When You Fear You’ve Missed Your Calling: Contemplative Prayer and the Questions That Remain

There is a particular kind of fear that shows up in quiet moments.

It sounds like questions that do not resolve.

Did I miss my calling? 

Did I take the wrong path ten years ago? 

Is it too late to become who I was meant to be?

Sometimes this fear comes after a big transition, when the dust has settled and life does not feel like we imagined. Sometimes it leaks in around the edges of a busy, successful life that looks “fine,” but does not feel like a fit. Sometimes it comes when we have lost something we loved and we do not know what comes next.

Wherever it comes from, the fear of a missed calling can hollow us out from the inside. We replay decisions. We anxiously scan for the “right” next move. We pray for answers and feel like we are speaking into a void.

This reflection is not going to end with a tidy formula for finding your purpose. It will not guarantee that you will suddenly feel at peace about every decision you have ever made.

What it will do is linger with that fear for a while, and explore one way of being with it that has, over time, opened some space in me and in others I sit with. A way of prayer that is less about fixing our past and more about learning to rest inside our present.

When Prayer Stops Working

For a long time, my prayer life was almost entirely made of words.

I brought my fears to the Divine in long, detailed reports. I asked for clarity. I rehearsed my worries about wasted time, wrong choices, and closed doors. I prayed for a blueprint: “Show me exactly what you want me to do, and I will do it.”

Sometimes that kind of praying can be a relief. It can feel good to get everything off your chest. But there came a point when those words started looping. I would say the same things, ask the same questions, and feel more tired when I was done than when I started.

I noticed something else too. The more I talked about my calling in prayer, the more I silently assumed that the Divine was disappointed with how I had handled it. I could feel myself working to win back favor, earn back time, convince the Divine to still “use” me.

It was like constantly trying to renegotiate a contract I feared I had already broken.

If you have ever prayed like that, you may know the exhaustion that follows. You might find yourself thinking, “I am doing everything I know to do, and I still feel lost.” Or perhaps you stop praying about it altogether because it only makes you more anxious.

For some of the people I walk with, the turning point comes when the words themselves start to feel thin. They realize that they do not need another speech. They need a place to rest.

What Contemplative Prayer Is (and Is Not)

Contemplative prayer is one of the words people use for that place of rest.

I do not mean a special, mystical state reserved for experts. I mean a simple posture of being with the Divine without needing to fill the space.

At its heart, contemplative prayer is:

- Stillness, at least on the inside, even if your body is walking or washing dishes. 

- Silence, not as punishment but as a gentle stepping back from constant commentary. 

- A resting attention, turned toward the Sacred Mystery that holds your life.

Sometimes a single word or short phrase becomes a kind of anchor for this attention. Sometimes it is no word at all, but an inner leaning toward Presence.

This is different from the way many of us first learned to pray. Instead of explaining, imagining, or debating with the Divine, contemplative prayer slowly moves us into something quieter, more like sitting at the shore of a deep lake than talking across a desk.

If spoken prayer is like bringing all the pieces of your life to the table to sort through them, contemplative prayer is like letting the pieces sink below the surface until only the water remains visible. The questions are still there. They have not been ignored. But they are no longer the only thing in view.

People who give their lives to this kind of prayer often describe it as a gift, not an achievement. You cannot force yourself into it by trying harder. You consent to it, gently, over and over, and it opens.

And while it does, something in the way we relate to our calling begins to change.

When Calling Meets Silence

One person I met with had carried regret for decades.

“I was offered a position when I was younger,” she said. “It felt like my dream job. I turned it down because I was scared of moving. I have spent my whole life wondering if that was my one chance, and I blew it.”

She had prayed about it many times. She had tried to convince herself that everything happened for a reason. It did not touch the ache.

So we did something different. Instead of dissecting the decision again, we sat together in quiet. She chose a simple phrase that helped her return when her mind ran away. When memories and self-accusation rose up, she did not chase them or push them down. She just kept returning to that quiet orientation toward Love.

At first, the old stories got louder. “You wasted it. You were a coward.” We found this was because she was starting to truly listen.

But something small started to shift. After several weeks, she said, “When I sit in the quiet, the memory is still there. The regret is still there. But I am noticing that there is something larger holding both me and that younger version of me. I keep feeling this sense: ‘I was there too. I did not leave you alone in that decision.’”

Nothing about her past changed. The job was still a job she did not take. What changed was the story that her worth hinged on that one moment, and that the Divine Presence had been conditional on her performing correctly.

In the stillness, she began to sense that her calling was not a single door she had once failed to walk through, but an ongoing relationship. Something alive, patient, and larger than her fear.

Contemplative prayer did not erase her questions. It gave them a new home.

What Trust Looks Like in the Dark

When we are afraid we have missed our calling, we usually want information.

We want a clear sign that we are back on track. We want the Divine to spell out what our next role, job, or ministry should be. We want confirmation that the years behind us were not a waste.

Contemplative prayer does not always provide that kind of clarity. Often, it feels like sitting in a dimly lit room where only the next small step is visible: stay, breathe, attend. It is natural in that way.

The trust that grows there is different from “I know exactly what comes next.” It is more like, “I do not know what comes next, but I am less convinced that my life can fall outside of Love.”

From that place, discernment starts to feel less like a test and more like a conversation.

We notice inner movements that had been drowned out by anxiety. A quiet joy when we imagine one path. A constriction when we imagine another. A surprising grief or longing that bubbles up when we stop trying to be practical.

In contemplative prayer, those movements have room to surface. There is no pressure to interpret them perfectly. We simply notice them in the presence of the One who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Sometimes what arises is not direction at all, but deep tiredness, or anger, or shame. This can feel like failure: “I came to prayer to get answers about my calling, and all I feel is rage at my old boss,” or “all I want to do is cry.”

In my experience, those are not distractions from discernment. They are often the very places that need attention before any meaningful sense of calling can emerge. Contemplative prayer gives those neglected parts of us a safe place to appear. It is a gift from the Divine to get to give them our attention.

We begin to see that the question, “What am I called to do?” sits on top of other questions:

Am I allowed to want what I want? 

Can I trust that the Divine is not waiting to punish me for choosing wrong? 

Is it possible that my life matters even here, in this ordinary place I did not choose?

Those are not problems to solve quickly. They are deep, human questions that deserve patient, quiet company.

Resting and Moving

One of the misunderstandings about more contemplative forms of prayer is that they are an escape from real life.

If I sit in silence long enough, the thinking goes, I will become detached, passive, unconcerned with the world’s needs or my own responsibilities.

Sometimes the opposite happens. When our inner life is never given space, our actions can become frantic or hollow. We keep doing and doing, secretly afraid that if we stopped, there would be nothing solid underneath.

People whose lives are immersed in service often speak of their need for both: unhurried time of simple presence, and concrete engagement with the suffering and beauty around them. Not as competing loyalties, but as different expressions of the same relationship.

You might notice this in small ways.

A parent who takes a few minutes of quiet before the children wake up, not to plan the day, but just to sit, sometimes finds a new tenderness for the very routines that used to feel like drudgery.

A nurse who pauses in stillness during a lunch break may feel refueled for the afternoon, not because the patients are easier, but because the work is no longer held alone.

A person in a demanding job who feels lost about their larger purpose may discover, in the quiet, a gentle courage to have one honest conversation they have been avoiding. That one conversation can change the shape of their work, or confirm that it is time to leave.

When rest and action keep informing one another like this, calling stops being a distant ideal and becomes something that takes shape inside the ordinary pattern of days.

When the Noise Does Not Go Away

It may sound as if contemplative prayer is a peaceful, uninterrupted experience.

Sometimes it is. More often, it is a bit noisy inside.

You sit in silence and immediately remember an email you forgot to send. You start wondering about money. You relive an embarrassing conversation from last week. You think about moving to another country. You worry again that you have wasted your life.

Most people assume that if their mind keeps chattering, they are “bad” at this kind of prayer, or that it is not for them.

I have come to see those recurring thoughts as something closer to visitors at the door. They knock, sometimes loudly. You do not have to drag them inside and interrogate them, but you also do not have to slam the door. You can quietly notice, “Ah, here is my fear about money again,” or, “Here is that old regret,” and then gently turn your gaze back toward Presence.

Over time, certain visitors do not just knock; they linger. A specific regret. A recurring image. A desire that will not go away, even after you try to talk yourself out of it.

Those persistent stirrings can become invitations for deeper reflection outside of the quiet space. They might prompt a conversation with a trusted friend, a counselor, or a spiritual companion. They might lead you to journal, or to pay attention to how those themes show up in your dreams or your body.

In that way, contemplative prayer and more active forms of reflection begin to weave together. The silence exposes what needs attention. Our daily life gives us material to bring back into the silence.

Little by little, a different picture of calling appears. It is not a single grand assignment that we either accomplish or miss. It looks more like a lifelong relationship in which our unique life, with its limits and possibilities, is slowly aligned with the Divine life that pulses beneath it.

For Those Who Feel it is “Too Late”

Some of the hardest conversations I have are with people who are convinced that their window for meaningful purpose has closed.

They say things like:

“If I had been braver in my twenties…” 

“If I had not stayed in that marriage so long…” 

“If I had gone back to school when I had the chance…”

Underneath the words is often a quiet verdict: “Whatever I was meant to do, it is out of reach now.”

I do not have an argument that can undo that verdict. What I have seen, though, is that when a person begins to cultivate some small space of contemplative attention, another voice slowly gets room to speak.

It does not shout. It does not deny the losses. It might sound more like:

“You are still here.” 

“I know the whole story.” 

“I have not stopped being with you.”

From that place, new callings can emerge that would never have made sense earlier in life. A person who once wanted a particular title may find deep meaning in mentoring younger colleagues. Someone who regrets not having children may discover a surprising joy in becoming a steady presence for nieces, nephews, or neighbors. A retired worker who feels useless might become a quiet anchor of prayer for their community.

None of these erase the grief of paths not taken. They do not “make up for” everything. But they are real. They carry weight. They arise not from scrambling to fix the past, but from listening here and now for what love invites.

Contemplative prayer does not promise that every dream can be recovered. What it can gently reveal is that the Divine has not exhausted the ways your life can matter.

A Way of Being with Your Own Questions

If you are reading this while the fear of a missed calling is close to the surface, it might be tempting to hunt for the one sentence that will solve it.

Instead, consider this post as an invitation to notice how you are holding the question itself.

When you think about your calling, do you feel your body tighten? Do you picture a Divine taskmaster with a checklist? Do you feel like you are always behind?

You could experiment with a different posture, just for a few moments at a time.

Instead of rehearsing the entire story of your life choices, you might simply sit, or walk, or look out a window, and let a single, simple attention rise: “Here I am.” Or, “You are here.” Or another phrase that points your awareness toward Presence rather than performance.

You might notice what surfaces in that quiet. Not to grade yourself on how “spiritual” it feels, but to pay honest attention to what is already in you.

If what rises is anger, or grief, or numbness, you do not have to push it aside. You might simply acknowledge, “This, too, lives in me,” in the company of the One who is not surprised by any of it.

Over time, this kind of gentle, consistent returning can soften the sharp edges around your calling. Instead of a verdict on your life, it can become a question you carry in relationship:

What is being asked of me now, in this season, with this body, this history, these limitations and gifts? 

Where, in all of this, do I sense even a small pull toward compassion, mercy, or gratitude?

You may not get quick answers. But sometimes, the way you hold the questions becomes its own form of calling.

A Quiet Closing

If contemplative prayer has a gift for those of us who fear we have missed our calling, it might be this:

It slowly shifts our attention from “What if I chose wrong?” to “Who holds me, even here?”

From “How can I make up for lost time?” to “What is quietly being offered in this moment?”

From “What job or role will prove that my life matters?” to “How is Love inviting me to live inside this day?”

You do not need special qualifications to enter that kind of prayer. You do not need to have your life sorted out first. You do not even need to be sure how you feel about the Divine. You need only enough willingness to be still, for a short while, and to aim your attention toward the Mystery that has already been paying attention to you.

If this kind of reflection resonates and you would like to receive future writings like it, you are welcome to subscribe. It is simply a way to stay in the conversation as we continue to explore calling, prayer, and the deep play of becoming more whole.

Live and Lead with Soul,

Ben Shoup