QUESTIONS OF CALLING
unearthing beauty, mining meaning, and seeking truth
This is a place for anyone who wants more, who is not content to be comfortable, who seeks a life of truth and meaning, not just happiness.
Here, we ask hard questions, tell true stories, and turn life inside out to unearth the ragged beauty within.
I’m honored to have you to join me.
Good Thoughts on Feeling Bad: What If We Stop Chasing Happiness?
What if feeling bad sometimes is just part of the human experience rather than something to avoid, fix, or berate oneself about?
As an Enneagram 4, I’m pretty adept at embracing negative emotions (rather than denying, distracting, or quick-fixing). But I am realizing that I’ve nevertheless picked up the habit of feeling guilty or disappointed in myself for having those bad feelings—seeing them as a sign that either I’m doing something wrong with my life or, worse, I’m somehow broken . . .
A Vocation of Personhood: Discovering a Sense of Calling in the Messy Middle
guest post by Kat Wordsworth
“Perhaps your personhood is a vocation of such beauty and significance that souls will be saved through your simple fidelity to being human.” - K.J. Ramsey
Questions of vocation, calling, and purpose in my life have been on the back burner for over a decade. I didn’t believe myself worthy of the conversation, worthy of thinking that I had anything to contribute. To me, a sense of calling was deeply entwined with being a confident and secure Christian. To be called meant hearing God’s voice and plan for your life. And that was not something I had ever experienced. . .
How Separating Internal and External Change Can Transform Your Writing—and Your Life
I learned something recently that feels simultaneously mind-blowing and also like something I’ve known for ages:
A bittersweet ending results from the combination of a negative external change plus a positive internal change.
Let me explain.
Every story operates on two levels: internal and external. . . .
Habitual Fear: A Personal Narrative
This is a very special guest post by an alumna of my Unearthing Beauty Personal Narrative Class. I absolutely love its understated drama as she explores an internal conflict with lots of sensory detail and stream-of-consciousness internal dialog.
I awake from deep sleep to my husband's phone ringing. I lie in bed trying to figure out the details, only hearing his end of the call. . .
Give Yourself the Gift of Self-Efficacy and Watch Your Dreams Become Realities
So many things feel outside of our control, especially in the last few years. Wars, pandemics, hurricanes, Zoom schooling, inflation, recession. Writing goals? Let’s just be grateful we were able to write anything lately.
And yet… underneath the narrative of powerlessness and capitulation, I have seen so many writers exhibiting incredible strength, perseverance, and determination this year. Writers who have been quietly devoted to improving their craft, choosing to show up and do the work they need to in order to accomplish their dreams.
Emotional Burnout: Protecting Your Mental Health as an Introvert and Mother
I’m just gonna say it: Recently, I’ve wondered if having a third child was a mistake.
It has nothing to do with the actual child: our youngest is as sweet and easy as you could hope for, full of toothless grins, adorable squeals, and delighted giggles.
Rather, my doubt has to do with feeling completely overwhelmed and burnt out by the constant stream of needs and emotions that demand my attention. Constant. Even when I’m at work or they’ve all gone to bed, their hypothetical future needs and past emotions are at the forefront of my psyche, buzzing like static, fraying my attention and swamping my heart. . .
Success Is Nonlinear. So Is Progress.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever worked diligently at a project only to see little to no results—or worse, to see it crash and burn into a pile of smoking ash.
Oh, you too?
I’ve been feeling this way a little recently. I’ve started to make a real effort to create regularly, to carve out precious time from my packed schedule of teaching, counseling, momming, wifing, and just surviving for creative pursuits—for posting and blogging and journaling and promoting. And I have very little to show for it.
Light in The Heart of Darkness
I first read this novella in AP English at the tender age of seventeen. As a teenager I think did not appreciate the novel in part because I was unable to comprehend the depths that Conrad plumbs. I had not the emotional and existential tools to process such a story about the horror of human life, our immense capacity for corruption, and the illusion of progress to which we cling as if to a vine swinging over an abyss. Twenty more years of life experience certainly make me no sage, but these ideas resonate now, and I am awed at the author’s ability to express so concisely and eloquently that which is so difficult even to conceive. . . .
Learning to Doubt Without Fear
When I started teaching teens at a Christian school a decade ago, I was baffled by how classroom discussion of controversial topics seemed to provoke panic among many parents.
What surprised me was not simply that parents objected to my choice of material but rather the terror that seemed to underlie their objections. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t even theological. It was emotional: a nameless, faceless, gaping fear.
I’m still not sure what those parents were so afraid of, but I know it had something to do with their children learning to question their faith, to honestly consider other options and opinions . . .
Passion, Purpose, and the Painful Journey of Becoming: Thoughts on Calling
One theme underlies every meaningful decision we make in this world: what is the purpose of my life? What is it that I have been uniquely designed to do?
I’ve been searching for answers to these questions for most of my life . . .
The Shape of Your Soul
Ever feel like you just don’t fit in?
Sometimes I think I’ve spent more than half my waking hours feeling this way. Maybe it’s my Enneagram 4-ness coming out and no one else feels this way and you’re all going to think I’m a big weirdo (see how quickly that feeling comes to the surface?), but feeling out of place and ill-equipped to adapt is as familiar to me as breathing.
Questions of Calling
Why am I here?
This is the question that ultimately drives all of human striving. It appears in many forms: what is the meaning of life? what does it look like to live life well? what is the deeper purpose to which God is calling me?
There are no easy answers.
Not All Who Wander
From the outside, in our world of five-year plans and goal-setting and ladder-climbing, wandering looks aimless, restless, wasteful, even lazy. And it certainly can be. But wandering can also be purposeful—a form of intentional surrender aimed at letting the ego take a back seat and allowing God to guide us.
Sometimes God speaks by slamming doors in our faces or setting our hearts ablaze with an undeniable desire, but more often I find he speaks in whispers and nudges that are all too easy to miss.
When You Feel Like a Failure: Befriending Your Sense of Inadequacy
Sometimes I don’t feel called to motherhood.
That’s not something we’re really allowed to say, but it’s true—both for me and for many moms with whom I’ve spoken.
A couple of weeks ago, my husband had a zoom meeting right through dinnertime, so it was just me with my three girls, ages 5, 3, and 3 months…
Riding Out the Storm: Finding Strength in Life’s Hardest Moments
On the surface, my life is pretty good, great even. I’m incredibly privileged, with three beautiful children, a loving husband, a flexible, meaningful job, great friends.
But sometimes I feel like I’m drowning.
Not the thrashing, panicked, violent kind of drowning. Rather, like I am fighting a rip tide day after day, treading water, working so very hard just to stay afloat, weary to the bone—drowning almost imperceptibly. Silently. Drifting further and further from shore as I struggle to summon another surge of energy and intention . . .
Beauty in the Unexpected
If you’re like me, you rely daily on an illusion of control. For most of us, the last five months have shattered that illusion.
This week I did some searching, and amidst the muck of unexpected difficulties and the slime of impossible decisions, I found some unexpected beauty and meaning blossoming—flowers fertilized by all the sh*t we have been wading through, blooms I never would have seen if all had gone according to my plan.
Here is what I found.
Life, Unexpected
I did not expect August to look like this, to have us going on five months trapped in our houses and visiting with friends almost exclusively via screens, the oppressive summer heat having become another warden, barricading us in our homes day after day as the school year looms (for us both as teachers and as parents) full of uncertainty and anxiety…
A Childlike Faith
We were taking an evening walk around the neighborhood, dodging the thunderstorm that menaced on the radar forecast. My infant was strapped to my chest, and I pushed my worn out three-year-old in the stroller. My five-year-old walked on her own two feet, running and skipping, leaping and twirling, her legs long like a gazelle, her voice a constant stream of questions and commentary.
Suddenly the conversation took a serious turn. "Mom, I wish God didn't exist."
Postpartum: The Second Birth No One Told Me About
When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read obsessively about pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I read about cribs and car seats, strollers and swaddles. Thanks to some savvy friends, I even read some about breastfeeding, though I didn’t learn many basic facts about babies and their care until after our little girl had arrived and started making it very clear that we were not meeting all of her needs, at which time I read more.
What I never read anything about was what would happen to me after she was born. Not just physically—which offered plenty of its own surprises and challenges—but also mentally and emotionally. . .
Start Small and Think It Through: Creating Habits that Stick
More and more, I’m learning that in order to pursue any calling with excellence, we must develop good habits that can carry us through the mess and busyness of life. I used to think routines were boring and constricting. But no. Routines hold us up when motivation and willpower fail. Habits are powerful allies that can do a lot of the heavy lifting for us if only we will help them get established.
This year, I want to start a new habit. But, I want it to stick. Therefore, I’ve spent some time reading through some articles by James Clear about habit change, pulled from his book Atomic Habits, and thinking about how I can set myself up for success. This post lays out the major takeaways.