Instead of out, start looking in.

For years, my husband was the antagonist. I woke to him each morning, armed with eager idealism, full of mission and calling, as he grabbed coffee, blew kisses and ran out the door. His calendar marked days full of passion and fervor and intention. Mine marked days of chic-fil-a playgrounds, target returns and an overwhelming sense of auto repeat.

Watching his car pull out of the driveway from the kitchen window, I’d turn back to cleaning up the cheerios as sneaky tears began to fall. Never telling anyone, I was too guilted by my growing resentment.

It seemed life rushed by for everyone else, but I was lost within my four walls—success measured by whether my hair was washed that day. Methodically feeding my babies, changing their diapers, I wondered where my own passion had evaporated. I recalled the days in my youth. A confident girl, vibrant and optimistic slowly fading into a hollow vacuum, unsure whether to return.

This is how it’s supposed to be. Right? We lay our lives down for the needs of those we love. Fraught by extremes, when I wasn’t shamed by my selfishness, I’d wear my badge of martyrdom.  Yet, it wasn’t Gabe’s fault (although I never told him that). He always encouraged me to cultivate gifts that once blossomed in my youth, but even that felt forced. Unsure of where to begin, I always politely declined.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. I needed to feel the loss of my identity, before I’d ever be restored. I needed to know my days of doubting my life mattered. What else would cause me to meet Jesus with greater desperation than I’d ever known in my thirty-seven years?

For many of us, we create a life that comes from our own hands. We look to the left and the right and we wonder why we aren’t smarter, funnier, savvier than the person next to us. So we hustle. We can’t stand to fall behind or miss out. So we duplicate the roles we see others play. We replicate their efforts, hoping—just hoping it will resolve our angst. But it feels counterfeit. A copycat.

There must be something more.

If we allow it, a graceful haunting surfaces. In the quiet, when the busy fades and our self importance diminishes this angst tells us something:

Instead of out, start looking in.

The answer isn’t somewhere out there, waiting to be found.

It’s always been right here, inside your chest, tethered to your soul.

I believe that calling is for each of us. Men and women. But it’s not an abstract job description that floats in the sky, waiting to land one the most unsuspecting head. It’s not a stay at home calling, corporate ladder calling, boardroom calling or a church staff calling.

It’s a posture.

A surrender. A recognition that God chooses to use us to be a part of his redeeming work in the world. It demands a raising of hands and hearts to our creator to recklessly ask, what do you want with my life? What did you intend from the very beginning? In the earliest hours that you crafted me in my mothers womb, what birthright gifts did you endow? Uniquely me? How radically creative that not a single person in this universe replicates each gifting.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there.

We also ask, what life did you allow me to live? Through the twists and turns and ups and downs—what blows brought pain and loss? For in those moments my heart broke and a burden birthed. And with that birthing came something beautiful. A purpose. A calling.

What if, we become a church that no longer measures or compares, but celebrates each persons calling?

What if we talked about it from our platforms, and often?

What if men and women took the stage and shared what breaks their heart and keeps them up at night and the body stands in unison with one voice and one heart to affirm it?

It would be a day the enemy would suffer. It would be a day the people of God put their gifted hands to the brokenness of this world of suffering and loss and pain. Uniting to fight things such as mental illness, abortion, slavery, orphans, infidelity, poverty, and shame.

Oh, the things God wants to do in us, if we allow it.