Dear Kristin, 

You're wonderful! You've put your finger on something major. I think you have put into words what a lot of other readers are thinking and going through, and I am sure they are thanking you right now for saying it so clearly and honestly. I just hope I can answer in a way that will help you and them.  

First off, you have to understand how we are made. We are much more in tune with the world around us than with spiritual things. Through our senses we see, hear, feel, touch, smell, talk, enjoy all those things that go on around us. Anything else seems too abstract and not really real. That is why when all our friends are going to a certain movie and our parents say we can't, we don't readily see why, we just want to do what everyone else is doing, and have fun with them.  

But when we start considering what is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, we enter into a new dimension of reality, and sometimes it means we part ways with people we thought were our friends. As we mature humanly we put less emphasis on what our senses and feelings tell us, and what is right and good becomes more important in our life.  

On top of this our faith brings us into a completely different and new reality, way beyond the grasp of our senses. If you have faith, you know that what you receive in Communion is not bread but the Body of Christ, and even though you can't see or taste the difference, you treat it differently, you adore it because it is Christ really present.  

Our faith tells us the truth about our life, why we are here on earth, what matters, what is most important, how Christ has loved us. But the big problem for us is that we don't reach faith through our senses. A chocolate sundae is always going to exert a certain appeal that any abstract spiritual principle, no matter how beautiful it might be, just cannot seem to match in the same way. That is just the way God made us. 

Now let's get back to your question. What you are in the middle of is the struggle we all have of letting go, putting what pleases our senses into perspective, realizing that there is another dimension to happiness that is much deeper than what appeals to us superficially. We can't imagine there is more than what is immediately evident to us; it doesn't make much sense to us on first impression, though our faith tells us differently.  

So I would say that what you are going through is not primarily a struggle with a vocation, but the struggle involved in maturing spiritually, in beginning to put Christ in first place, and practicing trust in him that he is all that matters, that he will give us true happiness. No matter what your vocation is, you have to cross this threshold in your life. (A married person promises to love the other 'for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health'. Aren't we talking about the same thing here?).  

And so my advice is: don't focus specifically on the vocation now. Read the Gospel and tell Christ that you want to get to know him, and love him. Ask for this grace. It is the center of our faith, and the only real problem we have to solve. All the rest will take care of itself once you begin to get to know and love Christ. Then you will discover happiness and peace in your conscience, and you will taste what only he can give.