When Callings Collide

I recently read a novel that was hard to finish, not because the storyline wasn't interesting or because the pacing was off, but because the main characters were entirely too one-dimensional.  Each of the main characters had a specific calling in life that guided all their thoughts and actions.  They were passionate about their callings, but singular in them.  What I mean is, there was nothing else to motivate them or drive them, nothing else to talk about even.  The characters were rather myopic in their outlook on life.  Their entire worldview was funneled through the one lens of their one calling.

It was boring to read about them.  It was frustrating because it didn't feel realistic or relatable at all.  I almost gave up on the book because the characters bothered me so much.

In reality, most people have more than one calling at the same time.

In reality, most people have doubted those callings at one time or another.

In reality, not every day is full of joy because you're living out your calling.

In reality, discovering and living out your calling in life is often a sticky, jumbled mess full of high highs and low lows.  It is, quite simply, complicated.

The messiness is multifaceted.  Some callings are lifelong, some are seasonal.  Some are thrust upon us, some are chosen by us.  Some are obvious, some are difficult to discern.  Some are ours alone, some need to be shared and navigated alongside others.  Some are vocations, some avocations.

And many of them exist in tandem.  I don't set aside my calling as a mother in order to pick up my calling as a missionary.  They coexist today, and will coexist again tomorrow.  The same goes for everything I'm called to.  I'm called to marriage, to motherhood, to missions, to writing.  Every day of my life I am a wife, a mother, a missionary, and a writer, and it's the regular collision of these callings that is so difficult to balance.

Things can get very messy when callings collide.

But that's true for most of us.  I am certainly not the only mother out there struggling to find time and energy to pour into my marriage at the end of a long day on the home front.  I'm not the only missionary in the world needing to process my cross-cultural life through writing and finding next to no time to do it.  I'm not the only spouse on the mission field scrambling to justify the label "missionary" when she spends all day at home teaching the kids while her husband spends all day helping and serving the poor.

When callings collide, it can be rather difficult to keep track of all those callings, let alone live them out all at once.

Which is why it's so complicated, and also why we need God's grace every day to live out the callings He's given us.

It's nearly impossible - if not actually impossible - to succeed let alone excel in multiple callings at once.  Most days I completely fail at one or another, and sometimes I fail miserably.  A couple weeks ago my son told me how upset he was because I'd broken a promise to him and, compiled with a bunch of other negative emotions he was experiencing at the time, he said to my face, "I'm just done."  Meaning, he was done with me.  I won't attempt to explain the depth of my grief at being told by my son that I was a failure of a mother, but I use it as a recent example of how hard it is to fulfill even one of our callings let alone anything more.

Today marks the day that I had set a particular writing goal for myself on a certain project.  I set the goal months ago, thinking I could actually achieve it in time.  Well, today is here and I'm nowhere near that goal.  I have completely failed and I'm forced to wonder how this failure figures in to my long-term writing goals.

What does it mean to be a wife and a mother and a missionary and a writer?  What does that look like day in and day out?

I honestly don't know.  Because even when I focus solely on one calling at a time, I don't do it well every day, or even most days.  I get annoyed with my husband, I yell at my kids, I shut myself in the house to avoid any cross-cultural encounters, I ignore my writing project because eating chocolate and watching Netflix is just plain easier.  I fail, and fail, and fail, and fail again.

BUT.  But God's grace remains just as constant as our failures do, and His grace speaks truth into the lie that we probably weren't actually called to this and God must've made a mistake (which is a lie I've been battling a lot recently).

God's grace declares, "You were made for this even though you aren't perfect at it."

His grace speaks, "Acknowledge your failure but also acknowledge My presence and My strength to hold you up."

His grace breathes, "I created you and I chose you for this.  I still choose you for this.  I did not make a mistake."

When callings collide, so does God's grace and love and mercy.  He is gentle with us when we fail.  He is comforting when we grieve.  He is kind in His encouragement, tender in His care, patient in His guidance.  And perhaps more than anything, He is bold in His continued claim of us.  God never called me to be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect missionary, or a perfect writer.  He called me to be these things and to make of them whatever I could, with His help.  When He called me to them, He knew I would fail at every one of them.  And He still claims me as His own.  And He still invites me to fulfill these callings.

I think God is pleased that I accept the callings He's given me, and that I wrestle through the difficulty of when those callings collide rather than throw them away because it seems too hard or downright impossible to figure it out any other way.

So I keep taking them up, these callings of mine, and wrestle with balancing them most days.  And I pray that God will always send this reminder when I need it most: when callings collide, so does God's grace and love and mercy.