FINDING "YOUR CALLING."

 

When I was in my forties, I still had no idea what my “calling” was. According to my pastor – and several of my Christian friends – we all had them. So…I began to search for mine. I tried a lot of different things. I made dolls, did quite a bit of sewing, painted (I wasn’t good), different craft things, and I spent time cooking lots of different dishes that took a long time and included a lot of ingredients. (Now, I just make easy dishes!) I worked as an underwriting director at a non-profit Christian radio station, was a forced-placed insurance supervisor for a bank, ran the food program for The Salvation Army, and designed and ran a HUD program for the City of Wichita. I enjoyed these jobs, especially working in social services, but up until the time I worked for the bank, I still hadn’t found the thing that I felt I was born to do. However, while I was there, I heard a Bible teacher suggest that many times, if you went back to what you did naturally as a child, you might discover the gifts God had given you. I thought back to my childhood, and three things stood out. The first – my training to race barrels in the rodeo probably wasn’t going to lead me to my calling. The second thing that stood out was my love of reading. I read all the time. In elementary school I’d check out five or six books from the school library and read them all in one night. (Under the covers with a flashlight!) By junior high (called middle school now), I’d read every book written by Charles Dickens who is still my favorite author. In high school, I started writing poems. In my English class, our teacher assigned all of us to write three poems. Because of problems at home, I was pretty shut down during my teenage years. But when I heard this assignment, I was excited. Maybe my English teacher would see something special in me. I wasn’t a confident person and really needed a reason to feel good about myself. So, I wrote the poems and turned them in. One day she announced that she was going to read our poems, however, she wasn’t going to tell us who wrote them. I could hardly wait. But when she read mine, she announced to the class that she was sure she’d read them before. In other words, she accused me of plagiarism. I was crushed. And so ended my desire to write. But looking back upon that experience, I began to wonder. Could she possibly have said what she did because she thought the poems were good? Too good for a high school student who wasn’t standing out in her classroom? If so, was it possible I was actually called to be a writer?

So, one day, during my lunch break at the bank, I decided to see if I could write a novel on my computer. By the third page, I was certain this was NOT what I was called to do. It was hard. Really hard. As I stared at the page in front of me, a soft voice whispered inside. Try it one more time. I took a deep breath and started to type again. Suddenly, the words began to flow. And all these years later, they still come when I need them.

 

Is that the end of my writing story? No. When I realized I didn’t know anything about writing, I took a year off to study. Along the way, I became aware that a writing career was going to take a lot of my time. A lot. I would have to spend less time with my family, with my volunteer work, and at church. I had to know that this was what God wanted me to do. He needed to confirm that this really was “my calling” before I made the necessary changes in my life. I love snow, especially because God had used it when I was a child to let me know I was loved, and that He could hear my prayers. (That’s another story.) So, I picked a week on the calendar and prayed. I asked God to make it snow during that week if He wanted me to become a serious writer. One note: the week I picked was in April. No snow was in the forecast. I found out later that in Wichita, where I lived, there hadn’t been measurable snow in April for forty years. (I almost fainted when I discovered this!) That week, on Friday, everyone was surprised when it snowed nine inches! After that, I dedicated myself to a writing career.

 

It’s been twenty-five years since that day at the bank. Today, I have over fifty published books and I’m still writing. I’ll probably write for the rest of my life. Although the writing life can be difficult (deadlines and rewrites…arrrrgh!), there’s nothing else I’d rather do. I love creating stories that not only entertain, but also, I hope, deliver a touch from God, letting readers know how much they are loved.

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