Of Careers and Callings: My experience so far 2

After working for three years in the market place, since completing graduate school, I still don’t know what I want to be in the future.

Whaaaaaaaat? Did I read you correctly? Or this is some typo error?

Be assured, there are no typos in that statement. Yeah, your eyebrows are raised, I can see but I’m not ashamed to say it! I gleefully clap that you’re taken aback by this public confession.

In a recent but brief conversation with one of my favourite former professors, who made us crash at night for good grades, he asked what I was currently doing in the area of career pursuits. I dutifully told him that I was working with a research project. Now, when you say you work with a project, it always presupposes a short term stint and for the most part the assumption is justified. But my project is for 5 years and has 4 years more to go, I explained to him. And then he asked towards the end of the conversation that after this project, what did I permanently want to do?

Tell him that I still don’t know what to do or that I genuinely want to be a wife and mother permanently? But fearing that I might be misunderstood as a desperate single seeking a husband, I told him something like this, which is really what I believe:

I don’t think I’d want to restrict myself by saying that I want to be specifically this or that, but I move as God leads me. I use the biblical guideline that whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all you heart, Ecc. 9:10a. So I don’t put restrictions on what my future calling or career pursuit might be.

I must qualify that I do know the gifts, talents, skills and training that I’ve received so I will do whatever my heart finds to do within the gifts and skills I have, guided by God’s Word and the Spirit’s leading. I cannot be an astronaut because I don’t have the slightest clue of what it takes to be one nor do I have the accreditation for such a pursuit. All I know, with greatest apologies to astronauts, is that they are bagged in bloated clothing to float outside the earth in great explorations. So I wouldn’t do things outside what I know I can do or have the inclination to learn to do.

For me, getting to this point of acceptance and admittance has been a long and winding road; it is almost an unspeakable taboo to say that you don’t know what to do in the future. Sometimes within Christian circles, pastors and teachers beat the youth up with knowing the specific call of God upon your life and pursuing it talk. And when they don’t get that position or job or don’t know what that specific calling is, the young people torture themselves emotionally. I’ve been one of those poor misguided souls in the past.

I will not be restricted to a position or job; I’m too gifted and versatile for that. Neither am I Jack of all trades. A few years in the market place has taught me that there is such a vast room for learning and acquiring new skills. I’ve also learnt that I need to brave the un-ventured trails; is that not what is called adventure? I believe that I’m made to discover more of who I am as a person and as a woman. Can anything be more worth pursuing that just what God wants me to be? If I am made to be like-Christ, then I want to be the-woman-like-Christ, Romans 8:29-30.

Did I study Elective Science in senior secondary school? No. So you know that I’m neither a doctor, a lawyer, nor an engineer. But I’m glad to say that I at least, know the basics of what engineers do for a living. :) And…. next time you see me, don’t ask me whether I’ve finally figured out what I want to be or to do in the future, because I’m already living life. And it’s good.

Read part 1 here.