no personal example of what that looks like, which makes it difficult to discern now.