Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling

by Paula Faris

I was afraid of living without my narcotic of choice—work.

Dr. Martin Luther King: “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

I’ve been plagued by fear my whole life—fear of failure, fear of not fitting in, fear of being alone, fear of being embarrassed, fear that I didn’t belong, fear that I wasn’t good enough—and over the years, I’d almost lost myself to those fears. But time after time, God moved me through those fears and into a deeper sense of my callings, both my faith calling and the calling of my career.

Calling, purpose, focus, intention, balance are the buzzwords of our time. Forget about how to achieve those things—what do they even mean?

All I knew was that walking away from the anchor desk felt simultaneously like freedom and the loss of my identity.

Did I even know myself without this career? Could I? My worth had become my work. My value, in my vocation.

Just as we’re made up of both body and soul, our calling has two distinct facets—a faith or life calling (which I’ll term faith calling for the sake of simplicity), and a day-to-day work calling (which I’ll dub vocational calling). As

In fact, it’s my belief that everything we do (our vocational calling) serves as a vehicle to share who we are—people loved by God and called to love God and share his love with the people of this world (our faith calling).

Faith calling—everyone has one, even if they don’t call it that. What is it? For the Christian (or one who believes in God), it is who God has created you to be, and how you’ve been called to live in response.

But our vocational calling—what we do—can change, whereas our faith calling won’t.

our vocations are meant for one purpose—to be a vehicle for sharing God’s love with the world.

David’s life is an example of what happens when we lose sight of who we are, our underlying purpose, our faith calling.

Your faith calling describes who you are. It should serve as the foundation for everything you do. It should affect the way you interact with people, the way you parent, the way you relate to your spouse, and the way you pursue your vocational calling. Everything should flow from your faith calling.

But achievement and success in what I did never satisfied me, at least not for long. Come to find out, achievement and success can’t sustain a life.

when he counsels young people about discovering their calling, he tells them to pay attention to three things: their natural giftings, their innate curiosities, and the vocational encouragement given by trusted teachers, leaders, and mentors.

We find our way to our vocational calling by considering our skill sets (“What we’re good at,” I write); what we’re curious about (“Curiosities,” I write); and the skills and proficiencies our friends and mentors recognize in us (“Mentor encouragement,” I write).

You may have the same faith calling as others in your chosen vocation. (I’m not the only Christian in broadcast journalism, for instance.) You might even have the same general vocational aims (just as Peter, Andrew, Paul, and Ananias had the vocational aims of sharing the Christian faith). But because you have different skills and gifts, different curiosities, and because different people have spoken into your life (which is to say nothing of the differences in your life experiences), your vocational calling is unique to you.

the way you pursue your vocational calling will be unlike anyone else’s.

As important as it is to identify, know, and internalize your faith calling, it is just as important to identify, know, and internalize your vocational calling. And if you’ve gotten off track, if you can’t quite say what your vocational calling is, do a little digging. Ask the questions Shedd asked: What are my innate skills? What am I curious about? What skills and proficiencies have my mentors and friends recognized in me? Then ask, Is there anything getting in the way of that calling, anything such as fear?

Through success and achievement, I found a place, an identity, a sense of self-worth. I was Paula the Good Student, Paula the Musician, and Paula the Overachiever. And though it wasn’t conscious, a subtle belief began to creep in: I was only as good as my next accomplishment, my next achievement, the next rung of the ladder I climbed. I was as good as the next thing I did.

(Which begs this question: Why was Jonah less afraid of being tossed into the stormy sea than he was of going to preach to a Gentile horde?)

What is preventing me from walking into my vocational calling?

“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you” (Joshua 3:7 ESV). In that moment, I knew: When God calls you, he’ll equip you.

But if we’re rooted in our faith calling—reminding ourselves we’re first called to love God and love people—and if we keep pressing through the fear and into the vocational calling God has laid out for us, we can muscle through any circumstance. We can press through the fear. If we don’t, we won’t find the gold God has for us.

Cultivate a desire bigger than fear.

But when these external realities come against you, don’t freeze in fear. Instead, cultivate a desire greater than your fear. Cultivate a faith bigger than fear too, and remember that if God calls you, he’ll equip you.

Your vocational calling is much bigger than the fear that limits you.

But sometimes, we learn the most important lessons through the messes we make.

“Don’t allow fear to prevent you from walking into your destiny,”

Just like David Shedd had said, our vocational callings are meant for something bigger. They’re meant to advance our purpose, our faith calling—to be our unique vehicle by which we love God and others. They’re meant to be rooted in and flow from our faith calling. And when that happens, it’s God’s love and our mandate to love others that motivates us to push through our fear and move into new opportunities, new areas of influence. It doesn’t become so much about what we do, but rather who we’re doing it for.

“Sometimes other people have the dream for you before you have it for yourself because you’ve allowed your fear to paralyze you.”

Roberts says. “And fear just needs the eye of a needle to get through and it just consumes your very being. So many fears keep us sidelined.”

If you live in the real world, there will be moments when you have to step out of your comfort zone, or when you’ll be pushed out of your comfort zone, as you pursue your vocational calling.

It was that leap that would lead me to understand the ultimate truth—that my true identity wasn’t found in what I did, but rather in who I was.

Impostor Syndrome is a pervasive feeling of self-doubt, insecurity, or fraudulence despite often overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It strikes smart, successful individuals. It often rears its head after an especially notable accomplishment, like admission to a prestigious university, public acclaim, winning an award, or earning a promotion.1

Remembering who we are in God—his beloved children—where he’s placed us, and the people he’s placed around us affects our decision-making and thought processes, and even reminds us not to worry in times of fear.

When God calls you, he’ll equip you. It becomes less about what you can bring to the table and more about being expectant that God will show up.

His purpose—to love God and love others—helped him navigate what he did.

What’s more, I didn’t recognize how my career was just the vehicle by which I’d show God’s love to the world around me, and at the pace I was traveling, I never would have discovered this truth. I needed to slow down.

Truth is, it didn’t matter if others thought I was a failure. I was already convinced I was.

So often, it is simply implied that our calling is what we do from nine to five. Our calling is our career.

As followers of Christ, we need to root into a different truth. Our primary calling is not our vocation. It is not our jobs. Our primary calling is singular: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (see Mark 12:30–31). In other words, love God and love people.

Jesus knew his purpose, his faith calling—to love God and love people. How did he express that love?

If there’s any implication in their writings, it’s that our primary calling is to love God and love people, all the way to the end.

As Christians, it’s time to have a much bigger, more nuanced conversation about calling. Calling isn’t just about your vocation. It’s more holistic. It’s not what you do, it’s who you’ve been created to be—a follower of the living God who shares his love with a hurting world. And when we come to understand this truth, we see our true identity—we are representatives of the living, loving God.

I didn’t fully appreciate this truth in the first half of my career. I poured myself into my career, made it my life, my identity, and in that, a subtle twisting happened. What was that twisting? I believed this: The God who had called me to be a reporter would equip me to be a reporter. Instead of believing this: The God who’d called me to love God and love people...

When God calls you, he will always equip you, but he equips you to an identity rooted in your faith...

Jesus is more concerned about whether we are loving him with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. That’s where he wants us to find our worth, our identity. And when we’re rooted in that identity, we can share the truth of God’s love with the world around us. But when we lose sight of this truth, when we find our identity in what we do, we’ll find ourselves mired in anxiety, fear, and worry, just as Martha did.

If you’re moving too fast to slow down and root yourself in your faith calling, you’re moving too fast. If you don’t slow down, rest assured, God will slow you down.

When we get out of whack, when our priorities go askew, God will intervene. He’ll give us every opportunity to right our course. Sometimes he’ll allow adversity, or even a random apple to get our attention. Sometimes he’ll bring the adversity. (Knowing the difference between whether God allows or brings adversity, of course, is tricky business, so it’s best to contact your resident theologian when trying to understand your own situation.) And when we’re faced with this kind of adversity, we have two possible options: We can run from God, or we can slow down long enough to listen to him and allow him to set a new direction for our lives.