I Was Made to Love
By Lisa Hezmalhalch
Alumna, Class of B.S. 2008, M.A. 2015
Figuring out a career path is such an important part of life, especially in America. Society tells us that what we choose to do for a living defines who we are. Growing up with that framework, I thought that figuring out what I was made for would simplify my life and provide clarity, but, in many ways, it made things much less clear.
From the time I was young, I never felt a strong call to do something specific with my life. When I was in elementary school, all the other kids wanted to be teachers or firefighters or astronauts—nowadays, kids want to be YouTubers—but I didn't have anything to point to. I remember someone asking me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I told them that I wanted to be a teacher because that seemed like the closest thing to what I was aiming for, but deep down, I always thought, "If I could just get paid to love people, that's what I would do.” But even as a kid I knew that “loving people” wasn’t a “real job.” I tried to name my vocation but didn’t have words for it. It made me wonder if there was something wrong with me. What I wanted to do was intangible.
The idea of loving people as my life's calling didn't just come out of thin air. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area in a single-parent home with my mom and two younger brothers. Despite my parents’ divorce when I was about three-years-old, I grew up in a home that was rich in love thanks to my mom. My mom did everything she could to take care of us while also going to school and working. In the midst of all that, she reached out to others who needed her help and did whatever she could for them. Whether it was financial help even when we were struggling, sitting up and talking late into the night, giving them rides, cleaning their houses, watching their kids, or inviting displaced people to live with us, my mom always loved others in practical, sacrificial ways. Most compelling of all, she loved doing it.
On a daily basis, I learned how to love people by watching my mom love others. She set such a good example of how to love people that I came to see her love as synonymous with how God loves us. Growing up in church, I heard about the sacrificial love of God and I saw it play out in the sacrificial love of my mom. When I saw her loving others, I saw her being the hands and feet of Jesus towards people. It made sense to me that if I was going to love others, that I would be the hands and feet of Jesus, too. When I was in junior high school, I told the Lord that I loved Him with all my heart and wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to serving Him. I had no idea what that would look like, but I was open to whatever He had for me.
In my adult life, I had to confront the old, "What are you going to be when you grow up?" question again. In my job searches, although I didn't see “love” listed in job descriptions, I focused on positions where I could serve the Lord, love people, and get paid. Being a teacher was still my default answer because I would often hear teachers talk about living a life of love and sacrifice. I did enjoy working at an elementary school for a couple of years, but in my heart, it still wasn’t quite right. I was still seeking to name my vocation—to define what I was called to do. I was still searching, so I volunteered with the junior high group at church. While I was there, I found myself frustrated that all the devotionals that I found for teen-aged girls seemed lacking, so I decided to take it upon myself to write a devotional for them. I realized that I had a gift for writing and the youth pastor would encourage my work. That experience provided some direction for my next step in life. I felt the Lord calling me to go to college, so I tried to find a school that would train me to write youth devotionals.
When I heard God calling me to go to college, I was like, "Sure, Lord, I'll go anywhere," but I was biased towards one specific factor. I loved the rain. Since it barely rained in California, I decided to see if I could find a school in a state where it did. Knowing that Portland, Oregon had a rainy reputation, I did a little digging and came across Multnomah University. At the time, Multnomah had a Journalism program, which I thought would make me a better writer, and everyone was required to double major in Bible and Theology, which I thought would help me know how to write about the Scriptures. Multnomah was everything that I was looking for.
After a semester in the Journalism program, my writing improved and I started to learn how to interview people. As the years went by, I discovered that I loved getting to know each person I interviewed and hearing their stories, but I wasn't very excited to write about them. Even though I was a good writer, I felt like their stories were sacred, even private. I realized that even if I wrote their stories well, there was no telling how others would perceive them. It wasn’t how I wanted to love the people that I was interacting with. All the while, my love for Scripture was growing along with a love for psychology and understanding how people worked. I realized that journalism was not what I wanted to do in the future, but at this point in my college career, it was a bit late to change programs.
In 2008, I finished my degree and started working at Multnomah as an Admissions Counselor. I loved having weighty conversations with students about their hopes, dreams, goals, fears, and challenges. Likewise, when I was at home, I loved walking with my housemates through the difficulties of life. Because of those experiences, I knew that whatever lay ahead, I wanted to understand how to help people navigate life and grow spiritually. At first, that desire led me to begin graduate school to earn my Master of Arts in Counseling (MAC) degree. However, after making it over halfway through the MAC program, I realized that I didn't want to be a licensed counselor, but I still wanted to help people. After all this time, I was still circling around the concept of loving others. I was still searching for a career path that would let me do what my heart was telling me to do. I decided to switch from MAC to pursue an M.A. in Pastoral Leadership degree.
Contrary to my deep desire to love and be loved, I was still single at this point in my life. During my time in seminary, I had a crush on a guy, and I remember that one of my professors, Dr. Val Clemen, made an incredible insight into my life during a mentor meeting. She said, "You have a great capacity to love. Maybe you shouldn't focus all your love on this one person. Instead, see who else in your life you could love." That hit me right in between the eyes. I spent a lot of energy on one person, who maybe didn't even know I existed when there were so many people in my life that I could easily shower with love. I've asked myself that question frequently over the years. Am I focusing too much on one person? Who else could I love and pour into at this time?
“I see every part of my life, even purposefully being a single woman, as a sacrifice for others. I am not a victim of failing to find Mr. Right. It’s a choice that I make.”
- Lisa Hezmalhalch
In 2015, I graduated with my M.A. in Pastoral Leadership with an emphasis in Counseling (thanks to my time spent in the MAC program). As I combined what I learned in the MAC program with what I was learning in seminary, I started to think that maybe I could get paid to love people after all. When a friend asked me the graduate version of that familiar, vocational question: "What are you going to do with your degree?" that is when a lifetime of questions, reflections, doubts, and fears all culminated in a freeing moment of clarity. I realized it wasn't about a certain career path that I was called to; it was about the person the Lord was calling me to be. I said, "I don't feel called to a particular job. I feel called to be a particular person that loves people." My desire to love, from the time that I was a child, was the real answer to my calling, career, and aspirations. Although a specific job was not revealed, a true purpose and pursuit took shape for me even though it remained intangible.
A couple of years ago, I read the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite Nun who died in 1897 at the age of twenty-four. In the book, she described how, in her love for the Lord, she wished that she could be a million different things for Him. In processing all the things she wished she could be, she realized that there was something central to each vocation: love. She realized that love is what she was called to be. As I read that, I felt like I was looking in a mirror. Although it's been a winding journey, I discovered that my central vocation in any job is love. I continue to wrestle through what that looks like today, and it often changes day-to-day and in different seasons, however, I practice loving others in every aspect of my life. During my career at Multnomah, I worked in Admissions, Student Life, Auxiliary Services, and Enrollment Management. The core of everything I did in all those jobs was to love students and my coworkers. No matter what position I had at Multnomah or will have in the future, even though it has never been in my job description, I am called to love.
I see every part of my life, even purposefully being a single woman, as a sacrifice for others. I am not a victim of failing to find Mr. Right. It’s a choice that I make. I embrace the gift that God has given me as the freedom to live for others. Currently, I live with a family and I get to love them in ways that I couldn't if I had a family of my own. I don't have a husband and kids at home to wait for me. If a friend is in need at the last minute, I can go and love them in practical ways. I can visit people. I can stay up late. I get to volunteer at church more often. I live the legacy of sacrifice that my mom lived before my eyes. More importantly, it's the legacy of sacrificial love that we have through Christ. He was on this earth for as long as he needed to be for us. Christ is our example of perfect love for others because He was willing to give up His very life. When I look at the cross, I see Love in action and I try to live my life likewise. My little sacrifices, in His strength, are just a piece of His big sacrifice for us.
It took me a long time to figure out that the thing that I was made for wasn't as concrete as I believed it should be. My biggest obstacle was that nobody was talking to me about being called to do something intangible. You don't often hear people say something like, "I just feel called to love, and that's it." The common sentiment around careers is, "I'm working on this degree so I can get this job and make money." I can’t even express how often I’ve wished that I could survive without money because it would free me to just love people. It is counter-cultural to shape your life and even your career around something other than earning a paycheck. In a society like ours, pursuing a career is a prized goal. I always felt like there was something different for me. I felt like there's something beyond that cultural expectation. Yes, I needed to earn a living to survive in life, but what am I doing to thrive in life?
I was uniquely made for something—not a job or a paycheck, but a deeper purpose in life. The way I love people doesn't look exactly like how my mom loved people or how St. Therese of Lisieux loved people. God created and gifted us differently. The journey towards discerning what we are made for doesn't have to look picture perfect or comparable to someone else even those you look up to. It will be tailored to who you are called to be and the particular way that you're made.
We often focus on tangible things that are easily broken, easily replaced, easily forgotten, and that eventually fade away. Titles and paychecks are a part of life, but sometimes the answer to what we are made for is far less tangible. When considering career paths and college aspirations, we each have the opportunity to reframe the questions around who we are and what we were made to do. Don't be afraid if what you are made for is intangible or is not fully defined for you. Sometimes, seeking after the tangible can distract and blind us from seeing God's purposes for our lives. Regardless of where we live and work or what our titles and bank accounts say, loving God and loving others is the “more” that we are all made for.