My story began....

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, which is a pretty “old” church by church standards. We called ourselves “Diet Catholics” – all the liturgy, half the guilt. One year when I was in college, I went to General Convention with some other friends to represent the “College Age Community” in the diocese. Picture this – a room full of Q-tips (that’s what we called all the white haired parishioners we went to church with) and us, a group of 10 college students more inclined to go out for drinks than sit and make diocesan decisions on a Saturday night. The evening was coming to a close and the Bishop, the big guy in charge of the diocese, was closing our session in prayer. We all bow our heads and he starts to pray, and then the unthinkable happens – my cell phone rings, and yes, my ringer was on LOUD. The room got even more silent, if you can imagine that. So I picked up my purse and tossed it to my friend a couple seats over and quietly said “Thea, you should turn your phone off. It’s really loud.” Of course those around us, and the Bishop who was praying, could hear us since it was so quiet. His response…”God, that better be you calling.” I have never been so mortified in my life, but this story gets me thinking of all the times God has called and how many times I’ve silenced His call or sent Him to voicemail.

I’ve realized that sometimes His calls seem to come from unexpected directions - family is telling you what to do, or friends pressuring you to do something else. We are constantly pulled in different directions and don’t know where to turn or what to do next – schoolwork piles up, bills have to be paid, family commitments, a night out with friends – and at some point, you should probably make it to church too. Do you ever stop to think – am I really doing what I’m supposed to be doing? What does that mean anyway? How do we determine what it is we’re supposed to be doing? Do our parents tell us? Or our friends? Or society?

We enter our 20s and we’re usually just a few years out of high school. We have big ideas and we’re ready to conquer the world. We know what others (friends, family, teachers, mentors) have told us, and we’ve formed our own ideas and opinions for what we want our lives to look like, and now we’re ready to take on the world. We don’t want the advice or the direction from anyone else. We’re adults and we know what we’re doing, and if we don’t, we’re bound and determined to make our own mistakes without anyone trying to stop us. What we sometimes forget, or at least what I forgot for a long time, is that God really is there to guide us and help us in life. He’s forever picking up the phone and calling, and when we don’t pick up and He gets our voicemail, He hangs up and He calls back. He never ever stops trying to reach us. He never gives up on us, no matter how many times we give up on Him.

I told you last week that I’d be honest with you. I told you I’d be real. So here’s the story of my 20s and all the times I didn’t pick up the phone when He called. I grew up in a Christian home. I went to church with my parents, did the Sunday school and then the youth group deal, and even was a peer leader throughout high school for a church retreat. I was the “good Christian girl” that my parents expected me to be. But what they didn’t know was that I changed when I was 16 and answered a call in my life that was more seductive than anything I’d ever heard – the call of my hormones. I discovered boys, well particularly one boy, my junior year and then I discovered the pain of a miscarriage that spring. God called me and wanted to help, but I didn’t answer. Instead I turned inward and introspective with my pain and, although I kept my church commitments, I stopped listening to His call for me. I started following only my heart and mind and did not turn back when He warned me away. I’ll skip ahead to when I moved to Chico for college because my life basically followed the same path for the next few years – a new boy, moved out on my own, worked, went to school…you know the routine.

But when I was 20 I moved away from all that I knew. I left my comfort zone, my childhood friends, my family, my boyfriend, and I moved to Northern California. 12 hours from anyone I knew I thought I could reinvent myself in Chico. I thought I could forget the pain, the heartbreaks, and the disappointments that waited for me at home. And I thought I could do it all by myself. This is when I really hung up the phone and stopped listening. I spent some time “discovering” myself and reinventing what was important to me. I stopped going to church. I didn’t talk to my friends at home much. I thought my parents were out to control me and didn’t want anything good for me. I found beer, boys, drugs, more boys, and even more beer. I spent a lot of time those first years in college being “called” by a pint or a shot, which was then typically followed by some random guys room. I don’t remember how many times I flipped a coin with friends to see who would drive home at night because none of us were really sober. My best friend and I even had a deal – whoever was MORE sober (I didn’t say whoever was sober) would drive to their home and if we hit a curb, we had to pull over and walk the rest of the way. I never hit a curb, but I was also never sober. I don’t know how many guys I went home with and I don’t know how many times I praised the porcelain, but I do know that I was running away from something. I’m not sure what, but the more intoxicated I was, the more fun I had and the more I didn’t feel. I barely made it through school that year, but I had met some great friends that managed to pick me up and keep me in reality long enough to at least pass my classes. Those friends would keep me sober. They would make sure I got my work done for school. And, at the encouragement of some friends, I signed up for a retreat for young adults through my local church in Chico (that I had never attended).

This is when His phone calls started coming through again. I had spent the past 12 months drinking and the past 6 months drunk 6 nights of the week, and the only reason I was sober that 7th night was because there wasn’t anything fun going on in the bars downtown. I had to get my homework done at some point after all. I had spent 12 months sending God’s calls to voicemail or silencing His voice in my life. I would lie in bed at night, drunk beyond belief, and I still couldn’t turn off the voice in my head telling me I was better than this. At that retreat, I was sober for 3 days straight and I could finally hear Him again. I let Him in to take control. I let Him wash the pain from my heart. I let Him help me to pick up the pieces of a life I hadn’t been sure was worth living any more. And all this started because I answered a lot of other calls and thought I could do it all alone. When I let Him back in and started following His call in my life, I started getting all those things I knew I wanted, but never realized that He wanted for me too.

Today, at 29, I am a Graphic Designer, I live in San Diego, I am a wife, I belong to a great church, I have wonderful friends, my relationship with my parents is good again, and I can’t wait to see what God has in store for me next. I’m on the other side of my 20s now, and looking back I realize that I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t gone through all the things I had. But what I never realized was that God was always there with me. He never stopped calling, and He never stopped walking beside me or carrying me when I needed Him. I turned my back on Him, but He never turned His back on me.

God calls each one of us, every moment of every day. He knows what our path is and where we are going, all we have to do now is follow. What exactly do I mean when I say God is “calling” to each of us? Is it like God talking to Homer out of the clouds or is it more subtle? How can we be sure that it’s really God we’re hearing and not our own egos or the pressures of others in our lives? Once we figure it out, it can be an amazing and fulfilling thing to live life in line with God’s design and calling on our lives. It can be difficult and overwhelming to discover. Here is my suggestion to you: Pay attention to who God made you to be. What gives you life? What are you good at? What do you love to do? What is consistent in you that may be clues to your design and calling? Before he met Christ, the apostle Paul was an activist and a zealot – a well-spoken opponent of the church. When he met Christ, he continued to be an activist and a zealot, but he changed for whom he worked. In Acts it says that he began to preach at once in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God. He didn't change who he was, but he did change who he followed in his life.

We each have a unique design. We can learn by watching someone else, but their calling is not our calling. Don’t get caught in the comparison trap. Just because your older brother went to UCSD to study science, does not mean that you have to follow in his footsteps. Your younger sister is getting married and starting a family, but you don’t feel like you’re ready. That’s okay, her calling is not yours. It’s okay to be single or married, in school or not. It’s okay to get your education through hard work and not with a college degree. Despite what your parents and your friends and the rest of the world is telling you, there is no one-size-fits-all plan for what everyone is supposed to do with their lives.

Remember that God’s calling for your life goes way beyond what you do. It’s about who you are, where you belong, who you love, and how you interact. In our society, it’s easy to approach a calling in a way that’s not much more than striving for success and notoriety, with a thin veil of the spiritual and God thrown on for good measure. If we step out the door each day with the sole purpose of discovering and living a life for God, we would be a reflection of all that He wants us to be. We would use our God-given gifts and talents to make this world a better place and to improve the lives of those around us with just a smile, a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on. And without knowing it, we would be listening to His call.

Those are the people we need in this world – the ones that hear and listen to God.

When the phone rings tomorrow or you hear a voice in your head, are you going to stop and listen? Are you going to give Him control of your life? Are you going to stop and say “Okay God, I’ve tried this on my own, I haven’t been listening, and it hasn’t been exactly working out. Let’s say we give your way a try and see what happens?”