"Call Within a Call"
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Faith on Thursday, August 26, 2010 9:00 PM
Today is the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s birth, and the day is being widely celebrated.
On the radio this afternoon, I caught a snippet of Al Kresta’s segment on the topic. His guest talked about how Mother Teresa had been living happily as a nun until she felt the call to serve the poorest of the poor. It was Teresa’s “call within a call,” she said.
Since then I’ve been thinking about that phrase: call within a call.
I can see what it meant for Mother Teresa: God sent her not just to the religious life in general, but to a specific religious life, giving herself to the most needy ones.
But what does it mean for me?
When I was a teenager, I assumed that once I figured out my big-V vocation I’d be set. If I became a nun or got married, I’d know what to do after that.
After I got married I discovered that it doesn’t quite work that way.
When we were having fertility struggles during the early years, one of the things that made it hardest for me was wondering what I was supposed to do if I didn’t become a mother. I’d thought it was so clear: get married, have kids. No gray areas, no time to wonder.
But for a time, my call within my call was to wait and pray and become the person God wanted me to be, in a way that was completely different from what I’d expected. It was very hard. And eventually, it was very good too.
Then the children came, and that was even better. I thought, too, that maybe things would be simple now. I could be a wife, be a mom, and not have to worry so much about listening.
Don’t ask me why I imagined that God would bring me to a place where I could stop listening to Him. Perhaps sleep deprivation addled my brain a bit.
After eight years of marriage and four of motherhood, I think I might finally be starting to see what a “call within a call” could mean. Vocation isn’t just about what I do, it’s about how I do it. It’s about using all my talents - even the ones I don’t know I have - to let God bring me forward, and closer to him.
Today, the call within my call might be to teach my children a certain thing, to love my husband in a particular way. It’s nothing as life-changing as Mother Teresa’s call (although I hope I’m open to calls that extreme, if God wants to send them), but it’s important. It’s the reason I need to keep listening.
God keeps calling. Imagine that!
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
