Passion

So after Honduras I knew I loved Spanish and I enjoyed being able to answer questions and teach, so I thought why not be a Spanish teacher? I’d be able to better my Spanish and teach, and I had already begun the course sequence for education…sounds good. (Now there’s one small detail that I have to add at this point in the story. When you are young and in love, you’ll do anything. You see I thought I might want to teach, but I sure didn’t feel called. The only reason I had taken an education class prior to going to Honduras was because I wanted to take a class with the girl I liked—the one who is now my girlfriend—and she happened to be an education student. So that’s really why I “decided” to be an education major). That semester I did some classroom observation and saw the behind-the-scenes work that teaching involves. While I enjoyed the experience and still love to teach, I felt teaching high school Spanish was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life (and I noticed that I wasn’t very creative; every time I had to come up with a lesson, my first thought was lecture-style instruction…not very ideal for antsy high school students). I also quickly realized that I was not deeply passionate about teaching.

I’d like to digress for a moment. You may have noticed that I use the word passion/passionate a lot. I love it…so let me spend a few minutes on it. My generation has been taught to “do what you love to do,” which is both a blessing and a curse. I call it a curse because finding what one is passionate about does not happen overnight. A quick search on the web shows that the average number of career switches for my generation is about 7! This is very different than most of our parents’ experiences. They, instead, pursued where the jobs were. It didn’t matter if you were passionate about that job; it was about working hard, rising up, and supporting your family (thanks mom and dad!). That’s not so much the case with my generation. Now it’s a blessing, however, because we have the opportunity to enjoy what we do; we are able to find what we are obsessed with and do that (hopefully we don’t find were obsessed with something creepy…). We have the hopes of finding a job that we actually LOVE (not just like or bare).

Ask someone who knows me and they’ll probably tell you I am a very passionate person (well, at least I hope so…otherwise I just lied to you). Just watch me and you can see. If I’m working on something I really care about, I give it my all. But give me a project that doesn’t catch my attention and the end result will be subpar at best (though I’ve learned how to make it look like I’ve been working hard…). As a Christian, I believe that my purpose, my vocation, in life is to glorify God by using the skills and talents He has given me. Or in the most Calvin Collegesque words I can think of, it is to usher in shalom through good stewardship of my skills and talents. Unfortunately, this idea of glorifying God through your work tends to get misunderstood. People sometimes think this means they have to pursue a “Christian” job—pastor, missionary, worship leader, etc. However, God created life for us TO ENJOY, and I believe He wants us to glorify Him doing whatever it is that we enjoy doing. So how does that translate into glorification? Passion. We carry out this life mission by finding our passion, pursuing it ferociously, and translating it into an impactful service to others in God’s world. So it doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, teacher, landscaper, or stay-at-home mom—if you’re passionate about what you do and serve others while doing it, I believe that glorifies God.