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| Source: churchleaders.com |
I've been thinking a lot about my vocation lately.
Vocation is a pretty cool word. It comes from the Latin word "vocāre" which means "to call" or "calling."
Your vocation is more than just your job or career.
It is literally your God-given calling in life.
For years, I studied to become a doctor, taking pre-medicine courses in college, going on to medical school, and then completing my residency in Family Medicine.
However, today--as I type this--I am a homeschooling mother of three, who is stealing a few minutes in our homeschool room between loading the dishwasher with the breakfast dishes and transferring clothes into the dryer, to blog a few thoughts about vocation.
So, how exactly did I get here?
I've thought about this more than I'd care to admit.
I can't tell you how many times, upon learning that I am a physician, folks have asked me about why I am currently doing what I do. It puzzles people. It doesn't quite make sense--you were a physician and now you are not? What about all that school? they ask. Would you make different choices in life, looking back?
I try to explain it to them as best as I can, which usually involves a few awkwardly strung together comments about maybe going back to work part-time some day, how I have been able to use my training on short-term medical mission trips, how--let's be honest--I really use my skills every day as a stay-at-home mom (insert awkward laughter here)....
You get the idea.
But I will be the first to admit, as will many, many professional mothers, that my life--our lives--are very strange at times.
Instead of leading meetings and seeing patients and rocking it out in a board room, we are wiping bottoms and sweeping up Cheerios and reading Hop on Pop for the thousandth time.
Now, fast-forward a few years: instead of looking up the dosage charts of ciprofloxacin for a patient, I am showing my fifth-grade daughter how to diagram predicate nominatives, folding the umpteenth load of clothes, and negotiating yet another crying session over "he did such-and-such to me" or "tell her to stop doing such-and-such" with my first-grader (all of which have literally occurred as I blog here today...).
I'll be honest...there are those days...those hard, whinny, tantrum days...or those monotonous, dull and mundane days...when I sit down to regroup from the household chaos, and I am tempted to jump online and do a quick Google search of my old medical school classmates.
That never ends well, believe me, because here's what I inevitably discover:
One fellow classmate has started her own successful dermatology practice in the town of our medical college.
Another is a renown allergist, leading the Top Doc lists in his state for several years in a row.
Yet another is featured in her local newspaper, curing her small southern town of cancer.
Meanwhile, I've just successfully bandaged up my littlest-one's knee from a scrape she sustained on her scooter.
Yeah, I've got nothing.
Well, it came to me just the other day--call it a Eureka moment, or call it the product of a lengthy rumination over the book Garden-City I am currently reading (and would highly recommend!)--but whatever you call it, it just suddenly occurred to me in the shower.
I hopped out, water still dripping down my arms as I wrapped myself up in a bath towel, rushed across the room, and jotted these words into the journal from my night-stand drawer:
IT IS ALL THE SAME CALL.
Doctoring.
Mothering.
Homeschooling.
Discipling three white-hot-passionate-Jesus-lovin' children.
All of the jobs I do, and have ever done, follow the thread of the exact same calling:
To bring hope and healing to a broken and fallen world.
I have recently come to realize that when it is distilled down to its essence, diagnosing a disease and prescribing medication for a sick patient is doing the exact same thing as teaching my children to enjoy literature, which is the exact same thing as showing them their need for Jesus when I break up a sibling squabble: bringing hope and healing to a broken and fallen world.
Sounds pretty lofty, huh?
Well, it sounds pretty lofty because it IS pretty lofty. It is no less than the cultural mandate given by God Himself at the time of Creation, and recapitulated by Christ before his ascension into Heaven, to be fruitful and multiply, subdue it, and to go into all the world and make disciples.
But what is mind-blowing is that our calling is really God's calling, given to us: we actually get to partner with God in His mission to bring hope and healing to a fallen and broken world, and for us believers, we will one day be able to reign and rule with Him over this new-heaven-and-earth world for all of eternity.
So, suddenly (or perhaps not so suddenly, if you consider it was really eleven years in the making), the dots have connected for me.
I haven't completely missed the boat.
I am not on some random journey.
I am not merely sitting out in the field tending sheep, biding time for the real calling on my life to come to fruition.
Nope.
Just like Joseph, Moses, David, and all those other God-followers (even Christ Himself!) who were often in a season of waiting, serving their master, sitting in prison, tending sheep in the fields, honing their carpentry craft in a seemingly inconsequential small Jewish town, I, too, am on a powerful mission from God and with God.
And I'm here to tell you--or perhaps to remind you--that you are too, dear friend.
So the next time you are discouraged and think that the work you find yourself doing seems so mundane, or random, or just so-not-what-you-signed-up-for, consider the one true call of God.
It may look different from anything you ever imagined. No one may ever even acknowledge it or give you an award for it. But it matters. And it can be, and will be, used to further the Kingdom of God unto the ends of the Earth, until the end of the Ages.
(For more thoughts on work and rest, I'd highly recommend this book by John Mark Comer. For more reflections about influence and what that really means, check out this and this post from the archives.)
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