The Tension of Art and Vocation

When I was seventeen years old, I moved into my very first apartment. Instead of worrying about who would ask me to prom, I was worried about having to fire the seminary student at the local bookstore I managed. I couldn’t vote, but I could create a profit-and-loss report with my eyes closed.

I didn’t go into my late teenage years expecting to be a career woman, but those were the cards I was dealt. I quickly moved into corporate marketing and communication, then ministry, and signed my first major book contract when I was twenty-seven and a contract for my second and third books when I was twenty-eight. By the time I was thirty-two years old, I had the opportunity to travel to eighteen countries to write stories, I was honored to speak in front of over a hundred thousand people, and for the most part, was able to live the dream staying self-employed. This often meant I could work in my pajamas and avoid using mascara for days on end.

This was life – a good life. One I have held in deep gratitude in my prayers as I know it is a life many work hard for (myself included…not once has it been an easy life).

As I continue writing, I find myself in a tension I’ve not yet experienced and questions I’ve not yet asked: Is this what I’m here to do? I examine the colors in the garden of my heart. Are the seasons changing?

Writing has always been a part of who I am. From the time I could form the shapes of the alphabet, words move from my mind to paper. This art will never leave me.

But as a career? I wonder…

Merton wrestled with writing as vocation, and for the last two years I have poured over his journals. I see myself in his words and feel his tension. As always, whatever I put my hands to can succeed, but if the motivation of my heart is misaligned, it’s worthless in the eyes of my God.

Intertwining the art of writing with the nuances of vocation often leaves me feeling like I need to exfoliate the surface of my heart and mind. My social media feeds tell me what to do to get more people to read me (I have accepted this as using any of these virtual places as simply mediums to communicate the truths God has imparted to me), as well as demanding – yes, demanding – I share everyone else’s work with those around me. “Retweet this!” — “Can you put this on your Facebook Page, blog, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, refrigerator door, and all the telephone posts in a 2-mile radius from your house?” — “Hey, look! I’m #471,271 on Amazon!”

The Scriptures say to celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who mourn. Usually, my heart gets tired from mourning but I’ve found lately my heart is tired from celebrating; not because I envy others’ success (much), but because the noise can be so, so, loud.

I do not want to add to this noise, yet there is even irony as I type these words on my blog, which I will then place a link to it on Twitter and Facebook.

“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”  – Merton