Calling Stories: Walter Wittwer's vocational crisis, calling confusion in 2020
Welcome to the newest installment of Calling Stories, a refreshed and reimagined series of guest posts for Ordinary Time. In the past two autumns, I’ve hosted a series of guest posts called Work Stories. This year I've reimagined the series to embrace a wider vision of calling and to add some sweet bonus features for my Patreon community. Go here to learn how to join in Calling Conversations with our guest contributors.
I’m grateful to welcome back our dear friend Walter even though he’s experiencing deep vocational disappointment right now. In 2018, Walter shared with us a day in the life of his work among the least of these and those who care for them: Walter Wittwer’s learning-from-the-least calling
Walter's love for God and for people makes me glad to be a Christian. I’m not sure I’ve met anyone more open to giving and receiving mercy than Walter. It’s a characteristic he demonstrates in every setting. Until his post two years ago, I hadn’t known much about his daily work, and as I read, it made perfect sense. Of course, our mercy-giving Father would lead Walter into this work. And may our good Father sustain Walter while he waits to be released into rhythms of work and rest more fitting to his soul.
I hope you’ll find encouragement in Walter’s honest assessment of the disappointing, frustrating places in a calling journey. I hope this especially if you’re in the middle of a similar desert place. If you can relate to Walter’s statement “My calling echoes back from a brass heaven”, know that you are not alone. If you feel like you’ve had enough experience learning to fail well, know that you’re not alone. Whether you’re twenty, forty, or seventy-years old and yearning to made whole in the ways you navigate the world as your truest self, know you are not alone.
What do you understand more clearly about who you are called to be and what you are called to do? What do you understand less clearly?
Where have you had to "pump the brakes of your ambition" in this season? Where have you seen unexpected "green lights" for your calling(s) in this season?
This story has been going on for four years. Fired from my previous job after 17 years, seemingly ending a good career on a bad note. Believing it was God’s move to bring me to full-time ministry, applying to churches all over the country for fourteen months without a nibble. Accepting an opportunity to receive chaplaincy training at the local hospital, which seems to have led nowhere. Accepting a call to the Anglican diaconate which runs smoothly until the pandemic canceled ordination…indefinitely. Following up on a recommendation to enter spiritual director training, confirmations by several people, discernment seems clear. Denied enrollment. So, I’m back in the career I thought I had ended, struggling with my go and lack of motivation. Realizing my age is now a hindrance. Struggling with the unfairness. I’m healthy, have much experience, but people feel I’m a risk now. Health insurance which I only use for an annual physical is more expensive. Unemployment is high but my prospects are low.
Then comes covid. How do I do this job from a distance? Working with people with disabilities and people who work with people with disabilities just doesn’t work well online. Lord, what is going on? By now, shouldn’t I know what I’m doing? Where I’m going? Something is happening. Not what I thought. Not what I’d hoped for. Like the Philistines running from the thunder of God, my plans and dreams and hopes lie abandoned along the road of retreat. My cries unheard. Lost to a deaf God. I call and He remains silent. My calling echoes back from a brass heaven.
My calling. Perhaps my calling has been drowning out His calling. Whose calling is it anyway? Whose calling am I listening for? Do my goals hear? Are my plans equipped with ears? Men compartmentalize. There’s the work compartment, the church compartment, the marriage compartment, the children compartment, etc. Each has its own calling. Work as unto the Lord. Worship God and support the church. Love my wife and serve her. Love my children and encourage them. All neat and tidy like it should be. Is there a problem?
While this is going on, I get involved in an inner healing ministry, you know, to help others and, whamo! it’s me that needs the help. So as these career things are unraveling, my psyche is unraveling. Thank God my wife and kids are stable, although they added a grandchild and another is on the way. So that is a new thing I’m doing, being a grandfather.
Other compartments have had to either adjust or close down. Prison ministry is gone for the foreseeable future. Church is different, first online, then in person in smaller groups. Triads, prayer gatherings, committee meetings all on Zoom. I’m tired of 2-D people! I want the real thing! I used to be a loner and now I miss people. Go figure.
Something is happening. I’m beginning to understand. I am becoming whole. I have been too long a chameleon, managing multiple images handcrafted for the various callings I had. Wasn’t I called to please my employer and wife and children and friends and church? They all seemed to want something different. I had multiple acts fit for each stage. It’s been exhausting. And in these past few years, I have failed far more than succeeded. Learning to fail well has also been exhausting. Something has to change.
Even in the disrupted rhythms of life, what is something you still can't not do related to your work or callings? What is something you can no longer do?
In the disarray of suddenly needing to help people from a distance, from a cell phone and computer, I don’t have time to dress for the part. In the uncertainty of how to stay alive while maneuvering through an invisible killer, I lost the script for social interaction. In the ever-intensifying climate of anger and nastiness all around the world, my images proved useless. In the splitting apart of the Body of Christ into pixels and digital programming, I’m starting to come together.
Like clothes all separated into light, medium, and dark loads, now thrown back into a mixed pile, I’ve learned that it is one wardrobe after all. My left hand can no longer not know what my right hand is doing, one coordinated body is needed, has always been needed. God created me in His image, not His images. It is a mystery, He being Three in One. In His Threeness, He never loses His Oneness. That is my one call after all. To mirror my Father as much as I can.
What does Sabbath look like for you right now?
The God of the Sabbath is the same God as the God of creation. He is never changing. He is who He is. I am to be who I am.
Seek first the Kingdom of God. There is only one Kingdom. There is only one God. There is only one me. I am learning to be me. No matter which office I’m in it’s the same person answering the same call from the same God.
All I do I’m to do for Him because all I do I do to Him (see Mat.25:40). It does not matter where I am or to whom I do, we are all the least of these. And if all I do is for Him and for His Kingdom, then all I do is one call from One God.
“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecc.12:13-14) My whole duty is to Him. Every deed, every secret thing, whether I do it in an office building, a store, my home, prison, a church, a gas station, at noon or midnight or 9 am, alone or with others, wherever, whenever, whatever, with whoever, goes to the same boss to judge.
Becoming whole has not been an easy mending. My broken life is being reassembled by a loving Hand with pure gold, but for gold to fuse two pieces together it must be melted and so it is hot as it is applied to the shards of myself. There is always pain in the repairing, but I look forward to the finished work.
More and more I move about in life without changing my persona, without transition planning, without much hesitation. The pandemic’s equal-opportunity vice grip on the world has required less rigid boundaries between activities. Since so many things are now done in the same place, these roles need to live in close proximity and be able to allow free movement between themselves. This helps both the breaking, as activities and roles bump into each other, and the melding together, as the nearness allows them to exchange ideas and strengths.
And it gives God the opportunity to enter places jarred open by all the prayer loosened by my desperate heart, seeking to maneuver this new environment, ready to be one man under one God with one call, His.
Three office spaces for “one man under one God with one call".
Walter Witter is about to be a second-time grandfather, married to lovely Karen, Clinical Team Leader at an agency in Westchester County, NY, responsible to 22 adults in 5 homes, passionate for Kairos prison ministry, and moving toward vocational diaconate within the Anglican Church through Church of the Apostles in Bridgeport, CT. The best way to heal your own wounds is to help others heal theirs.
p.s., You can read more about Walter’s journey as a chaplain, prison minister, reader of good books, and writer of poetry at his blog ChainsGone.com
