Unfolding

Unfolding

Amy Carroll

I stared into the frustrated eyes of my friend last week as we talked about her calling to write. She has big, big dreams, and her dreams seem to be taking far too long to come true. I told her how much I understood. Stepping into my calling was a long time coming too.

My calling is to teach, speak, and write. Your calling may fall into a myriad of other categories, but every calling is equally high when it’s lived out in obedience to the Most High. We are all called to ministry.

My calling didn’t materialize in a year or even two. It has unfolded during the last thirty-five years, and each phase of that unfolding has shaped and changed me. The unfolding progressed something like this:

• I became a passionate teacher of young children.
• I married my best friend.
• I invested years in my little boys’ lives.
• I taught adults as they chased dreams that had passed them by in their teens.
• I volunteered in a women’s ministry.
• I visited home after home as the “Welcome Wagon Lady” in my town.
• I accepted invitations to speak at my church and other churches close by.
• I joined the Proverbs 31 Ministries’ speaker team.
• I returned to a frustrating year of elementary school teaching.
• I stepped into my calling of equipping others in their calling.

I’ve looked at this list many times and thought, Wow. I wasted a lot of years to finally discover my calling. But I’ve come to realize that’s just not true. Every relationship, every job, every opportunity has prepared me for what I’m doing now. The psalmist reminds me that God establishes the work of my hands. Each change presented me with an invitation to view that next place as a stepping-stone into a calling. Sometimes I accepted the invitation, and sometimes I didn’t.

I was often irritated at the apparent meaninglessness of what I was doing, but now I see the significance of each stepping-stone. Every diaper changed, every knee kissed, every book read, every late-night listening session, every choice to die to self, every lesson plan, every story, every presentation, every meeting, every spreadsheet, every thing …

It all counted.

Every moment was an unfolding of my eventual calling. God used each stepping-stone to establish me in the work I’m doing now.

Don’t despair today if you can’t see it. Obey God and trust that He is working. His timing is so rarely ours, but it is always perfect. Instead of chafing under the seemingly mundane, embrace each task as a building block for the dreams in your heart. Don’t give up hope.

I promise, it’s coming.

Dear Lord, it’s been difficult waiting to step into my calling as the years have come and gone. Please help me appreciate each seemingly mundane task and day as a means to You establishing the work of my hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

REMEMBER

Every moment is an unfolding of your eventual calling.

REFLECT

What periods of your life did you once consider wasted that you now see as fruitful times of training?

RESPOND

Write down four to six things you might consider among the more “mundane” things required of you in this season of your life. How do you imagine God might be using them to establish the work of your hands?

POWER VERSES

Romans 11:33–36; 1 Peter 4:10–11