The following content is taken from The In-Between, by Jeff Goins. If you own the full book already, you can find this section in chapter four.

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Finding Your

Calling

Sometimes, all we need to do to find our calling is to look at what we love and see what’s always been there. The journey of discovering my life’s work was not a process of dreaming but remembering.

I always thought I wanted to be a rock star. But the more I pursued music, the more I realized it wasn’t right for me. My true vocation was hiding in the shadows, watching from afar like a distant love interest, always taken for granted.

That’s the funny thing about a calling. Like the girl next door, it can sneak up on you.

Some people wait their whole lives for the right career to come along, refusing to begin their lives until they have more clarity. Longing for a vocation that will complete them, they sometimes never find their life’s work. What I’ve discovered is that the opposite is true: while we wait for our callings to present themselves, they are waiting on us to wake up to the signs.

In high school, my dad bought me a used electric guitar by trading in my neglected tenor saxophone for a cheap Fender Strato caster knock-off. It was blue and came with a black gig bag, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

That’s when I decided to become a rock star.

In the early eighties, my dad played in a band called Majik. Back then, it was still cool to misspell common words and call it art. While I was growing up, he would regale me with stories of his time with the band, which included meeting Bob Dylan at a party and jamming with Neil Young’s buddies. He even dated one of the girls from the band Heart. My dad—a working-class Joe with a tattoo of a wizard on his arm—was cool. A real rocker. And with him as my teacher, I was destined to be one, too.

After practicing playing guitar for six months without much improvement, I got frustrated. Able to limp through only a few simple songs, I wondered why I was no Carlos Santana. Did I just not have what it took? Angry, I took my complaint to my dad.

Snatching the guitar from my hands, he showed me how to play a barre chord by holding down all the strings with one finger. He told me I couldn’t jump from one end of the guitar to the next, that I had to gradually work my way down the neck. And the same was true for playing solos. I had to practice.

Shortly after that, I started writing songs. I had always been a sucker for words, and with my music, my love for language had a new outlet.

Growing up, I watched the movie Eddie and the Cruisers with my dad more times than I can count. We saw it so many times on VHS that the tape slowed down and distorted the sound in certain places.

During one scene in the movie, Eddie, the lead singer, tells Frank, their lyricist: “Words and music, man. They need each other.”[1]

As a new songwriter, I was beginning to discover how true that was.

Most nights in high school, I stayed up late, crafting poems that would someday have music behind them. Sophomore year, I found two guys who liked to jam, and together, we formed a band called Decaf. Determined to not be called copycats, my two new bandmates and I played almost all original music, which was rare for other bands we knew. We weren’t a cover band; we were a real band with real songs. And I was the songwriter. Finally, I’d found my muse, a reason for living and creating. Or so I thought.

In college, I continued to play music. As I did, I became comfortable with writing songs. I joined a band that played music for our weekly chapel services, and we often formed side projects. On the weekends, we would travel, playing shows wherever anyone would have us. I was certain this was my destiny.

Around the same time, at the request of one of my professors, I started tutoring students at the Campus Writing Center. I wasn’t an English major, but it was a way to make money using my familiarity with words. I certainly never thought it’d lead anywhere.

After college, opportunities to pursue music continued, but my passion waned. I toured the country with a band, playing more shows than I ever would have imagined. Other than sleeping or eating, music was all I did. As a result, I became better than I ever thought possible. Realizing I could now be as good as I wanted—it was really just a matter of practice—I was now faced with the dilemma of whether or not I wanted it. Playing gigs was no longer exciting, and I often felt distracted while playing guitar. Maybe it was the lull of life on the road, but I began to wonder if music really was my calling.

In between gigs, I started writing. Not having composed content longer than a song lyric, I decide to write a short story. The idea came while driving through the Midwest, surrounded by cornfields, with nothing to do but think. So I began.

Every night, while staying at a different place in the country, I wrote a piece of a story that I would email to myself so I could resume writing it at the next stop. At the end of the year, I presented the story to my then-girlfriend, Ashley. No one other than her will probably ever read it, but that’s okay. There was something thrilling in the act of writing it, something freeing. An experience I wanted to have again.

That same year, I spent a few hours each week writing a report of the band’s activity that I would then post on the Internet.

The following summer, despite my reservations, I started a blog. Having heard of this trend of online publishing, I thought at first it sounded stupid. Why would anyone care what I had to say? Despite my doubts, I tried it anyway. The experience gave me a thrill. It was like playing a live show.

Around that time, my friend Dale, who was contemplating what he would do for the rest of his life, told me, “If I couldn’t play music, I don’t know what I’d do.”

As I watched a group of musicians nod in unison to the wisdom of these words, my head remained fixed. I wondered what was wrong with me.

I’d just do something else, I thought.

Such a thought brought anxiety. Although I’d been playing guitar for seven years, I wasn’t in love with it. This made me worry that maybe I’d missed my calling. Were all those years wasted?

A few months later, I chased Ashley down to Nashville and was hired by a nonprofit as a writer. This was the first time anyone called me a “writer.” It would take years before I’d be willing to admit that to myself. My job with the organization was to help staff and volunteers tell their stories through blogging, a hobby I’d just started months before.

Upon receiving the assignment, I went to Borders to pull every blogging book off the shelf. There were five of them, and most included words and phrases I’d never heard of before. I was in over my head. But after a while of faking it, I finally figured out this craft of writing and publishing online.

A year later, my boss asked me to start a marketing team. Returning to the same bookstore to scour the shelves for another topic, I once again felt overwhelmed with the pressure of having to do something I’d never done before. But eventually, I got the hang of that job, too.

During the next four years, I hired writers and designers and video editors, sometimes pulling long days of work that left me with little energy to play guitar or do anything else creative. At that point, I had stopped writing. But even in my stillness, something stirred.

Once in a while on a Saturday afternoon, when the wind was blowing just right, a feeling would come over me, and I’d pick up my laptop to write—for hours. Crafting words about life and what I thought of the world, I wrote. Just to write. With no intent of ever getting published. The content came from a place deep in my soul where the things I make are made for love and nothing else.

At first, it was merely an escape, but eventually it grew into something more serious. After writing in private for months and then years, I was able to get a few stories published in some national magazines and on some popular websites.

More than once, my wife asked me, “When are you going to write a book?”

Laughing and shaking my head, I’d acknowledge her question and then return to my busyness, avoiding the answer. Years later, it was obvious that she wasn’t asking. She was telling.

One morning, I picked up a book my wife had been reading and skimmed over a random page. The author wrote about how she became a writer, and the story resonated with me.

In music, you can hit a certain note and if it is the same frequency as a nearby object, the object will vibrate. This is why we see in old cartoons ladies singing opera and breaking windows. It can actually happen.

As this author struck her chord, describing feelings of guilt and shame as she first started writing, I felt something strange and energetic shake in my soul. She liked her day job but still wanted more; it did not fulfill her completely. During the day, the call to write distracted her, teasing her with promised satisfaction to come, like a love affair. A sense of shame for “cheating” on her occupation overcame her. As I read this, my heartbeat quickened, because I too, felt that same shame she described. It was a feeling of deceit or betrayal. Everything about wanting to be a writer felt wrong, so I suppressed it, buried it deep. It just felt too selfish, too wrong.[2]

A year later, a friend asked, “What’s your dream?”

I rolled my eyes.

At the time, most people I knew were talking about their dreams, and it was starting to get old. Maybe they were bored or searching for a better job in a down economy, but I had enough to do. Instead of dreaming, why not just get a job? Did everyone really need to have a dream?

My thoughts betrayed my cynicism: “I don’t have one.” I was resolute in my declaration, then for flavor adding, “Actually, I’m living my dream right now.”

The last five years, I’d submitted to someone else’s dream, and had grown in so many ways as a result. Under the tutelage of my boss, I watched peers chase empty passions, ending their pursuits in frustration, while I learned how to be a steady apprentice.

Yes, this was the road less traveled. And I was better for taking it.

“Weird,” my friend said, his voice taking on a therapeutic tone. “Because I would’ve guessed your dream was to be a writer.”

At the end of that statement, his voice raised in tone, as if he were asking a question—but he wasn’t. Something about the way he said “writer” struck me, like the word itself hit my soul with a resounding thud.

I swallowed hard.

“Well, I guess you’re right. I would like to be a writer … someday.”

He laughed and shook his head, sighing.

“Jeff, you don’t have to want to be a writer. You are a writer. You just need to write.”

My eyes enlarged in mystic wonder, pupils surely dilating. Really? That’s all it took?

For years, I wrote and published some of my best work—and still, I didn’t feel like a writer. I would tell people I was “someone who wrote,” but not a writer. Never a writer. Just a guy with some words who occasionally got published. No big deal. But when my friend said those nine wonderful, weighty words—you are a writer, you just need to write—it felt as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I had seen the light.

So I began to write.

Having heard that serious writers get up at five in the morning, I started doing the same. Some mornings, I’d write three hundred words; other days, I’d write over a thousand. But none of that mattered. What mattered was I was getting up every day to pursue my passion, not for the sake of improvement or achievement, but for pure love of the craft.

The more I wrote, the better I got. Apparently, all those years blogging and teaching other writers hadn’t been for naught. One day a friend said, “You’ve found your voice.”

Maybe I had.

It had happened so gradually that I’d hardly taken notice. But like picking up the guitar one day to find it no longer hurt my fingers, I found a similar familiarity with putting my fingers to the keyboard. Maybe I was supposed to be a writer.

But then again, I’d been through these emotions before. How did I know this would stick, or that I was even good enough to make it?

Carrying these thoughts around with me, I responded to an old friend’s invitation to meet up for coffee.

My friend Shane is the best guitar player you’ve never heard of. I seriously believe he could hold his own with some of the world’s best: Steve Vai, Joe Walsh, even Jimmy Page. He’s that good. Like me, Shane spent a year on the road with a band. In fact, he spent a few years traveling and playing music.

The difference between us was how we spent our free time in between gigs. I spent those long hours on the road listening to music, counting mile markers, and falling asleep. Shane did something different: he practiced. Every spare moment he had, he would pick up his guitar, crawl to the back of the van, and play scales for hours, trying to get just a little bit better. I always admired that and wanted to know what drove him to such discipline.

When we got together for coffee, I asked Shane what he thought about gifts and if people could be naturally good at something, like music or writing. Or, I wondered, did it just come down to good, old-fashioned hard work?

“I teach kids all the time who think playing guitar is just something cool to do,” he said. Shane has also been a music teacher and tutor for many years. “They come in for maybe four or five lessons, and then they’re done. Once their fingers start hurting, they give up. But—” he paused and leaned forward as if to share a secret, “—every once in a while I meet some kid who has it. In one lesson, he has learned what takes most students six months to learn. And he just gets it. Sometimes, these kids have never picked up a guitar before in their whole lives, but they totally get it. They can hear what it’s supposed to sound like. I don’t know what you call that, but that’s a gift.”

I nodded, feigning understanding, but honestly befuddled.

“So what do you do with the kids who aren’t gifted? Do you tell them they don’t have it?”

He shook his head. “I would never tell some kid who has an interest in music to quit, because I’ve seen kids work hard to play a few simple chords, and I see the look on their face when they’ve done something they didn’t think they could do. I believe we all have natural inclinations—things that we just love doing. And we forget that’s also a gift.”

I nodded, trying to make sense of this. It was great to hear Shane talk of his passion for guitar, but I wondered about those who weren’t as good and committed as he was. I wondered about folks like me who were fickle about so many things, even guitar. And what did this mean for my writing? Did I have “it”?

“If I were terrible at this,” he said, “I’d still have to do it. It’s something I feel called to do. God never promised me I would be successful at guitar; He just called me to do it—so I want to do it well.”

My eyes lifted from the crêpe I was devouring and locked with Shane’s. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Yes, calling. Ever since I sat down to write a story about gargoyles in sixth grade, I had sensed that same feeling—the compulsion—he described. It was the need to create, to make something you were proud of, even if nobody noticed or acknowledged your effort.

Shane wasn’t born playing music. He wasn’t like Beethoven, picking up his instrument before he could eat solid foods. He started playing guitar in high school when his youth pastor encouraged him to play in the church band. Quickly, he found himself loving it, setting aside all his free time to practice. Who knows if he had a natural gift before picking up the guitar? But what’s certain is that he loves to play. So he does it as much as he can and has done so for years—not because someone forced him to do so, but because the craft deserved it.

When I began to write more seriously, to really consider myself a writer and act like it, I felt a call to write as much as I could. To practice. Not for the sake of getting better, but out of respect for the writing itself. I couldn’t avoid it any longer; it was a compulsion that consumed me.

Steven Pressfield says that in pursuit of our life’s work, we often chase shadow careers. These are things that look like our calling, but aren’t.[3] This can be an addiction, another hobby, or just plain old procrastination. As I started writing, I could see how everything I’d done up until that point was prologue, preparation for the main event. The sixth grade spelling bee I’d won. The fascination with songwriting. Even the year on the road. These were all shadows of something to come. Mile markers on the highway to my calling.

A calling, as my friend Clint says, is “something you can’t not do.” It’s a driving desire, a prompting at your back or side that doesn’t relent until you give in, until you answer. Until you finally surrender. That’s why our life’s work is more than a dream; it’s a calling. It calls to you.

I’ve always had a way with words. Or perhaps, they’ve had a way with me, tracking me down and calling me back to the work I was made for. For a long time, I took this for granted, didn’t appreciate it. But now I understand. This journey was never about success or arriving; it was about obedience.

While I played guitar, I was overly concerned with my insufficiencies. Not being the next Jimi Hendrix meant utter failure. Insecure and embarrassed of my own inabilities, I was often beating myself up for not being good enough. Now as a writer, I try not to think like that. Maybe because I’ve put down the guitar and picked up the pen, exchanging a desire to look a certain way for coming to grips with my purpose.

These days, I spend my free time writing—not because I want to be the best writer in the world or receive accolades from fans, but because it’s something I can’t not do. It’s something that must be done, regardless of skill or reward. I try to do my best, but being bad isn’t a good enough reason to not try.

Such conviction didn’t come as an epiphany, with flashing lights from heaven and the booming voice of God. It came as I understand many people’s callings come: quietly. In a space where I was on my way to be one thing and instead became another.

When this happens, the call can be subtle, as a simple realization of what we ought to be doing with the rest of our lives. This is what compels us to climb into the backseat of a van to practice playing scales for eight hours or endure the discomfort of a soggy, wooden reed placed between our lips. It’s what calls us to work past the pain of carpal tunnel and overcome obstacles of being whatever it is we say we ought to be.

Some say a calling comes from a muse or the work itself, but I believe God is the one who calls. Like most things from the divine, a calling is hard to describe.

Oswald Chambers says, “If you can tell me where you got the call … I question whether you have ever had a call.”[4] A calling is mysterious, but those who have been prompted know it. Unsure of the location or exactly what I was doing when called, I look back on life and realize there were many moments in which it was clear I was supposed to be a writer.

In a way, this is something I’ve been waiting to do my whole life, unwittingly preparing and practicing for years. That’s what it means to find a calling. You don’t actually find it; you become it.

Through this process of stepping into one’s life’s work, once again we learn to wait. We wait for a dream to become a reality. For a passion to turn into skill. For us to be ready for what God has for us next.

Perhaps the hardest part of realizing my calling was how easy it was to ignore. I could, after all, have continued working at my day job without ever needing a new challenge and would have kept being congratulated for my work. But I would have deprived myself and probably others of something important, something significant. Maybe what I write won’t ever make an impact on anyone but me. And if that’s the case, I’m fine with that because I am doing what is mine to do, and that’s all any of us can really hope for.

Not everyone finds their calling. Certainly, it’s not something we have to do; it’s a choice, which may be the scariest part. If you and I aren’t paying attention to our lives—if we don’t possess the patience to examine our gifts and talents—then we just might miss what we were made to do.

Maybe that’s the point of the in-between. All things we wait for are not merely roadblocks on the long journey; they are the journey. And each stop has a crucial lesson. In other words, it wasn’t enough for me to become a writer; I had to become the writer who traveled and played music and learned the importance of working through the delays of life, so that I could become the person I was meant to be. And maybe that’s what we all need: not to accomplish an arbitrary list of goals or pursue a plan already laid out, but to find the one that’s waiting for us, that’s been there all along.

***

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This Portion Adapted From: The In-Between by Jeff Goins

Contents for The In-Between

Foreword

Introduction

LIFE BETWEEN the PANELS

part one

SLOW DOWN

CHAPTER 1: Siestas

SEARCHING for a BREAKTHROUGH

CHAPTER 2: Tracks

FINDING your WAY HOME

CHAPTER 3: The Road

LOVING the JOURNEY

part two

WORTH the WAIT

CHAPTER 4: Calling

FROM MUSIC to WORDS

CHAPTER 5: Courtship

LOVE takes TIME

CHAPTER 6: Expecting

THE PATH to PARENTHOOD

part three

WHEN the WAITING ENDS

CHAPTER 7: Bookshelves

WHERE old STORIES END

CHAPTER 8: Ice Cream

WHAT really MATTERS

Conclusion

Notes

Acknowledgments

Notes

1. Martin Davidson and Arlene Davidson, Eddie and the Cruisers, directed by Martin Davidson (Los Angeles: Embassy Pictures, 1983).

2. Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010).

3. Steven Pressfield, “More from Turning Pro,” Steven Pressfield Online, June 13, 2012. www.stevenpressfield.com/2012/06/more-from-turning-pro/.

4. Oswald Chambers, “The Consciousness of the Call,” My Utmost for His Highest, September 29, 2012. http://utmost.org/classic/the-consciousness-of-the-call-classic/.

© 2013 by

JEFF GOINS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright © 2000, 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Published in association with the literary agency of Mark Oestreicher.

Edited by Bailey Utecht

Interior design: Design Corps

Cover design: Kara Davison / Faceout Studio

Cover image: Shutterstock #34362736

Illustrations by: Mandy Thompson

Author Photo: Ashley Goins

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goins, Jeff.

The in-between : embracing the tension between now and the next best thing / Jeff Goins.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-8024-0724-5

1. Life--Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Christian life. 3. Change—Religious aspects—Christianity. 4. Expectation (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity. 5. Waiting (Philosophy) I. Title.

BV4501.3.G647 2013

248.4—dc23

2013014296

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Table of Contents

Finding Your Calling

Contents for The In-Between

Notes

Copyright