Discerning your Secondary Vocation
/DOMINIKA RAMOS
Do you have ideas of what your role as a wife in marriage should look like?
PHOTOGRAPHY: Matthew Lomanno
I've never believed that all women's lives should look a certain way, but I certainly had ideas of what my day-to-day duties as a wife and mother would look like. I was surprised, then, to find God calling me more than once to relinquish my expectations and to realize that his daily calling for me within the life-long vocation of marriage was something that could change.
What helped me most was coming to a fuller understanding of the Catholic Church's beliefs about vocations. The Church sees vocation on three levels: the universal call to holiness, then the primary vocation, and lastly the secondary vocation.
Through baptism every Christian is given the universal call to holiness. The primary vocation is an individual's calling to marriage, religious life, or consecrated single life. The secondary vocation more specifically makes up your day-to-day life: your job, the way you use your gifts and talents in service of God, the volunteer opportunities you pursue and so on.
The distinction between the three is important, because when we conflate them, we can get rigid and inaccurate ideas about how we should live.
Too often it can be tempting to listen to loud voices declaring that a faithful Catholic wife stays at home with her children, homeschools, and makes home cooked meals from scratch. Or on the flipside, other voices cry out that if there is any desire in her heart for a dream outside of the home, then not following that desire is denying herself in an essential and unhealthy way.
Neither of these extremes are dogmatic, and when they are taken as such, they can cause needless anxiety. The reality, in my own life, has been far more nuanced.
I have lived out the secondary vocation within my primary vocation of marriage in many different ways.
I've worked both full-time and part-time outside the home. I've stayed home full time, and I've worked from home. I've sent my kids to daycare, and I've also spent every minute of the day with them. I've recently begun homeschooling my oldest, but perhaps some day I'll send him and his siblings to a brick and mortar school.
I've worked in jobs that did not suit my charisms at all (looking at you, customer service). And I've lived through seasons where the day-to-day tasks that comprise my secondary vocation have been far more fitting for my gifts: lecturing on literature or reading aloud to a preschooler.
And in all seasons there has been sacrifice. In all seasons, my husband and I have had to ask ourselves if the way we've structured our lives is contributing to peace in us as individuals and in our family as a whole, and if not, if there is something we can change to better serve one another.
The longer I've been married, the more I've realized how impermanent the circumstances of day-to-day life can be and how crucial it is to be attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit in order to not become too attached to the kind of life we've built or the one we desire.
I've learned that, while it's ideal for our daily work to align with our particular charisms, there are seasons where, for the good of our family, we may have to sacrifice the work we want for the work we must do.
How, then, do you become adept at discerning your secondary vocation? I'm still learning, but here are a few things that have helped me:
Learn from the wisdom of others
Take advantage of the wisdom shared by those who have walked with many people through the same decisions you have to make. Reading a book like What's Your Decision: An Ignatian Approach to Decision Making or Jacques Phillipe's In the School of the Holy Spirit has been particularly helpful for me.
Talk to your spouse
Having regular, honest conversations with your spouse are crucial. It's so easy to go on auto-pilot under the duress of work and family life, that we can fail to see our spouse drowning or vice versa.
Make prayer a priority
We cannot listen to the noise of Catholic media personalities more than the time we spend with God Himself and expect to have clarity in our lives. Spend time with Christ in Adoration, meditate upon His Word, contemplate the mysteries of His life in the Rosary. The goal of this life, the one our secondary vocation should be directed towards, is ultimately to share in God's divine life for all eternity. We cannot do this if we do not know Him.
Discernment doesn't end once we've said "I do" and slipped the ring on our beloved's finger. It never ends, because conversion never ends.
Understanding God's individual call to us for how we must live out our daily lives is something we must engage in constantly, individually and as a couple.
