I am stopped.

Running along the path.  Suddenly I am stopped.  Listening to others speak of Lent and the connection between the Exodus out of Egypt and Jesus coming again to die.  I am stopped because I feel inside my bones that I understand something.  I am getting something.  I feel near tears.

My calling.  That is what arises in me from this conversation playing in my ears.  The question has often felt more haunting than comforting.  But right now I feel a sense of resolve, assuredness, and confidence.

My calling is my faith.  There it is, suddenly it feels so clear.  Often I have struggled with my faith.  There those two words sit in the same sentence.  Those two often elusive difficult words, faith and calling.  There is an irony that I would find something loosened with them together tied in the same breath.  An unlocking is suddenly that my calling resides in my faith and I just need to give myself over to it.  

In faith life that is what one can hope for.  For things to be unlocked, loosened, especially those things that you have passed over a million times, because there is a Spirit at work.  Things not seen with our eyes but revealed and felt deep within.  And at a moments notice.  That is the adventure.  And that is why it is personal, because it is so deeply felt.  And to another it may simply feel like no big deal, or common sense.  Even to me, the passion felt passes in intensity.  So it is up to me to keep the fire burning and the loosening loosed.

The greatest gift I can give my kids is to tell them their story, a big part of their story are the stories of God.  Homeschooling often has me in a muddled mess, for different reasons.   But in this moment it feels clear that when we sit together in these days and I have their attention (for just a bit) that my being able to impart truth and build our faith, and going boldly in proclaiming...this is calling.  Their story and God's story intertwined will be with them into eternity, there is a lasting quality in this calling.  And it is the story that will enable them to walk this hard earth.

And there it was, something unlocked at the moment I said I need to give myself over to my faith and believe it wholeheartedly.  It requires a leaping off which is the very nature of faith.  We are so bound.  By ourselves, others perceptions, fear, others actions...I want to be loosened to have faith and just simply believe in my own heart.  I have known God my whole life and yet I have felt at times so cautious.  Faith doesn't grow as well with caution tape.  It needs freedom, belief, and abandon.
Let it be.