Friday 10/17

                  Chapter 2 Where Are We Going?

 

“Our willingness to serve and obey Jesus Christ enables us to be useful and usable servants to do work for Him – work that really matters.” ¹

 

“To have an effect on people’s lives, you first need to love them and believe in them.”

²

 

When reading my Bible in the morning (a beautiful though thick and heavy gift from my former neighbors in Florida, thanks Lee and Ron for the NIV Life Application Study Bible) I seldom read anymore the actual life application parts on each page. I used to. Maybe in a rush to get on with my day, I have been overlooking an important part. I think reading the above words this morning was a not so gentle nudge to return to my original practice.

Where are we going and how do we get there? How do we find our path? Are we seeking a path for a career, or just a more fulfilling life? Are we seeking direction for our life’s work or to enhance social interactions or hobbies? (The discussion that follows focuses on career choices.)  How do we find our talents and the ways in which we are gifted? We learn that God has uniquely gifted each of us, but we wonder in what way He has gifted us personally. I believe we are looking in the right place when we find out in general terms what we like to do. Do we like to create things? Do we like to be by ourselves when we work? Are we independent risk-takers? Are we ‘people’ people? Answering general questions like these first will help steer us in the right direction. 

When I was doing my personal search, seeking guidance on a choice for a second career, I was handed a personality assessment. Not having ever taken one before I was not sure what to expect. (You can find a variety of assessments online. I don’t recall which I took). My assessment results showed that I am a social person, a listener, a fixer, a helper and an encourager. Those weren’t the exact names of the categories, I’ve forgotten them since, but that was the gist of the findings. 

Once I saw the results, I compared them with what I liked to do. I realized that they fit with my past experiences. I had been a baseball coach and an ice hockey coach and loved doing that. I had helped run middle school groups at church and enjoyed the interactions and listening to the life stories of young kids. I had also helped run an adult support group once a week in the evenings for those struggling with life-controlling issues. Then there was my time spent as a Guardian ad Litem in Florida when my level of empathy was stretched even further.

People were always asking my opinion on things, and I think that has turned me into a good listener. I have an aversion to conflict. I always want to see things fixed, maybe sometimes even things that can’t be fixed.

So now, I was moving along nicely. I knew what I liked, and I knew what a magical survey thought of me! Now I just needed to figure out how this was going to translate into my choice of a meaningful second career. After bouncing around a few thoughts with my pastor, I thought that the choice of becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist would be a good fit.

So, there it was. I had a direction. I had a goal. There was no longer just a blank confusing page in front of me. Now the important step lay in front of me. Now it was time to continue to pray about it as I explored the steps I would need to take to get where I felt led to go. I had no counseling or therapy background, save for life experience itself, so I was not sure how all this was going to play out. As it turned out, I could proceed without having a bachelor’s degree in counseling. I was able to go straight into a master’s program. It became even more convenient for me when I found I could do most of the program online. Paying for it? Well, that was another story! Like many students, I am now saddled with annoying and burdensome student loan debt.

That is the beginning of the story of how I ended up where I am today, a school counselor at a middle school. I love my job. It is where I belong. It is where I am happiest. It is where I find myself most effective. I can tangibly feel the sense of meaning and purpose it has added to my life. But I believe a huge part of discovering my ideal position was in first finding my gifts. I believe God’s personal gifts for us are found in the area where we are most happy. We are naturally happiest doing something we like and are good at. We need to seek out these gifts and let them flourish in us.

When you set out to find your passion and path, perhaps this method will work for you as well. I can’t emphasize enough how large a component of the search it is in finding out what you like and what you are good at. I don’t believe God calls us to do something that we hate. He may stretch our comfort level, but that is only because His gifts for us, and our ultimate happiness, lie beyond our current situation. I think our likes and loves flow naturally from the gifts God gives us.

If I am five-foot nothing and weigh 150 lbs., my gifting will not lead me to be an NFL lineman! If I am a highly extroverted person who loves working outdoors and interacting with others throughout the day, maybe a job as an actuary isn’t where I am called to be. God gifts us for success. That should seem obvious, but we still struggle at times to allow God to help us achieve success through our fear of stepping out into strange territory. We need to appreciate the fact that God loves us, and the plans that He has for us, and the gifts that He gives us, are for our good, for our success, and for our happiness. All this isn’t meant to be self-serving though! We are to use our gifts, our passions and our positions to help others and to make a positive difference in the world. We should never be afraid to follow God’s lead!

So, once you have found what you believe to be your calling, what do you do next? I would run it by some friends that know you well. See what they have to say. See if they have any valuable input. Do they see in you what you see in you? Wise friends and mentors are always good resources to have to help provide us with honest assessment and encouragement along the way. 

 

‘Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.’ (Proverbs

15:22) 

 

When we have made our choice and prayed about it, and we have checked out what the path before us looks like, now what? It is time to take action. Without action nothing changes; no progress will be made, and everything that we have done up until this point will have been in vain. Sure, making a move here may be disconcerting; it may make you nervous. 

In his book, QBQ, The Question Behind the Question, John G. Miller shows us what action does. I’ll paraphrase his highlights: 

 

ACTION brings learning and growth.

ACTION leads us towards solutions.

ACTION requires courage.

ACTION builds confidence.

 

If you are looking for fulfillment and a sense of meaning and purpose in your life and are looking at major life change to accomplish that, then you could easily be scared. But you must act through the scared. Nothing worthwhile comes about without taking a chance. Working through our fears and insecurities helps us to grow and develop and build our self-worth. So, look at the path you need to take to get where you want to go. 

AND THEN…

                                    Find a step, then test it. Then take another

and test it. If it is all good, feels good, feels right, not necessarily easy right, but challenging right, if you feel that God is saying to go, then go! Give it all you have. This is not a time for half-hearted effort. This is your ‘all-in’ moment. Because if you are embarking on your personal journey to serve and discover how God has gifted you to live a life that means something, a life of purpose, a life of making a difference in the lives of others, and consequentially your own life, is there any time other than this, a time more important than this, to give it everything that you’ve got?  

You’ll find it easier to be giving 100% when what you’re doing is your passion. In school, I always said that I could get straight A’s if I wanted to, but I was always distracted and sidetracked. Not because I couldn’t do it, but because I didn’t have the passion to follow that track. I became more involved in socializing and making friends. Academics were not a priority. (The whys of all that is another story we might get into later, yea, we probably do need to get into and address that as well). I remember in my junior year at Purdue I made my straight “A” claim to my buddy’s girlfriend. Whether she was just trying to challenge me to get all “A” s and push myself, or maybe she saw more of the clowning around and socializing side of my personality and didn’t think I had it in me, I don’t know. But, the smart side of me did not fail to take advantage of the ensuing bet. I bet her that I could, and we bet dinner on it. So, either I made her dinner, (strictly a friendly dinner, not a date, she was after all my best bud’s girlfriend!) or she made me dinner. And if you know how much I like food, well…The side advantage to this bet would be that the payoff would come after the spring semester was over, and if I lost I would have to go to Atlantic Beach, NC and spend a bunch of days on the beach there and cook her a nice dinner. (Momma didn’t raise no dummy!) Have I digressed? The point of this is that I didn’t really care if I got all “A”’s. And guess what? Surprise, surprise, I didn’t.