When Callings Conflict

What if you’re called in multiple directions at once? What if the realities of your life—good, precious gifts—seem to be designed to prevent you from pursuing the other callings you’ve worked so hard to discern and develop?

These are the questions I’ve been struggling with recently as I feel another life growing within me and see her due date nearing on the calendar. How will I continue to pursue these other endeavors I’ve been nurturing so carefully when I will have a third little human dependent on me for her every need?

I already feel stretched too thin. I am barely carving our any time to write or read or create, and it will be ten times harder when I have a newborn to care for and haven’t slept for more than three hours in a row for weeks.

Which isn’t to say I’m not grateful and excited and humbled to have this miraculous experience one more time of bringing a new life into the world and being entrusted with her tiny, fragile body and brand new soul. This too is a calling—one of the highest and most important and most deeply creative ever given to humans.

But why give me two demanding callings simultaneously? Surely there is not room for both in this busy life.

I don’t know the answer. But I do know that God’s economy is not like ours. And His wisdom surpasses our understanding. And it’s my job to trust in that and simply do the next right thing in love as far as I can discern it.

Maybe these two callings will work symbiotically in ways I can’t imagine. Or maybe not. Maybe I will need to put my personal and creative goals on hold for a few months or even years as I devote myself to this new being I’ll be responsible for. In that case, I have to trust that my gifts, my words, my passion, my ability will keep until the time is right for them to be unpacked from storage and put to work again.

It won’t be easy—nothing truly important ever is—but it will be worth it.

It will be worth it.