Authentic Living: Vocation

Happy New Year my friends! I hope you all are greeting this new year with happiness, healthiness, and excitement for things to come!

It’s been a while since I’ve provided an installment to my “Authentic Living” series: in part due to the seemingly inherent hectic nature of the holidays, and in part because I haven’t quite figured out how to tackle this subject of vocation. But after several days of a lot of quiet time and space for introspection, I feel much more ready to share with you all.

At my undergraduate institution, the word “vocation” was used by faculty and staff until we students were quite nauseated by it. Although as a college student I didn’t fully understand what vocation meant, over the past two years I’ve come to not only understand what vocation is, but also appreciate and embrace the concept and what it means in my life. As I worked my way through graduate school, I imagined myself in my post-graduate life building a career in a non-profit organization that was doing something related to women’s equality, human rights, or some similarly “sexy” work in the NGO world. At the time, my boyfriend was in the army, and I knew that could mean frequent moves in the future, but since there are so many non-profits and I wasn’t too fussy about the type of work I’d be doing, it all seemed like a great plan.

Come late spring of last year though, and within a span of 7 weeks, I was single with my Masters degree in hand. On the one hand, the freedom that gave me felt incredible, and yet at the same time it was a bit terrifying to know that I could really go anywhere I wanted. It wasn’t until June that I absolutely panicked. I was in a meeting with my supervisors when they looked at me and bluntly asked, “What is your dream? What are your goals?” Friends, I have never felt like a deer in headlights more than I did at that moment. In a split second, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been planning my career on my dreams and the talents God has given me. So much of my thoughts had been based on the life I used to know, and with that gone, I had no idea what I really wanted to do. The “world was my oyster,” as they say, and I was terrified. I suddenly found myself in my mid-twenties with two degrees and not a clue what I wanted my long-term career to look like. How did that happen? But more critically, how do I even go about figuring it out?

That same week I went to a film screening of a documentary about an artist who takes her work into broken communities and brings color, life, and healing to people who have experienced so much pain and destruction. I’ve had the privilege of seeing her work in Rwanda, and as I watched the film that evening, there was something in my spirit that quickened. I wasn’t sure if it was the heart of her work, the images and sounds of Rwanda in the film, or something else that caused it, but I felt it so clearly. Whatever was causing that sensation was stirring something at the very core of my being, and I knew it touched on that dream my supervisors had asked me about – whatever it was. After that experience, I started a “Vision Journal” – a simple notebook in which I record organizations, events, projects, etc, that capture my attention, why they interest me, and the steps I’m taking to engage and participate. Instead of just knowing my dream as a feeling inside me, I wanted to find a pattern in what I loved and why.

The result has been beautiful. Granted, not all the opportunities have panned out – at least not yet. Perhaps someday they will. But I’ve begun to think of my career very differently now. It’s no longer a 9-5 job with a clear ladder to climb – it’s something I want my life to be about. And when that shift in perspective happens…oh my goodness. I have been able to make the distinction between my jobs – I have my “pay the bills” job (as I like to call it) and my “vocation” job. I am so blessed to have a full-time job that allows me not only to pay my bills and gain solid work experience (with skills related to my future career!), it also provides me the time and space to do my vocation job, which is perhaps the most wonderful blessing of all. Because of this job, I have been able to participate in extra trainings, travel to Rwanda to continue work on the radio documentary, and I will be starting volunteer work at a peace museum in the coming weeks.

Is my full-time job what I thought I’d be doing 6+ months after graduating? Absolutely not. Do I feel fulfilled in my life’s work right now? More than I can possibly express in this blog post. I have come to a place, and am continuing to move more fully into a space, in which I am discovering life dreams and career goals that feel undeniably authentic to who I am. Who knows, maybe there’s a PhD in my future? ;)