The Truth About Calling

•  Hi friends, I’m Christine Kaine and you’re listening to the Life and Leadership Podcast where we share conversations with faithfueled leaders from all over the globe. Hey friend, welcome to the Life and Leadership Podcast. I am so glad that you’re here. Now, every time you tune in or share an episode or invite a friend to join us, you’re helping build this lifegiving community and we truly could not do this without you.
• So, we are in week two of our new series, The Best of Life and Leadership, where we’re revisiting some of the most powerful conversations from our first three seasons, ones that you have told us have deeply impacted your life and leadership. So, today we’re diving into the topic of calling. I’ve got to tell you, this is something we hear about non-stop, and it’s a topic so many of us wrestle with and we wonder about.
• You’re going to hear insights from Professor Ariana Malloy, business leader, and Propel cohorts coach April Stalwolf, and a few highlights from our listener Q&A series. So whether you’re just beginning to explore your calling or navigating what it looks like in a new season, I’ve got to tell you, this episode is just for you.
• So let’s jump in. Ariana, thanks so much for joining me today. I’m pumped. I’m so glad to be here. I’m pumped, too. I know. I’m thinking, okay, just in our little banter before we got on, I thought our podcast listeners need to strap themselves in today because I think you’re matching my energy. And that is very dangerous for anybody on the other side of this.
• It’s like, put your coffee down before we even start. But um this might be true. I was a cheerleader in high school. I can’t take that out of me. I could see it. I thought I am in love with you as soon as I saw you. This is awesome. Okay. I I just want, you know, the listeners here to just um come up to speed a bit.
• Just tell me a little bit the cliffnotes version of your story and how you’ve ended up here you are a professor of Biola now. H you didn’t just wake up and there you are. How did you get to there? Yeah, that is a story. I think the shortest version is I had no idea that I was even smart enough to go to college. Uh in school I was very sociable.
• I loved Jesus. I loved people. I had some unfortunate encounters with some teachers who didn’t make me feel very smart. And so I went into college. I’m a first generation college student. So my parents hadn’t finished college. They’ve done amazing things in their life, but I was just sort of figuring this out on my own with their help.
• And I remember sitting in a class with a professor named Dr. Bill Purcell. And I had some kind of like, you know, passionate convicted comment that he let me make in class. And he said something like, “Thank you, Dr. Mallaloy.” And I had this like, whoa, he just called me doctor. Could I do that? And I think in college, I also felt like I could ask those why questions that no one had time for earlier.
• And I felt like my wings had been let out of a cage and all of a sudden I could stretch and it was amazing. But I didn’t um I didn’t have a sense of what to do afterwards. I knew who I was in God as a college student and I really knew how to be a good daughter. I didn’t know what adulthood looked like and I felt like everyone else did but didn’t really um I didn’t really know.
• So, I moved back at home with my parents. I worked for a church for a year. That was not a great experience. I worked for two women starting a nonprofit. That was a phenomenal experience, but I was a little bit bored. And I was single, which I know is very strange in the Christian church sometimes. And so, I thought, what should I do with myself? I went back and I got a master’s degree.
• And during that time, I felt even more alive. And I studied organizational communication, communication in the workplace and about work. And I was so fascinated with how Christians work, how they use their faith as a motivation to work well or as an excuse to not do a good job. And I thought, we cannot have this.
• We need to approach everything with veracity and and and passion and accountability and treat others well in the name of Jesus. And so I took a year off. I worked for the nonprofit that I had um been working at with before. And then I got bored and I was single and I thought I’m hearing a theme here. Yes. Um so I applied to some places and I got into my top choice and it was a very rigorous program.