Deborah Koehn Loyd - Your Vocational Credo: Practical Steps to Discover Your Unique Purpose

W elcome to the journeyyour journey. This book is about noticing patterns, those that come from your own story, that mark you, shape who you are and help you to be your best self. Most of us are well acquainted with the events of our own stories, yet we have not made sense of the mountain peaks and valleys in them that form us. The trends and truths get lost in the multitude of clues that vie for our attention. The chatter distracts us and the landscape becomes flattened.

Christine and I met when we were studying in India. She was a ray of hope in a landscape that seemed void of mentors for someone like me. I begged her to mentor me, and she eventually said yes. Until I began my vocational exploration at Christines urging, I had no idea how to interpret the events of my life. Since then, I have collected a few unconventional shortcuts that will help you to move along more quickly than I was able to. I offer you a process to help you read and interpret your own story. It includes developing your vocational credo and discovering ways that you might live it out. Your vocational credo describes why you are on earth and what you will do about it. You will adapt and re-adapt the concepts demonstrated in this book before you find the right words to describe you. Only then will the credo become truly yours.

In the following chapters youll find your pathway forward by delving into these questions:

• What are the differences between vocation, career, job and calling?
• What are you all about? What is your ultimate why?
• What are your gifts, talents and tools?
• What are the personal barriers to success that will keep you from living into your vocation?
• How has pain been formative in your story, and what does it contribute to your vocation?
• What in your past is waiting to be energized?
• In what ways does your greatest joy intersect with the deep needs of the world?
• What is your greatest hope?
• How do you establish enduring significance for your lifes work? How does it live on after you are gone?

Vocation is a creative significant work unique to you, expressed with deep joy as a love offering to God, exuding self-respect and care for others that meets the needs of the world in a meaningful way.

Furthermore, vocation rests on three pieces of hard work. The first is to discover what you are all about. This is the journey of your why, which is shorthand for a question that most of us have asked at one time or another, Why do I exist? Your responses to the preceding questions will help you to begin to form that answer. The second piece is discovering how to make yourself available to God in a way that makes sense to you. This requires your commitment to explore how you will utilize your skills, gifts and talents in life-giving ways for yourself and others. The third element comes from my mother, who, at a very dark time in my life, gave me this sage bit of advice: We dont do faith if it works. We do faith until it works. This is what spirituality is all about. She helped me understand that trial and error are part of the process. I learned that what I did not fight for could never be mine. Numerous times this advice has helped me to flow with my circumstances, rather than fight them, and find my way to success. As it turns out, it is crucial to know when to fight and when not to fight.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the worlds deep hunger meet.

FREDERICK BUECHNER

By applying the practices in this book you will develop an inner voice that will gain strength. And as that happens God will respond with enablement and opportunity. It is a circular proposition: You risk, God shows up, you respond, and then it starts over again. Accepting a lifestyle that welcomes risk and does not shrink from failure is the cornerstone of growth. If you make yourself available, God will give you opportunities to do what you do best and the capacity to do it with maximum effectiveness.

So I write this book with three assumptions. First, everyone has a unique vocation that God desires for each of us to fulfill. Second, our fulfillment in life is tethered to the discovery and performance of our vocation. Third, vocation is meant to be altruistic, that is, for the sake of others. Without others, vocation deteriorates to narcissism.

What if God is so generous that God cannot help but give each human being a vocation that will contribute to changing the world? It is possible for everyone, from teenagers to retirees, to find our significant vocation because God intends for us to find it. Vocation creates people who love what they do and who inspire others to be more than they currently are. People with passion will never lack for vision or mission.

Neither will they lack for followers. What kind of greatness is hiding in you? Are you willing to find out? You may become the hero in your own story!

I am particularly passionate to show that altruism and compassion are not luxuries, but essential needs to answer the challenges of our modern world.

MATTHIEU RICARD,
The Worlds Happiest Man

My journey to discover my vocation could not have happened without my partner in crime, Ken, my husband of thirty-six years, and my amazing children and grandchildren. When Ken and I were first married, we worked at jobs that paid the bills but were unfulfilling on most levels. Both being raised by parents from a generation that emphasized responsibility over fulfillment, we responded well to their tutelage but found ourselves feeling stuck. Once we dared to step outside of the norm, we began to dream, and based on those dreams we took risks, lots of them. Life changed dramatically. The ride became extremely bumpy and at the same time crazy exciting.

In the 1990s we started a church for twentysomethings. It was unlike anything that had come before it. Edgy did not even begin to describe it. What a wild ride that was! Ken has since started three churches for our friends who live outdoors in Portland, Oregon. I went back to school for ten years and became a college professor. I went on to partner in a couple of organizations to empower Christian women: Womens Convergence and Womens Theology Hub. I now work with Forge, an organization that supports those who want to live missionally as well as young church planters. I also started Finding Forward, which is my ongoing endeavor to help people find their vocation. I do retreats, group training, individual coaching and certified training.

For Ken and me there is no turning back to the staid life of the past. Our friends suggest that we think about retirement, but that doesnt sound right just yet. Although we now are grandparents and in the legacy season of our lives, we continue to change and grow, finding new ways to express our vocations. As it turns out, God is not finished with us yet.

The impetus for this body of research and this book is a result of my loss of voice. This occurred on two levels. The first was the virtual loss of voice that happened through sexual abuse. Fear and shame robbed me of my ability to tell my own story. My abuser threatened me into silence. This signaled a self-destructive urge within me that took years to unravel through therapy and working out my spirituality.

The second loss of voice was quite literal. I developed a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, which left me with barely a whisper. My life dramatically altered as a result of this loss, creating a domino effect of losses in other areas. It was also the very thing that set me on my journey to find healing, vocation and a more gracious view of God. My story has been miraculous, and I trust that yours will be too.