Consider Your Calling

Once upon a time my three-year-old began begging to be a ballerina. This desire wasn’t that uncommon for a little girl, but it was a big deal to me.

I’m a jock. I never dress up. I’m not a girly-girl. I couldn’t dance if you begged me. I honestly just waited for Abigail to forget about her request, but she didn’t. Every day her little blond self batted her eyes and asked when she could start learning ballet.

We were preparing to move back to the United States after years overseas with the air force, so I found a small Christian ballet studio in our new town and signed her up. Right before her fourth birthday, we made plans to attend a week-long class there.

However, Abigail had a pressing problem with being a ballerina, her mother’s tomboyishness aside. She was shy. Not just a little bit shy but debilitatingly shy. We joke that she spent the first five years of her life attached to my right thigh. She couldn’t speak to a stranger. If one tried to talk to her, she panicked. She couldn’t stay with anyone other than her father and me. When I delivered her younger sister, my husband couldn’t stay with me in the hospital because her own grandparents couldn’t get Abigail to stop crying.

And now Abigail wanted to take ballet. In public. With other people. With strangers.

She spent the days leading up to her big debut prancing around the living room in her leotards, tights, and ballet slippers. She was so alive and outgoing and excited, and yet as her mother, I knew this exuberance would be short-lived.

Sure enough, the moment we walked into the ballet studio, Abigail climbed into herself and could not get out. She wanted to dance so badly, but shyness won. We’d be forced to go home and grieve the fact that she couldn’t participate.

And then we met Lori Ann.

Her teacher glided onto the floor looking way younger than her fifty-some years and immediately assessed the blond little girl attached to my leg. An introvert herself, she knew that talking to Abigail would likely make the situation worse. Instead she began teaching her class and somehow moved Abigail off my hip and onto hers.

For the next few weeks, Abigail was her shadow. They never spoke. Lori Ann just taught the class while Abigail silently danced next to her. Abigail would not partner or look at anyone else.

This past year has been Abigail’s fourth at Central Ballet, and she has a part in their production requiring her to lead out the younger dancers. My shy little daughter who couldn’t leave my hip is now confident enough to glide out onto the stage without Lori Ann even in sight.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this incredible woman admitted to me, “It’s hard to know if I’m really making any difference.”

Wait.

What?

I was shocked. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she understand that I credited so much of my little girl’s life . . . so much of the young lady she was becoming . . . to this woman and her studio and her calling to teach my daughter ballet?

And did Lori Ann not understand how much I appreciated the prayers she gave at the start of each class, the Bible study that accompanied the play she’d written, the positive body image she encouraged, and her care for the hearts of these young women?

Sometimes we look around and see people called to what we consider great things, and then in turn we consider what we’re doing insignificant. We think if we aren’t leading thousands of people to Christ, we aren’t making a difference. We think if we aren’t missionaries, we aren’t doing an important thing. I’m just a housewife. I’m just a mom. I’m just a teacher. But God didn’t call us to do what everyone else is doing. He called us to do what he’s asking us to do!

First Corinthians 10:31 reminds us of what he most wants from us: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (NIV). First Corinthians 7:20 says, “Each person should remain in the situation they were in when God called them” (NIV).

Wherever you are right now, consider it your calling. This moment—if only a short one—is where God has placed you. It’s where he wants you. Live for him. You may be ministering to only one person. You may never see the impact you make this side of heaven. But it’s where he has you for this time.

And it matters.

Abigail is proof of that.

Wendi Kitsteiner is a former city girl now living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee with her husband and four young children. She is passionate about the causes of infertility, adoption, and keeping it real as a mom. You can follow her at flakymn.blogspot.com or becauseofisaac.org.

Photograph © Hal Gatewood, used with permission