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

by Paula Faris

But when those moments come, it’s our job to pay attention to them, to hear the God behind them saying, Slow down and listen to me; it’s time to get reattached to the vine.

I’d lost track of my true purpose, my true faith calling. But through a series of truly unfortunate events (the Year of Hell, as I’ve come to call it), God woke me up. And though I didn’t know what that might mean for my career—not exactly, anyway—I did the next right thing. I slowed down and reexamined the trajectory of my life. If I kept going in the same direction, I’d lose myself, and maybe my family.

Changed lives, lives of difference, are deeply rooted in the love of God.

The truth was, my vocational calling could change from time to time, as long as the decision to make the change grew from my faith calling.

As long as I was using my vocation as a vehicle for that love, I was living from the center of my purpose.

No matter the branch of your vocational calling, though, if it’s not rooted in the true vine of faith calling, if it’s not supported and nourished by God’s life, it won’t bear fruit.

Sometimes he prunes them even when we’re healthy so that we might share his love in different ways with different people.

A life of purpose is one that is attached to the root of our faith callings, one that is nourished by it, one that bears fruit in our day-to-day vocations.

(what are we good at, what are we curious about, and what are the skills and proficiencies our mentors and trusted advisors recognize?).

when we put too much of our identity in what we do, God will allow adversity to get us back on track, to help us root our identities in our faith calling.

Calling is so much bigger than that, and it begins in who we are in God and what we were ultimately put on this earth for—to be a representation of God’s love, his hands and feet in this world.

when I made the change I felt he was calling me into, I was able to see.

don’t believe there are silver bullets,” he says. “I think change happens incrementally over time.”

But little by little, I’m understanding how faith informs my vocational calling, how it asks me to do things that are bigger than my fear, and how when I root my identity in that faith, God makes the path forward plain.

We would start asking them, “Who do you want to be when you grow up?” instead of, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” We would teach them their gifts are the way in which God will ask them to share his love with the world. We would teach them to build faithful lives, lives like my dad’s. Maybe this could be the legacy he left behind.

You don’t have to change everything overnight (nor do you have to wait for a year of hell to wake you up). You can begin to correct your course today by making a simple paradigm shift and seeking incremental change.

The paradigm shift? See your vocation for what it is. It’s what you do, and it doesn’t define you.