Discernment vs. Trying to Get It Right

As you know if you read this blog, I am discerning a religious vocation, which means that I feel the call to become a religious sister. A nun, actually, meaning that I am called to contemplative life.

Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul
http://stpatricksconventschool.blogspot.com
/2012/03/three-nuns-at-ball-game.html

Some folks, well many folks, still think of nuns as circa 1955 with flying buttresses on their heads, vows of silence, self-flagellation, and other eerie and dysfunctional behaviors. For certain, there were some practices that have been done away with. Others never really existed in the first place. 

Active apostolate sisters have been out in the world with and without modified habits for longer than you think. But contemplatives are still out there too, in monasteries both rural and urban. I encourage you to look around in your local diocese or archdiocese for women's monastic orders and get to know them by going to Mass there, or even staying over night in a guest room. 

Back to discernment... it's a journey, as I've posted about before. But it's also a journey that goes in two directions: outward and inward. 

Outward because a woman (or a man) is searching for the form of life that would best suit her, be it marriage, consecrated religious life, or singlehood. This entails meeting with religious, visiting various communities, participating in discernment events and retreats, having a spiritual director, and yes, even dating. These involve seeking experiences and information from outside oneself.

But there's also an inward spiral that's happening, and this is the part that I think is easy to overlook in the attempt to get it "right" or "figure out" God's will as if it were a puzzle. To me, the spiral is the best way to visualize this journey of love. The inward journey allows a person who is open to the promptings of the Spirit to learn more about the person's own deepest self. It isn't a walk in the park, this inward spiral, all butterflies and moonbeams and angel wings and glittery crosses. It means going to the dark places and walking in them with Christ. 

Shutting off these dark places or allowing them to be covered up with various dysfunctions will only lead to misery. It's a spiral because we will meet those dark places several times, in several manifestations. And as I've learned, those dark places will be presented in my relationships with others. The Spirit will make sure of this!

We mirror other people's "stuff" and they mirror ours. The question is, what do we do with that? When someone flies off the handle and has a temper tantrum, I recoil in disgust. But what about when I do the same thing? My history is wrought with a temper that has brought me no end of misery. As I got older, I saw that it was hurting others, and I did my best to manage it. It wasn't until I invited Christ into that very hurt place and started to see why my temper would flare that things started to shift for me. And it was from the actions of another person well in the grip of anger and temper that I was able to turn to Jesus and say, "Wow, dude. I don't want to be like that any more."

How does this relate to discernment? In learning about our deepest selves, our wounded selves, we can invite God into our experience - because that's where God wants to be! - and grow with grace into our best selves. And when we live and move as our best selves, we will naturally grow into the form of life best suited to each of us. We will know as God speaks to our hearts what we are made for, and as we heal and grow in grace, we will be able to walk in that path with others.

St. Catherine of Siena once said that if we are who we ought (who God made us) to be, we will set the world on fire. This speaks to the calling that each of us has to discern who God made us to be, and that includes discovering the dark places - our wounds - that beg for God's healing. In that healing, we will find our true selves. Both the outward and inward journey are necessary to discern anything in life, so it's important not to gloss over the dark places in the hopes of finding easy answers that won't satisfy our longings, and which won't release our unique gifts into the world.