9
Way Opens
On coming alive
When you get your “Who am I?” question right, all the “What should I do?” questions tend to take care of themselves.
—Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
Growing up, I was surrounded by teachers. My dad was a middle school special education teacher, and then later a high school guidance counselor. My best friend’s dad was a middle school math teacher. My soccer coach was a teacher. Many of my parents’ friends and the parents of my peers were teachers. I assumed I would be a teacher too. I had always loved to read. I was a decent writer. My favorite subject was English. It was a no-brainer: I should be a high school English teacher.
My dad encouraged me in this direction. Teaching is a good, stable job, especially for a woman, he said. “You’ll have your summers off,” he reminded me. “It will be ideal when you have kids.” These sounded like logical reasons to pursue a career as a teacher. When I was accepted at the state university, I double-majored in English and Secondary Education. I completed all the required courses, did my semester of student teaching at my former high school, and passed the state certification exam. It wasn’t until I began interviewing for high school teaching positions that I realized I had made a grave mistake. Turns out, I didn’t want to be a high school English teacher. The truth is, I never had.
There had been hints along the way—like the fact that I’d found my education classes frightfully boring and had hated almost every moment of my four months in the classroom as a student teacher. I enjoyed prepping my classes, grading papers, and brainstorming creative ways to introduce challenging material to my students, but I despised the actual teaching. It wasn’t only that I was a little bit afraid of my students (though that was certainly part of it; my legs trembled and my hands shook every time I stood in front of the classroom). I also somehow knew, almost immediately, that teaching wasn’t the right fit for me.
Still, I pressed on. Secondary teaching certificate in hand, I applied to several high school English teacher jobs across the state. Like a train chugging dutifully down the track, I never considered not applying. Teaching was the path I had chosen, and getting a job as a high school English teacher was the expected culmination of my four-year degree. There was no switching tracks now.
My saving grace was that I was not offered any of the teaching positions I applied to. I came close—I had several interviews, and even a few callbacks—but in the end, the jobs were offered to other applicants. Though I was terrified by the fact that I had no job and no direction, I was secretly relieved. I had no idea what I would do with an English degree, but I knew one thing for sure: I was glad, come September, I would not be standing in a high school classroom.
You may wonder how in the world I came so close to embarking upon a career path so unsuitable for me. But according to author and teacher Parker Palmer, my story is not unusual. “We arrive in this world with birthright gifts—then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them,” Palmer explains in his book Let Your Life Speak.1
My dad didn’t disabuse me of my gifts—he recognized my skills as a communicator, my rapport with others, and my energetic personality, and he knew these assets were a good match for a career in teaching. Having flourished for decades as an educator himself, he also understood the benefits and rewards of this particular career path, and, wanting me to experience the same satisfaction he had, he steered me in that direction. What he didn’t and couldn’t know was that while some of my natural gifts were a good match for teaching, I didn’t have the heart for it. I was missing the passion. I followed my father’s direction because I knew being a teacher would be a solid job, a respectable profession, and a safe choice. I pursued a career in teaching because I thought it was what I ought to do. Given my strengths, it made sense. But all along I was missing a critical component. Teaching didn’t make me come alive.
Every fall, loppers and pruning shears in hand, my husband and I plunge headlong into the thicket of spirea shrubs that grow along the inside of the picket fence in our backyard. Aptly named bridal veil spirea, the bushes are beautiful in May, when, laden with thousands of delicate white blossoms, the branches cascade lacy and lush like yards of gossamer tulle to the ground. Unfortunately, for the remaining eleven months of the year, the shrubs are unruly and brambly and not especially attractive, and so every fall, Brad and I attempt to tame the chaos.
After hours of cutting, shearing, and clipping, we emerge bloody and scratched from the shrubs and stand back to survey our work, and every year, without fail, the spirea inevitably looks worse than when we began. Not only are the shrubs still a brambly, chaotic mess, our pruning also typically results in large gaps in the foliage. Rather than a neatly manicured hedge like we envisioned, we are left with an unkempt mix of errant branches and twigs interspersed with gaping bald spots. We stand in the backyard, clipped branches littering the lawn at our feet, and shake our heads, convinced that we’ve ruined the spirea once and for all.
The funny thing is, in sixteen years of annual autumn pruning, we have yet to decimate the spirea. In fact, come spring, it’s apparent that just the opposite has happened. The gaping holes and glaring empty spaces we created with our shears and loppers in the fall have miraculously been covered over with new shoots and blooms. What was once a void is now filled in with healthy new growth.
The Quakers have a saying: “Proceed as the way opens,” which is a lot like my father’s adage, “When in conflict, do nothing.” To “proceed as the way opens” means to avoid taking hasty action and to wait for guidance or future circumstances to inform your decision.2 As with the pruned spirea shrubs in my backyard, sometimes a space appears, allowing a new way to open and be filled. What initially might look like a mistake may in fact allow the space necessary for a new blooming.
Shortly after finishing my master’s degree, I landed a job as an editor in New York City, first at a business magazine and then at an art publication. I loved magazine editing and was good at it, but, it turned out, I did not thrive in the city. The frenetic pace overwhelmed me, the constant noise and throngs of people crushed my spirit, and I deeply missed easy access to nature. After two years in Manhattan, I succumbed to a debilitating chronic illness that forced me to resign from my editor job and move back in with my parents in Massachusetts. It appeared at the time that my stint in New York City had been a mistake.
Later, after I had recovered from my illness, I accepted a job as a communications director at a community college, only to learn through trial and error that I am not particularly skilled at managing people. The day I burst into tears when a staff member quit because, as he put it, he couldn’t bear working for me a minute longer, was the day I realized I rather disliked being a boss and was, frankly, not very good at it. Once again, it seemed like my career choice had been a mistake.
For a long time, my professional life looked a lot like the pruned spirea shrubs in my backyard. It was a tangled mess with lots of lopped off branches and glaring empty spaces. What I couldn’t see at the time, however, was that my mistakes and wrong turns were actually making space for a new, clearer way to open and be filled.
Turns out, we can learn as much from our mistakes and limitations as we can from our successes and potential. While both experiences as a magazine editor in New York City and as a community college communications director were difficult and disappointing at the time, both, in highlighting my limitations, were instrumental in ultimately pointing me toward my potential. Those “failed” professional endeavors helped me learn that I am better suited to small-town rather than big-city living, and that I am happier self-employed or as a member of a staff rather than as a boss. Ultimately, the branches I pruned, though they created gaps in my professional life and certainly felt like failures at the time, opened the space to pursue my calling as a writer.
How to Figure Out Who You Are
There is a difference between who we feel obligated to be, or who society or other influencers say we ought to be, and who we really are. “Figure out who you are. Then do it on purpose,” advised Dolly Parton.3 Or as Mark Twain put it: “The two best days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”4
Long before Mark Twain and Dolly Parton, even the apostle Paul had something to say about this. “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that,” he wrote to the Galatians. “Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life” (Gal. 6:4–5 Message). The question is, How do we figure out who we are? How do we figure out why we were born? What are the breadcrumbs that will lead us along the path to our calling when we are lost and can’t find our way?
Parker Palmer suggests that one way to pick up the trail to our true self and calling is to look back to our youth, when we “lived closer to our birthright gifts.”5 I laughed when I first read that, remembering the day I stumbled upon my old diaries crammed into a cardboard box marked “Michelle’s Keepsakes” in a corner of our basement. I sat on the concrete floor, cringing as I flipped through the pages. Suffice it to say, my fervent declarations of love both for boys and pop music (“Mr. Roboto is my favorite song!” is written in giant puffy rainbow letters across one entire page of my diary) are not exactly prescient signs of my future calling as a writer.
Still, when I recall my childhood passions, I do see hints of the vocational calling that would emerge decades later. For instance, my greatest pleasure as a child and preteen was reading. Tucked into the crook of an apple tree in my backyard, I lost myself in mysteries and adventures, particularly those that featured strong female protagonists—Nancy Drew, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM, The Secret Garden, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Pippi Longstocking, and everything by Judy Blume. I also loved biography, especially stories about girls or women who forged new paths or overcame great obstacles—Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Helen Keller, Anne Frank. I could get lost for hours amid the stacks in my town library, and later, in middle school and high school, I delighted in the in-depth research required for history and English papers. The clues are subtle, but they are there. Hidden in my zeal for reading and research were hints of the books I would write decades later.
Our birthright gifts are also often those we are least able to recognize in ourselves. For years I lamented the fact that I didn’t have any talents. I yearned to play piano, sing soprano, or paint oil portraits. I viewed musicians and artists as people with true gifts, while I considered my own writing ability a useful but pedestrian skill. It never occurred to me that my skills as a writer were a gift. I took it for granted, all the while pining for a “real” talent. Before I began to write books, people would often ask me, when they discovered I had majored in English, if I ever wrote fiction or poetry. “Oh no, I’m not creative; I’m just a business writer,” I always answered. Just a business writer. I didn’t value my skills. I couldn’t see that the ability to craft accessible, readable prose is itself a gift.
Turns out, Paul’s suggestion to “make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given” is sound advice. Looking back at what kinds of activities energized us and brought us joy as children and young adults can offer useful insights into our God-given gifts. Likewise, looking at what we are naturally good at, especially those skills we overlook or take for granted, might offer a path toward uncovering our vocational sweet spot.
Our Lives Are a Listening
In early Christianity, the word vocation originally referred to the call by God of an individual to the religious life. Even today, when we hear the word vocation, we may first think of a pastor, a priest, a nun, or a missionary, but the truth is, a vocation is much more than a religious calling. Each of us is called by God, and as Paul reminded the Romans, “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29). The word vocation comes from the Latin vox, meaning “voice,” and vocare, which means “to call.” The whole notion of a calling depends on there being a Caller. The Caller calls, and we answer, but first we listen. As Thomas Merton wrote, “My life is a listening; His is a speaking.”6
Sometimes, though, we don’t recognize God’s voice; we can’t discern that he is, in fact, speaking. Such was the case with young Samuel in the Old Testament.
Samuel was dedicated to God by his mother, Hannah, as part of a vow she made before he was born (see 1 Sam. 1:24–28). After he was weaned, Samuel went to live in the temple to serve Eli, the high priest. Each night Samuel slept in the tabernacle, where the ark of God was kept. One night, God called Samuel, but Samuel, thinking it was Eli who had called him, ran to his master and said, “Here I am; you called me” (1 Sam. 3:5). Confused, Eli sent Samuel back to bed. Three times the Lord called Samuel, and three times Samuel leapt from bed and ran to Eli’s side (see vv. 5, 6, 8).
Finally, as Samuel stood by his bedside for the third time, Eli realized it was God who was calling his young servant. “Go and lie down,” Eli instructed Samuel, “and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening’” (v. 9). The fourth and final time Samuel heard his name being called into the darkness, he recognized the voice as God’s and responded as Eli had instructed. Samuel then received his first assignment from God in his role as God’s prophet, which was to convey a difficult message to Eli about his sons (see vv. 11–14).
A few months after my second book released, my editor, Chad, and I were chatting one morning on the phone, brainstorming ideas for another book. “If you could write a full-length biography about any of the fifty women featured in your last book, who would you choose?” he asked me. I didn’t hesitate. “Katharina Luther,” I answered. The wife of Protestant reformer Martin Luther captivated me. The basic research I had done to write a short chapter about her in my previous book had left me eager to know more.
Chad was thrilled. I could hear the excitement building in his voice as we talked. With the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation around the corner, 2017 was the perfect time to publish a new biography of the Luthers, he reasoned. I, on the other hand, was already regretting I’d suggested the idea. The problem was, when I considered the dozens, if not hundreds of books that had already been published about Martin Luther over the years, I felt underqualified and just plain not smart enough to add to the oeuvre. I imagined an academic writing a book about Katharina and Martin Luther—someone who smoked a pipe, listened to opera on NPR, and was able to read German.
Instead of writing a proposal for the book, as Chad had suggested, I did nothing. I didn’t pursue the idea; I didn’t even seriously consider it. Until, that is, I happened to mention the idea in a conversation with three close friends, all of whom insisted not only that I was qualified to write this book, but also that perhaps God was calling me to do so.
I hadn’t seen it that way at all. Like Samuel, I hadn’t recognized God’s voice, and like Samuel, I needed an Eli in my life to point me in the direction of God’s calling. The truth is, my own ideas and expectations of who I was as a writer had blinded me to the opportunity looking me square in the face. I didn’t hear the call because it didn’t sound exactly the way I’d imagined and expected it should. Turns out, I had been listening to my own voice—the voice of fear and insecurity—rather than listening to God’s.
It’s not easy to identify the voice of God. Myriad distractions vie for our attention—not the least of which is our own ego (in my case, that’s often the loudest voice of all). We all need an Eli to help us sort through the detritus. We all need an Eli to help us discern when God is calling, especially if we can’t hear his voice ourselves.
Living from the Inside Out
On one of our free afternoons in Italy, a half dozen or so of the writers attending the retreat convened a meeting to brainstorm and share strategies and ideas related to book marketing.
Initially I was excited. Several of these authors have a much bigger audience and platform than I have, and I was eager to gain insight into their success. I took copious notes in my journal as they chatted about utilizing social media, creating and launching online classes, and strategies for growing email subscriber lists. While I listened, I made a list of the steps I needed to take in order to put several of these new ideas in place.
About halfway through the meeting, though, I realized that dread and anxiety had overtaken my initial enthusiasm. The writers who were sharing about their successful business strategies were energized—clearly they enjoyed the entrepreneurial side of creative work—but I was not, and it took me a while to figure out why.
As the writers continued to chat, I thought about the fact that I am not an early adopter. Ever. I considered that I don’t like to experiment with new technologies, and that I am easily overwhelmed when faced with a new initiative. I also admitted to myself that I don’t relish the challenge of figuring out innovative strategies and how they might work for me. In short, I realized the reason I was filled with dread and anxiety is that while I am a writer and an author, I do not have an entrepreneurial spirit. It took me a while to remember that this is okay.
One of the reasons we struggle so much with the process of discovering our vocational sweet spot is that we often force ourselves to be someone we are not. We try to squeeze our square peg selves into a round hole. The problem, though, is that when the person we are striving to be doesn’t jibe with our true, authentic self, we wind up feeling frustrated and fragmented in our work. Sometimes we even end up doing work that fills us with dread and anxiety instead of work that makes us come alive. That afternoon at the writers’ gathering, I forgot who I was. I am not an entrepreneur, yet when I made a list of all the entrepreneurial things I was going to do to become “a successful author,” I tried, at least for a few minutes, to will myself to be one. I took what I was hearing on the outside and tried to make myself that on the inside.
It’s said that Michelangelo intentionally left some of his sculptures incomplete to represent man’s eternal struggle to free himself from the trappings of the world. Visitors to the Accademia Gallery in Florence can view some of these unfinished sculptures along the corridor leading to Michelangelo’s David, which looms massive in the center of the main gallery. During my trip to Italy I stood speechless in front of each of these unfinished sculptures, known as the four Prisoners, or Slaves, as our docent explained Michelangelo’s sculpting technique. Unlike most Renaissance sculptors, who prepared a plaster cast model and then marked the block of marble to know where to chisel and chip, Michelangelo mostly worked freehand, starting from the front of the block and working back. He believed the sculptor was a tool in God’s hand, “not creating but simply revealing the powerful figures already contained in the marble.”7 Michelangelo insisted that the essential sculptural act was one of levare—taking away, a subtractive process8—much like the role of the gardener with pruning shears in hand.
This process of taking away to reveal what’s already inside resonates with me when it comes to how I have begun to think about calling as well. As Meister Eckhart put it, “The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction.”9 God created each of us with unique gifts and an essential, authentic self, but sometimes these gifts and this true self lay hidden, as if buried beneath a ton of marble. Like the sculptor who allows the art to emerge from inanimate material, or the gardener who prunes a tree to reveal its essential elements, we, too, await God’s direction and then follow his lead as he reveals our true gifts. We still ourselves. We wait with hope. We look and listen. And then, when the time is right, we walk toward the way that opens, toward the space that only we can fill.
What Makes You Come Alive?
“Cultivating a wholehearted life is not like trying to reach a destination,” writes Brené Brown. “It’s like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know that we’re heading in the right direction.”10 The truth is, figuring out who you are and the work you are called to—what Brown calls “cultivating a wholehearted life”—is a lifelong process. Like the bridal veil spirea in my backyard, living into your calling entails observation, tweaking, and even radical pruning all along the way. You may bloom for years in your vocational sweet spot, only to realize at some point that a way is closing or a new way is opening. Or you might backslide a bit, the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit diminished by the clamor of your false self or the distractions of the world. Yet if we continue to offer ourselves space and quiet, our true selves will offer us hints along the way, both when we are veering off course and when we’re heading in the right direction.
Sometimes simply noticing how our body feels can offer insight into whether we are listening to and heeding our true self. For instance, I often get a pit in my stomach when I am heading down the wrong path, as if my body instinctively knows what’s right or wrong, even before my mind does. Likewise, as we discussed in the previous chapter, it’s important to be aware of that which makes us liable to destruction. When I feel envy, jealousy, or the urge to ramp up productivity, I can be pretty sure my idolatry of success, which is driven by my false self, has taken hold again.
On the other hand, we can also notice what enlivens, excites, or enriches us. What brings you joy? Contentment? Satisfaction? What makes you come alive? What gives you life? As the Olympic runner Eric Liddell said in the film Chariots of Fire, “I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast. When I run I feel His pleasure.”11 Is there something in which, when you are immersed in it, you feel God’s pleasure? God gives us a purpose and a calling; he gives us work to do in our time on earth. But he also desires that we will experience satisfaction and even delight in our work, and when we do, I believe this gives God pleasure too.
A few months ago I spotted my former boss when I was out shopping with my son Noah in Marshall’s. My initial instinct was to avoid him, not because I harbored any ill feelings, but simply because I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, and I thought a conversation in the menswear section might be awkward. I walked out the store’s automatic sliding doors and into the parking lot, but before I made it to my car, I stopped short and turned to Noah. “We need to go back inside,” I told him. “I have to say hi to my old boss.”
Noah tried to convince me to leave. “It’s fine,” he argued. “He didn’t even see you. Why do you need to talk to him? Let’s just go!” Honestly, I wasn’t at all sure why I felt the need to return to the store and strike up a conversation with my former boss. Maybe it was intuition. Maybe it was guilt. But whatever the impetus, I turned around and headed back through the automatic doors to the men’s section of Marshall’s, Noah trailing grumpily behind me.
Jeff and I chatted for a few minutes over a rack of polo shirts. During our conversation I learned he was working for The Salvation Army headquarters in Omaha. “If you ever need a freelance writer, let me know,” I suggested, handing Jeff my business card before we parted. Two months later, he hired me.
I’ve been writing part-time for The Salvation Army for almost two years now, and I love it. I’ve found my calling, “the place,” as theologian Frederick Buechner said, “where [my] deep gladness and the world’s hunger meet.”12 It’s not glamorous work. An article I wrote recently about Stephen, a recovering meth addict who is one year clean and on the road back to physical and mental health, for example, was included in a newsletter that was mailed to fewer than 800 people, and I suspect far fewer than that actually read the story. This work won’t impact book sales, help me build my platform, or earn me any name recognition. There’s no status in this kind of writing. And yet, the day I interviewed him on the phone, the perseverance, strength, and humility I heard in Stephen’s voice awoke something in me. Talking with Stephen and writing his story was some of the most gratifying work I’ve ever done because it’s work that was born out of my authentic self, rather than out of hustle, striving, and the need to be Someone Important.
In a recent podcast interview, author Andy Crouch noted that when we focus solely on status—on being the biggest, the best, and the most successful—we lose the opportunity to use our gifts to benefit others rather than ourselves. “Everyone is chasing status,” Crouch observed, “but serving the vulnerable is wide open in every field.”13 So often I find myself wildly spinning my wheels in a fruitless attempt to become Someone Important. Yet in doing so, I leave in my wake a vast expanse of potential to make a difference in a less conspicuous but no less important way. Setting our sights so narrowly on reaching whatever it is we’ve deemed The One Big Thing means we often miss the wide-open field of less glamorous but no less gratifying work available to us.
Discovering your true calling, the place your deep gladness meets the world’s hunger, won’t likely bring you status, accolades, or notoriety. It probably won’t make you “successful” by our culture’s standards. But this I know for sure: it will offer you the opportunity for a different but no less beautiful kind of greatness, the kind of greatness that will bring you satisfaction and contentment, the kind of greatness that will make you come alive and bless you unexpectedly beyond measure.
Many years ago I worked part-time as an obituary writer for my local city newspaper. It was my job to synthesize the milestones and highlights of the deceased person’s life into a concise biography that, depending on the person, would fill as little as a paragraph or as much as a page. I wrote the obituaries of lots of different people, from those who had been CEOs, doctors, professors, and attorneys to those who had worked as auto mechanics, elementary school teachers, nurse’s aides, and mail carriers.
I was reminded of that job recently as I listened to the late poet John O’Donohue talk about the difference between biography and identity in a podcast interview. “There’s a reduction of identity to biography,” O’Donohue observed, but “they’re not the same thing. Biography unfolds identity and makes it visible and puts the mirror of it out there, but identity is a more complex thing. Your identity is not equivalent to your biography.”14
Your identity comes not from what you do, but from who you are in God. Once you understand at the core of your being that you are truly God’s beloved—delighted in and cherished by God—everything else falls into place. Some of us may end up with a paragraph for our obituary, some of us with a page, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter because our biography is not who we are. It is important and good to use our God-given gifts wisely in our short time on Earth, to be sure, but as Jesus gently reminded his friend Martha in the midst of all her frantic doing and serving, what we do—even the fabulous things we do—is not the most important thing (see Luke 10:38–42).
Above all, God wants to be in relationship with us. He isn’t nearly as concerned with what we do as he is with who we are, and especially who we are in him. Our primary identity is Beloved, and our very name is written in the palm of his hand (see Isa. 49:16 NLT). In the same way God called his precious son Beloved, he names our identity. Listen to the quiet whisper in your soul. God calls you Beloved too.
Figuring out who you are and what you should do with your “one wild and precious life,” as the poet Mary Oliver says, isn’t easy.15 We don’t always recognize our God-given gifts. We don’t always recognize the voice of God himself, even when he tells us to turn right or left, even when he says, “This is the way” (Isa. 30:21). May these questions help to shine a little light along the path as you journey toward answering the essential question “Who am I?”
- Think back to your childhood. Can you identify any of what Parker Palmer calls your “birthright gifts”? What are they? If you’ve lost sight of your early passions, how could you begin to circle back to unearth those long-buried gifts?
- Of everything you’ve done in your life, which achievement of yours do you feel best about? They needn’t be “important”; think about what made you feel thoroughly satisfied.
- Consider Paul’s advice to “make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given” (Gal. 6:4 Message). How is your current work aligned or misaligned with your essential self?
- Who in your life could be an Eli—someone who can help you hear God’s voice and discern his calling for you?
- What would it look like for you to pursue a greatness born out of satisfaction and a sense of true fulfillment rather than out of notoriety or success?