This Chasm of Calling

I’ve long resonated with what Frederick Buechner once said about calling: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

I heard it put another way recently by author, Rebekah Lions: “Calling is where your talents and burdens collide.”

Deep gladness and talents.

Deep hunger and burdens.

Calling.

Collision.

The holidays have been harder in recent years, and I’m feeling anything but the warm fuzzies this year — something more like brisk brambles. A collision of the person I used to be and the one I’m becoming. Where I stand and where I’m going.

Like echoes bleeding in a chasm.

On the one hand, I’m thrilled. I’ve never been more passionate about writing, podcasting, video publishing, and other digital content in my calling as a storyteller. My 18-year-old searching self would be thrilled (and mildly terrified) to know I’ve reached this point a decade and a half later.

And yet on the other hand, the more I discover my God-given passions, talents, and deep gladness, the more burdened grows my soul; the more hungry, my heart. I feel the strain in the disconnect between what I want and what I believe God wants for me and others in this chasm of the not yet.

It’s one step forward, one step backward, one jump, one tumble, and the horizon of my fullest calling still feels many lifetimes away. An hourglass that is indeed depositing but never quite runs out.

Enter Advent, I suppose: an eerie parallel for this season of my life.

It’s funny, I’ve never given much thought to Advent until this year. Until I got invited to deliver the Advent reading at church last week, actually.

I stood up there with a lighter and a microphone and read from Isaiah 9:

[2] The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. [3] You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest.

Across many of my writings, I’ve been quite vocal about my adoration of Christmases past in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, my old stomping grounds: the live nativity, Santa’s riding around town on a firetruck, family, and a sense of magical togetherness.

But what of the build-up to this special, nostalgic day? What of the waiting?

For hundreds of years, Israel had prophets foretelling and forthtelling for the people.

And then nothing.

For hundreds of years, nothing.

I once had a storybook Bible with solid black pages separating the Old and New Testaments. An in-between darkness that took two seconds to lick my thumb and index finger to flip but undoubtedly felt forever to live out.

This Advent season — and this greater season of my life — I find myself more restless and hungry and burdened than ever before, trapped in the chasm of these black pages. Desperate for the flip of a new page, to see God do what I believe he’s called me to do — and left only to wait.

To continue working, of course. To stay the course with my projects. To continue writing and podcasting and videoing, building both a resumé and healthy personal rhythms.

Living out these cycles of sowing and harvest. Of stewarding well these gifts and talents granted me. These passions that turn more passionate with each dwindling and birthing calendar year.

I’m passionate about words. I’m passionate about story. I’m passionate about vulnerability and vulnerability in community. I’m passionate about travel. I’m passionate about growth and going somewhere.

I’m passionate about Jesus. Of walking with him and walking alongside others alongside him.

How badly I wish for him to close this chasm. To silence the echoes. Or at least to show himself more clearly as I step, stumble through the dark.