Is Writing My Calling?

Greetings from the ridiculously cold land of France. At least right now. Alabama weather has spoiled me rotten, as they say, so this is going to take some getting used to. Since I got here on Monday, it has snowed every single day since. I'll be here for 6 whole months. I have a hopeful hypothesis of a direct relationship between the temperature and the level of my French before I leave.

Now to the matter at hand. Before I begin, I must mention that I was extremely impressed and enlightened by Marjorie's delineating calling vs. gifting last week. If I may, I would like to springboard from her ideas to talk about calling and writing.

What is my calling?

That's been a question that I'd struggled with for a while. I guess I always had this notion that a "calling" is this specific, grand thing that is supposed to be revealed to you in a moment of spiritual epiphany. I've heard many a fervent testimony about how when something spiritual happened or somebody said some special meaningful (but unbeknownst to the person who said it) thing to them, then the testifier knew that God was calling them to X. That has never happened to me, so I've always been wondering when that magic moment would happen. But looking at calling within the biblical framework that Marjorie laid out, I'm beginning to realize that maybe that magic moment never will happen; or rather, that the "magic moment" has already happened, and what I should be doing is assessing, perfecting, and exercising my God-given gifts instead of waiting around for an epiphany.

What are my gifts, then?

If I were asked to name them, I would say teaching, languages, and writing. These are things that I enjoy, that come somewhat easily for me, and that I have used within the context of edifying the Body. Even though we're talking specifically about writing in this case, I've used my experience as a teacher and my abilities with foreign languages to aid in my writing: writing Sunday School literature and translating Bible studies into Spanish for example. I don't have a moment of revelation to recount concerning writing as a gift of mine, but the feedback that I've gotten from other members of the Body assures me that my writing has had positive, edifying results.

Bonus musing: Music while writing

I like listening to music while writing either when I have a long, extensive paper to write that I'd rather not to make the experience a little more pleasurable, or if I have a writing project that I do like but that requires considerable concentration (as opposed to a post on my personal blog). The music usually comes from a random assortment of downloaded iTunes tunes, and functions as background music rather than a muse. "Spiderwebs" by No Doubt has certainly been of zero inspiration to write this post.