My career in education came easily. The skills were already there, for the most part. Growth and opportunities flowed without much effort. If I'm being honest, I was likely overqualified and/or over-experienced (did I make that word up?) for most of the positions I landed. And they certainly didn't check all of my boxes of fulfillment.
And that is how you know.
When the work comes easily, when you're probably too much for the room, when it provides well but does not pull at something deep...that is your career doing what careers are designed to do. Taking care of you. Freeing you up. Positioning you.
Your calling is something different altogether.
Your calling will require everything. It will ask you to grow in ways your career never demanded. It will feel less like a layup and more like a free throw you have to practice ten thousand times before it becomes second nature. It will bless you as deeply as it blesses everyone it touches. There will be friction, perceived failures, and a healthy amount of risk taking (aka faith). And unlike your career, it is fully transferable. You can take it anywhere. It works in every room.
Your career is not your calling. But it will introduce you to it if you pay attention.
I know this because I spent more than twenty years operating in my calling without knowing it.
Daycare receptionist. Cosmetic sales representative. Weight loss counselor. Educator. Commercial banker. Instructional coach. Corporate trainer. Entrepreneur. My titles kept changing. The industry kept shifting. But underneath every role, I was doing the same things: Teaching. Coaching. Creating spaces where people felt seen, loved, and capable of growth. I've spent my life helping people believe something new about themselves, and then walking alongside them while they proved it.
I thought I was building a career, but what I was actually doing was practicing for a calling.
When I founded a school I thought, this is it. This is the thing. The calling. My "life's work."
Except it kept becoming more than a school. Soon I realized it wasn't a school, it was a learning community. Then I realized it was bigger than learners, it included their families too. It was a community. Then it became bigger than those we served. It was about the ones who did the serving too - the staff. It was a space where everyone felt seen, loved, and capable of growth.
Eventually, I realized my work wasn't the work. I was walking out a calling that showed up dressed like a career.
Nothing cemented this for me more than words from a parent-turned-friend about the community we'd built.
She looked at me and said, "I've never felt anything like it before. The way it wrapped itself around you." After a long pause she added, "And I don't think I will ever feel that again."
In that moment I understood two things: First, it is a good thing to release a good thing when the time comes. And, I finally understood what I had actually been building all along.
According to Exodus 3, Moses was tending sheep when it happened for him. He was simply working his day job. The ordinary, unglamorous, daily work of a man who had no idea what God was about to interrupt his life with.
In the middle of that ordinary day, a bush caught fire and God called to Moses from inside the fire. God interrupted Moses' career to introduce him to his calling.
My favorite part of this story is the fact that Moses needed his career to fulfill his calling. Every year he spent in the wilderness as a shepherd gave him knowledge of the terrain he would later use to lead an entire people through that same wilderness. His career was not wasted time. It was not a detour. It was preparation wearing the disguise of an ordinary life.
In the book of Jeremiah, God says before He shaped you in the womb, He knew all about you. Before you saw the light of day, He had holy plans for you. He had a Holy path in mind for you. A calling.
Before your first job title. Before your first performance review. Before you knew what you were good at or what came easily or what drained you, God already had something in mind. Something holy and specific. Something that your career, in all its forms, was quietly preparing you for.
Your calling is not something you build. It is something you were born into. Your career is the long, winding, beautifully necessary road that hones the skills needed to walk in it.
Look back at the thread that has weaved its way through your life. Look at what was underneath the surface of every title, every role, every room you walked into. What did you actually do in there? What were you doing for people - for God's people - that had nothing to do with your job description?
That is your calling. And it's been there the whole time.
I wonder...
What would shift if you viewed your current job as preparation for your calling?
What ordinary thing might God be using to get your attention about what's next for you?
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirmations
My calling does not require credentials.
I carry my calling with me into every space I enter.
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