The Reality of Discerning and Living Out Our Personal Vocation

EPISODE 67 | THE REALITY OF DISCERNING AND LIVING OUT OUR PERSONAL VOCATION

Hello, dear listeners, today's episode is a little special – actually, very special for me. This is the audio recording of an Instagram Live that I did earlier this year that was very impromptu, but very raw because I was documenting a key moment in my own journey into discerning and living out my personal vocation, right? So, this entire podcast is about this process of getting to know who I really am, how can I know that, and then be able to live it authentically, confidently. How can I be anchored in the solidity and security of my core identity in Christ? Right, so, I mean, the podcast, Becoming Me, is about this journey.

[00:00:51]
It's about sharing the resources that have helped me – sharing the insights that I've gleaned in this lifelong journey. And, well, I'm still living it out – clearly. I am still in the process of becoming, and I think this last couple of months have been very profound. Actually, there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes in my own interior life and this Instagram Live recording is kind of like a snapshot of a milestone in my own journey.

[00:01:25]
And I had waited until now to share this on my podcast because initially I – you know, I was still debating whether or not to put this on my podcast because this Instagram Live recording – the way that I went about doing it and everything – I think the audio recording is, not up to my usually high standards, okay. But in the spirit of imperfect action and in the spirit of obedience and in trusting that – that the message itself is so important that I shouldn't hide it – as in I shouldn't not include it in my podcast just because I think, you know, the recording isn't at its absolute best quality. I share this with you humbly. And this episode is also going to be ushering in a series of podcast episodes that are about the discernment of our personal vocation. 

[00:02:28] PERSONAL VOCATION
Now, personal vocation is really just a term to describe the larger story of our lives, okay? Our personal unique unrepeatable stories.

[00:02:40]
So, when I use the term like, you know, discerning and living out my personal vocation – I'm actually talking about this process of becoming me more fully, more deeply, more authentically in a way that's more whole with greater integrity, right. And in living that out, a unique story emerges in my life. A unique story will emerge in your life.

[00:03:03]
So, this is really what – you know, the inspiration behind the Becoming Me Podcast. And the reason I've been talking about scripts is because our scripts, in many ways, impede our ability to see our real selves – our true selves. Okay, so, it's all linked and at this, point I'm ushering in a new way of, recording my, my podcast – which is that I will be trying out, you know, sharing my perspectives in my Instagram Lives. Okay, because it's going to be more spontaneous, more real. It's going to also help me be, I think – help me become clearer as I share in these more spontaneous moments – what the story is, what the process is. And I will be then making these Lives into the podcast.

[00:03:57]
But don't worry, okay? Because now I have learned my lesson from the first IG Live that was very impromptu. I dual record my Instagram Lives on another track with my external microphone. So, the subsequent episodes after this one, you will hear cleaner audio. I hope you enjoy Becoming Me as it continues to evolves with my own discovery of who I am in Christ and the work of my life that He's really calling me to do – that He has created me to do.

[00:04:32]
Thank you for listening and I really hope you enjoy the story that I'm going to share, and that it inspires you to think about your own story and your own process of becoming you.

[00:04:46] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host Ann Yeong and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life, and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me.

[00:05:20]
Okay, this was a very impromptu decision to do a Live. So, I think up to right now – right up to just a moment ago, there wasn't anyone. So, I was taking my time setting up. I hope you can hear me if anyone's watching me live. So, this impromptu the decision to do this without being really ready – it's not very typical of me. I like to be ready, but it was – it's quite a big moment that I had this morning, spiritually. And about, I guess, my own calling. And since so much of my work, like on my podcast, which is, you know, the title of my podcast, the name of my podcast is Becoming Me, right? And so much of my work is about how we can walk into the person that we were actually created to be – which is so, so hard to do, actually.

[00:06:24]
I think anybody who has the desire to, you know, to know who is it that they are, and to live the life that they're called to live. For many of us, that never really gets more beyond like a desire or wish. And you know, we often feel like we're not really making progress and we don't know why.

[00:06:45]
I've been working towards, I guess, slowly sharing all the various things that go into making this journey, this interior journey, right? Because there's so many aspects of it. And I think this morning was one of those times when something happened in my own journey, and it was such a teaching moment for me.

[00:07:08]
I felt like, in obedience, I needed to document this by also sharing this, I think, live so that is unfiltered – this part of the process for consolidating this truth for me. And the prompt for this actually is from my – well, I say, you know, she's my business coach. I'm not a paid client yet, because, or I mean – I don't know? God hasn't, you know, called me to do that yet because I'm not in the season of my business to qualify for her program. Her name is Jereshia Hawk. 

[00:07:41]
You may have seen me share some of her content on my Instagram Stories. She's also a woman of faith and I've always appreciated her – how she talks about you know, even building her business as a call of obedience – of spiritual obedience to God. And watching her latest IG live recording – which is a paid subscriber content – it just really called me out this morning. 

[00:08:12]
I felt God speaking to me and I just want to give a sharing for any of you who want to know what your calling – you know, like you've been thinking, I want to know what my calling is. I want to live out my calling. Just to give you a sense of how long this journey is, how many twists and turns it can take, and how challenging it is to make.

[00:08:37] MY MILESTONES & BACKGROUND
I want give you a bit of like, you know, the milestones in my journey and one just happened this morning, which I need to pray more about. And I'm still on the way, right? Okay, so, especially for those of you who are a bit newer to following me and hasn't listened to my podcast episodes, may not know anything about my background, all right.

[00:08:57]
As a student – so as a child, as a teenager, and as a young adult, I think most people who knew me thought of me as someone, you know, on the road to success – in any traditional sense of the word. I was doing pretty well academically. I was in good schools, among the top schools all the way to university where I was in the University of Toronto in Canada, where I double majored in psychology and philosophy.

[00:09:26]
And in a sense took, you know, whatever remaining courses I had left outside of the two majors – I took whatever courses I could on Catholic theology, you know, history. So, in a sense, when I graduated from university, I actually won a medal for psychology, but also for this interesting medal called Christianity – it's a Christianity and Culture medal.

[00:09:55]
But actually it's meant for, you know, a student in the Catholic college that I belonged to, who I think, graduated with the highest GPA in philosophy – who has also taken like a lot of courses in theology or religion or in – you know, kind of like in the college. Okay, so for me, my desire when I was going to university initially, was to do theology and philosophy, but – and I actually had to go to a completely different university – but that is another story for another day.

[00:10:27]
But the Lord led me to a secular university. And so, I ended up studying philosophy, psychology, and also as many, you know, Theology and church history courses as I could, and I had some really good professors. In fact, my favourite philosophy professor was a brilliant philosophy professor, was himself a Catholic, and a scholar of the Jesuit theologian, Bernard Lanigan, who is also an incredible theologian. And learning about Bernard Lanigan's philosophy or the way that he understood philosophy – the intellectual tradition on our intellect and faith, how reason and faith got together, really literally changed the way I thought of my faith, the way I thought of knowledge, okay? 

And so, that was in university. I didn't know, I still didn't know what it was that I was meant to do after that. I've always had this sense that I need to find what the answer is. I'm not content with the traditional paths, you know, that people take because I felt that life had to be more than just having, you know, a successful career in whatever sense, right? I mean, and I would admit, I'm in a position of privilege. My parents were in a situation where they could afford to send me overseas.

[00:11:54]
They were not dependent on me to come out to earn my income as soon as possible to contribute to the family. And so, I had time and I also – I had time but I didn't know what to do with that time, right? And after graduation, initially I wanted to come back from Canada to Singapore to maybe work a while and then figure out what's next for me.

[00:12:18] 1. MY PHD JOURNEY
But my parents, who had also their hopes for me, you know – especially my mom – tried to persuade me that I should go all the way to getting a PhD before I come back – in a way that was actually her own dream and she didn't get to do it. And the professors in my university as well, encouraged me in both psychology and philosophy departments because they felt I could do the work, right?

[00:12:48]
And I really dragged my feet. I actually – my heart was not in it. I didn't really feel convicted about going to graduate studies at that point because I didn't want to go into either psychology or philosophy – specifically to really narrow down, I loved both and I love how they're so complementary, you know? Philosophy – teaching me how to think about the deep questions, about metaphysics about, you know, about epistemology.

[00:13:14]
Okay, so, if I take out the big words for those of you who don't enjoy these big terms, you know – the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, how do I know that I know. What are the assumptions that people have about what counts as true, that leads to so much conflict and disagreement, right? When it seems often that we're disagreeing about issues, but a lot of times we're disagreeing at an even more fundamental level of assumptions about what counts as true or what counts as real.

[00:13:41]Okay, so, that's a bit of like the philosopher in me speaking. But what I learned even back then in my undergrad days is that I enjoy these subjects, but I don't really – my favourite thing about them is not just talking about them in a scholarly manner or talking to other people who study these topics. I love to be able to apply them to my life and to share them with people who don't study these topics, who may even be skeptical about what's the, you know, what value does psychology or philosophy have. What I can do with that. 

[00:14:14]Okay, so then – so I dragged my feet. I didn't really want to go further into doing a PhD in either one of them. But my mom was persistent and very persuasive, and in the end, I applied to the education faculty in the same university that I was in because education is something I feel very passionately about.

[00:14:36]I think anyone of you who – Hey to those of you who are here, just a couple of you here who are joining me live – I'm just going to keep talking. I don't want to lose my train of thought. Okay, so, I think I already lost my train of thought. That's one thing about me – I can't multitask and, you know, I just get so easily distracted.

[00:14:58]What was I saying? What was I saying? I know I was talking about – yeah, so, education. So, those of you who follow my content probably can guess that I enjoy teaching. I enjoy explaining. I really, really believe in the importance of education in the bigger sense. Okay, not just like in schools, but the formation of the human person.

[00:15:21]So, I thought maybe I'll apply to the education faculty and, you know – to their psychology program or to the philosophy program, the two different departments, right? So, there's educational psychology and there's philosophy of education. 

And I got accepted into philosophy education because I was so late in my application. I was actually pass the deadline. The Psych Education Department put me on the waitlist because they were full. But, you know, I think for a few people applied to philosophy of education, maybe – I got in. In fact, they offered me a scholarship, which was, I took it as an affirmation and a sign that's where God wanted me to go.

[00:15:58]
So, I went and it was a very interesting experience. Not so much about just what I was learning and studying in terms of the topics, but I realised that other people, the other students – you know, my classmates – many of whom were older than me, because I was coming straight from graduation, right.

[00:16:18]
It's a very Singaporean thing to do. Okay, those of you who are not Singaporean, not Asian, you know, for us it's like, you know, education is really important, right? A lot of us go from, you know, bachelors, you know, to masters, to PhDs straight away. Whereas, most of my classmates were, you know – they came to this program after having worked, maybe having taught in schools or being in some other part of educational systems, and they found that that was something that they really felt very passionately about, and that's why they enrolled in this program.

[00:16:50]
They knew why they were there. I didn't know why I was there. I was there because if I had to go to further my studies right away, this was like the least evil, right? But I did very well academically. I mean, I was not the most interested student, but the grades didn't show it. So, that kept me stuck as well, because I was doing well.

[00:17:15]
I was doing well enough that even before I finished my masters, they gave me a position in the PhD program. So, I stayed right. And I noticed that the students around me really loved what they were doing, what they were studying. They had certain topics that they, you know, they were excited about. And after a whole – you know, after six hours of reading in the library, when we gather in the evening, you know, let's say, at the pubs to talk, they still want to talk about what they were reading.

[00:17:44]
And for me, I was just doing the bare minimum that I needed to do to get through the program. You know, I was still getting really good grades, but my interest wasn't there. And with all my spare time I was actually reading books on spirituality and theology. That was my phase where I think I was still in apologetics.

[00:18:03]
So, I was reading – doing a lot of reading on my own to understand my Catholic tradition, you know, and all that – and spirituality, a lot on spirituality. I was going through my own stuff personally as well. You know, so, the point is actually the signs were clear when I look back now – my heart was really not in the school that I was.

[00:18:26]
And you know what I count as like the greatest accomplishment in my time as a graduate student, even as a PhD student, is not the publications that I published or the national scholarship that I actually somehow won, which I really – it was, I think God has a very funny sense of humour. Because that was the one – you know, in Canada and I'm a citizen by birth.

[00:18:52]
I mean, they're very, they're very good with offering support for their citizens, for education, right? So, the grants and the fellowships, scholarships for first students, I mean – and it's like they don't come with a bond. You know, and I was progressing well – at least on paper – in my studies, right?

[00:19:10]
I was presenting at conferences. I was actually getting some publications out. So, I actually won a scholarship, I mean a fellowship, but then I dropped out of my PhD because it came a point where it became very clear, I couldn't deny it anymore – that that wasn't where God was calling me, right? So, let me backtrack a bit.

[00:19:31]
I said, my greatest accomplishment – what I count as my greatest accomplishment back then, was not my grades, not the scholarships that I won, but the fact that 1. my PhD supervisor would send other students to talk to me when they were stuck in their dissertations. Okay, so, like they're my peers.

[00:19:49]
In fact, some of them were ahead of me. They were already writing a dissertation even before I was, at a point. But I found out that, from them, that my supervisor, our shared supervisor asked them to come and talk to me because he felt that I could help them clarify their thoughts about how to approach their thesis.

[00:20:06]
Okay, so, that was a big affirmation. And then I realized that I really did enjoy talking, helping people clarify their, you know, their thoughts, about their approach – you know about the pros and cons of each approach. Well, I'll ask them questions. I realized I was good at asking questions and helping people get better understanding of where they are, right? 

[00:20:27]
I didn't need to be a subject expert in what they were doing. I was just helping them to think, I was teaching them to clarify their thoughts. And I actually did help a couple of my, you know, my fellow students in their process of finishing a dissertation and defending this dissertation. And they're professors now, I mean they're professors for years now, you know, in North America, and I'm not – I don't have a "doctor" in front of my name.

[00:20:53]
At one point, I thought that was what I wanted, right? Dr. Ann Yeong – I don't have that credential. But those things, as in – that actually, to me was – I see it as what I was very proud of, that I was able to help people complete their dissertation by helping them clarify their thoughts. Right, and it's actually a real struggle.

[00:21:14]
And any one of you who did a PhD, finished a PhD, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. There's just so much that you can cover, and there may be so much that you're interested in knowing. To be able to distil that into just about a 300 page dissertation is a huge challenge, right? You have to have very great clarity of thought.

[00:21:35]
You have to be very systematic in, you know, what is just essential to do this particular work. So, when I finally had the courage – oh, it took so much courage, my God – to step out from my PhD. Because it felt like such a huge failure. I felt like I was letting down everyone – all my teachers, my family, people who believed in me, who thought that, you know, I was going to become a professor.

[00:22:00]
It's like the one time I fail, I didn't even finish the degree. You know, I was five years into my PhD program. I was ABD, which is all but dissertation. I was, you know, like I said, I had won – I even had scholarships along the way. For me, it's so – it was such a shameful thing. 

[00:22:19]
But when I came to the point I realized – God helped me realize I was so unhappy and I realized the only reason I was staying is to prove myself.

[00:22:28]
I don't know – you know, to not let people down. This was back in 2008. Yeah, I think around 2008, 2009 – it was a huge relief when I decided to just end my – you know, I took a leave of absence. The first step was I took a leave of absence for a year from my studies.

[00:22:55] 2. FULL-TIME MINISTRY
And I felt the call, at that point, the Lord was calling me to full-time ministry. And, and I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what that entailed. But I went – by making myself available. And as things went, you know – developed, I became a full-time volunteer in the parish that I was in, which was not the parish that I grew up in.

[00:23:15]
So, nobody knew me, which was great actually because it's like I had a fresh start, right? And I'd been away overseas for like, practically 10 years before then. So, it was like I was starting afresh. And at first, it was also very liberating. And then I was in full-time ministry in the parish for practically six years.

[00:23:32]
All in, eventually as paid staff. And somewhere along the way I went from being someone that nobody knew– which I said was great, and had this enthusiasm and freedom because I've let go of the burdens of expectations of my previous identity, which was like, you know – Ann, the academic or the academic to be, right – to just exploring an entirely new field and exploring what it meant to be me. So, along the way, in those six years, I mean, I very quickly burnt out because although it was a completely different area, everything that was inside me was still the same. Okay, the wounds that were in me were the same. My coping mechanisms were the same. 

[00:24:14]
So, I was still a perfectionist. I must do well in everything. I was terrified at letting people down. I felt that everything I did must reach really high standards. I held myself to, I think, maybe unreasonable standards and maybe others too – without knowing. And I always wondered why is it that people feel, felt pressured sometimes to work with me or be around me because they instinctively felt like they have to perform at a very high level.

[00:24:42]
I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. I want to say that that's actually still a part of me, but I was expressing it in a very unhealthy manner. Okay, I made an idol out of, I guess, achievement, but it was – I didn't know it then, but that was my protective mechanism. That was in a sense, you could say a trauma response.

[00:25:00] THE EXPECTATIONS OTHERS HAD OF ME
Okay, that's how I learned, since I was young, to be seen, to be heard, to be valued – by performing. Okay, by exceeding expectations. That's how I was loved. Well, that's how I felt I would get attention and approval and affection. 

[00:25:17]
And so, while I burnt out – as I was burning out in full-time ministry, I was also earning a reputation. So, now suddenly I wasn't, you know, a stranger anymore. I wasn't some unknown person anymore. Suddenly my name, Ann Yeong, you know – people would – as in lot of people began to hear my name or know my name before they knew me. And then I found that there were already expectations attached to that name that people who didn't know me personally had certain expectations of me.

[00:25:47]
And this was just so DeJa’Vu because back when I was in school, because I was head prefect – that was the kind of thing that happened to me. People who didn't know me personally, knew my name and had certain expectations about what I was like and who I was. Right, and it's shackling, okay – really, really shackling.

[00:26:09] A NEW PERSONA
Oh, I saw my cousins just joined – Hi! So, from a young age, I felt I needed to live up to a certain persona, okay. There was an expectation that I should behave a certain way. So, now I have a new persona as the person who, you know, gave up her PhD and, you know, maybe a promising career in the sector space, to go into full-time ministry, and serve God's people – in that context. 

[00:26:39]
And after a while, that became a prison for me. Why? Because internally I wasn't free. Okay, it's not the problem that people have expectations of me. I mean, that's reality. No one cannot have expectations. I think I subconsciously will have expectations on people as well, even if I'm not fully aware that – you know, that's happening, right?

[00:26:58]
So, what the problem is, is that I was not interiorly free to not be shackled by those expectations. Okay, I still needed to be the one that always exceeded expectations. So, now fast forward, I left the intensity of full-time parish ministry work back in midway through 2014.

[00:27:30]
So, I left the intensity of that. But then the subsequent years after some sabbatical, I was still in the same kind of space, just doing it a little differently, right? I was still the person that would give formation sessions in parishes to faith communities and all that. And that's been building up.

[00:27:50]
And then in 2020, the call came to start my podcast and to register a business. Both things, which I had never planned on doing or wanted to do. Honestly, I never felt like that was what I was cut out to do. No desire to do that, but it was obedience. So, in the same way that I obeyed the prompting to go into full-time ministry – like, leave PhD to go into full-time ministry – it's the same way I obeyed in 2020, the call to start the podcast and to register the business, even though I know nothing about this. 

So, once again, I'm in a field that I know nothing about and I'm learning my way and doing a lot of things that normally I wouldn't do and I don't really enjoy doing – okay, including showing up on IG like this right now. That's not the kind of thing that I would've done in the past, but it was part of the steps of obedience. 

[00:28:58] WHAT HAPPENED EARLIER IN THE MORNING?
So, what is it that happened this morning? I've been resisting for a while, even in the last couple of years, since I started the business and everything – I think I've been resisting a kind of dying of identity.

[00:29:14]
Okay, so, I was saying that this is a process of if we want to discern and live our personal vocation and personal calling. I think none of us know how much dying is in the process, how much dying to older versions of us, how much dying to what we thought was going to be in the path or the way for us.

[00:29:33]
So often when we think we found the path or when there's a conversion kind of experience, and you know, we've pivot. So, for example, for me, like when I dropped my PhD and went into full-time parish ministry, it's so easy to think that now this, this is it. This is where God wants me to be forever – you know, kind of like in full-time ministry. 

[00:29:52]
And actually it's not the case, right? As things evolved as He journeyed with me, as my relationship with Him deepened – as the healing grew, I guess, the healing of my own interior space – and I became freer. I realized His call is always shifting and changing and I have no idea where He is leading me.

[00:30:11]
And when I started, my podcast and my – you know, I registered my company, although, you know, as part of setting up a bank account for a business, right? I mean, because it's different from personal account. I had to have a conversation with the agent at the bank who asked me questions on the phone, right?

[00:30:28]
Like, so how soon do you think you're going break even? Or like, you know, when do you think you're going to – so basically about like earning revenue. And my answer to her was just, I have no idea, really. I have no idea because how can I explain to her that the reason I'm doing this wasn't because I had planned and thought out why I wanted to start a business and how I was going to go about it, but literally it was just an act of obedience to God, right? 

[00:30:52]
It was also really humbling to be able to, you know, sound in my head kind of stupid, like, I don't know. I have no idea. But it's just following the breadcrumbs, right? But I had no idea. I had no idea how challenging all this was going to be or where God was actually intending to lead me through all this. And what I realized today, while watching Jereshia Hawk's IG recording.

[00:31:31]
Although she was talking in a different context, but I knew God was speaking to me, was that, God is calling me out again from what I know and from the space that I was in, in the previous season of my life, right? So, prior to 2009, I was in the space of, I was in academic studies. I was on the path to becoming an academic.

[00:31:53]
And I had a certain identity then, there. And then the next season I was called to be in pastoral ministry full-time, in a very specific kind of context within church. And during those years I learned so much more about what it means to live the faith, to walk with people as I struggled to live my own faith more authentically and more – and with more integrity.

[00:32:15]
And I learned so much more about what the church actually teaches, specifically about the call to laypeople – that our mission is in the world, right? So, as much as I was learning all this and I was sharing these with other laypeople whose lives were very much in, you know, the secular spaces – apart from family and also in, you know, at work – my own work was still very much in the non-secular space.

[00:32:35]
It was still very much in the churchy kind of space, right? That those are the contexts – as in C O N T E X T – context in which I worked.

[00:32:43]
But now I realize God is calling me out of that and He wants to send me to serve a different demographic of people – not exactly different demographic, more specific context, which is different. No more in the church kind of pastoral context, but to draw on what I have learned and experienced in everything that I've gone through – both in the secular wisdom learnings that I had, in philosophy and psychology, as well as some of the, you can say, the more religious things that I've learned and church teaching and spirituality.

[00:33:22]
To use that in a space that's not technically pastoral – actually, it's actually still pastoral, it's formative and pastoral work, but it's not in the context that I'm used to. It's not general faith formation. It's not specifically about the content of faith or even the content of spiritual development per se – although I have passion for those two.

[00:33:45]
This is about forming a person; combining different streams of understanding for people who are deep in the trenches in the marketplace – who are leaders, especially – although my definition of leader is, you know, broad. But who feel called in that season in their life to really journey more deeply into integration, into knowing themselves and discerning God's call for them.

[00:34:13]
And I want to be able to speak and teach and operate at a level of sophistication where I felt I wasn't really allowed to do in the previous season of my life because I needed to be there for a more general audience. I think I still, you know, tended to draw people who liked, maybe a bit more intellectual rigor in the way the formation was happening. But I never really felt that I could really let go and do what I desire to do or what I've been created to fully do.

[00:34:55]
And so, I guess today, this sharing is both a testimony, an example. An example in the sense of – if you want to know your life's calling, it's a long process of ongoing discernment. Do not make assumptions too early about what that is. You know, even now I'm not making an assumption about what the totality of my calling is.

[00:35:20] A NEW SEASON
Discernment is only always about the next step, and God only shows us what's the next step, but – and sometimes that next step is so hard to take when it requires us to die to a previous identity, right? It's not just persona, but like who I knew myself to be in the last season, the last 10 years or so.

[00:35:40]
So, I don't know what 2023 will hold for me – and 2024. I think I will be sharing maybe a bit more in terms of behind the scenes of what's actually happening. I don't know. Some of you may feel that where I'm pivoting to, where I'm moving to, no longer serves you. And I just want to say it has been – it has been really good, you know, like for the length of time or the season where my path and yours, or like what I felt called to share and what you need, has converged. 

[00:36:20]
So, if you feel that I'm no longer a companion for you in, you know, as I evolve and discover who God is calling me to be in this season, then I bless you and I thank you for having followed me – you know, if our paths, in that sense, diverge. 

[00:36:37]
But I also welcome those of you who may find that this new direction that I'm taking might actually speak even more deeply and accurately to the struggles in your own life, which I think a lot of that would be how do I embody and integrate being a person of faith holistically, and not just about doing religion or practicing religion – but as a person.

[00:37:08]
In my family, in my relationships, in my families of origin, you know, dealing with the handicaps of my own trauma and becoming more able to love, seeking to become more able, to love to become a better leader, especially in, you know, in the context of in secular spaces, while being true to my identity as a child of God.

[00:37:30]
What does that mean? What does it mean beyond all the theoretical and conceptual things that we hear, right. And so, I guess this in a sense, is also a kind of me stepping through the threshold and choosing to do this – on a life that I wasn't prepared to do. It's my way of saying yes to God and saying, I don't know where you're leading me, but I'm following. 

[00:38:01]
I want to follow the best as I can. And it's terrifying because now I have to fully let go of the persona that I guess, I've been building over the last 10 years, into becoming the person that, well – you know, becoming more fully the person that He's called me to be. So, thank you all for, I mean, for those of you who popped in and out during the actual Live.

[00:38:24]
I will be sharing this – saving this, and sharing this, I think on both my Becoming Me Podcast account and in this and Animann account. And I ask you to pray for me – if you're a personal faith, in whatever faith, tradition you come from, or to wish me well. And if you're someone who is actively discerning your own call, just watch out for more of the content to come.

[00:38:51]
I think I'm getting greater clarity of as to what to focus on. Okay, and do watch the full video when you get a chance because what I want to really emphasize is there are more twists and turns to this journey of finding our calling and living it. And there's so many more things required of us to walk into it than most of us know or expect or are ready to do.

[00:39:14]
This is really truly the cost of discipleship, of going where we'd rather not go. And yet this is the path to fuller life, more abundant life, becoming our more authentic selves, our truer selves, and living with integrity. And becoming bolder to be who we are and being okay with people rejecting that, rejecting us, being okay with people disagreeing with us. 

[00:39:40]
Because of course not everyone's going to agree with us. We're not for everybody. The specific task and mission that we're called to is not for everybody. And when we become more our true selves, we become more allowing, more understanding that there'll be people who will be upset with us – with what we say because maybe it's not the message they need in their season of life.

[00:39:59]
Or maybe, you know, they have some other call and it just seems to conflict, you know, with ours. So, I'm going to be stepping up more and more.

[00:40:07]
I pray that God will give me the grace to continue to dare to be who I am, to be faithful to Him and to trust in my calling. And I pray that, that would bless more people. And those of you who follow my content, and those of you who will eventually join, maybe – who are called to join whatever paid services I have, which will also evolve and change.

[00:40:29]
I have a sense now, you know, as we continue to go into the year and next year. So, take care. I wish you good day, good week, and may God give you grace and wisdom to know what you have to do – have the courage to do what you need to do to keep stepping into your calling, to discern where He's calling you, where he's asking you to follow him – Amen.

[00:40:55] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me, where new episodes drop every first and third Wednesdays of the month. Remember, the most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, and no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. 

The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive. Don't forget to visit my website at becomingmepodcast.com and to subscribe to my newsletter, as well as to this podcast. Until the next episode. Happy becoming!