Discerning God's Will

Change.

That word looks kind of big and lonely up there. Change is a word that immediately instills an emotion. Could be hope, fear, longing, excitement... it has a way of affecting people.

Change is inevitable. The question on my heart is how to discern the Will of God through change. What change is best for me? How many things in my life need to change? If God's will is for my good, shouldn't any and all changes make me happy?

Okay, before I get carried away with questions here, let's talk about the theme. How does a person (like me) discern the will of God?

My mother always takes us to scripture. I tend to bury my heart in the psalms and let the prudence of Holy Church speak to me through the rhythm of the Liturgy fo the Hours. It's amazing how something written so long ago, before Christ even walked the earth can hold so much bearing on life today. Filled with the angst of life on earth and the hope of a lover, waiting for his journey to eternal life. I always find it telling to my situtation, which psalms resonate in my heart. Am I being surrounded by my enemy and betrayed by a friend? Am I lost in a barren land? Am I a slave, begging deliverance? Am I a soldier, fighting for my king? Am I signing a song of victory? And that's just the psalms, don't get me started on St. Paul's letters or the Gospel of St. John.

Another means is to use the fruits of the holy spirit as a guide. Does this decision fill me with peace? Does it enable me to better hope in fortitude, and trust in abandonment? My best friend, whom I've known and loved since I was 8, is getting married. Before I even met her fiance, I knew he was the one. There was an overwhelming peace about her and all she did (there still is) that being with her fiance makes her more who she was made to be. It's a beautiful thing.

Receiving counsel is another means to know if a decision is God's will. It doesn't have to just be from a spiritual director, although definitely seek out their opinion! God places wise people in our lives, people who know and love us, and also want what's best for us. Sometimes these friends can see the tree in the middle of the forest. I am blessed with both caring friends and a loving and supportive family, who isn't afraid to ask the hard questions.

These are a few of what I would deem to be the normal means to dsicover of God's Will.


I was thinking the other day and I would like to propose a maybe more non-conventional means. Often times what I neglect to accept is that living God's Will for my life is hand-in-hand with my cross. Rather, the cross He wishes me to carry. (Exhibit A: I'm still single! Definitely did not choose this cross for myself.) So, sometimes to follow God's will is accompanied by a certain fear of the unknown. From someone who lives her life in transition, I am still afraid of fear. Still afraid that the cross God has chosen for me will be too much to bear. Fear is such a human reaction. There's nothing wrong wtih this human reaction, the key is to move past that reaction into a divine trust in God's Will.

This point, where we step off the ledge into the uknown of God's Will, is that final stage of discernment. To take our prayer, counsel and discernment into action, trusting that God's plan will sustain you, even in the face of the Cross.

Lord help me embrace my cross!

Peace

“If peace is God’s gift and has its source in him, where are we to seek it and how can we build it, if not in a deep and intimate relationship with God?”

-Bl. Pope John Paul II-
Address to the representatives of the world religions.
Assisi, Jan 24, 2002

I love calendars, schedules, and planners. One of my favorite calendars is one on my desk. It is filled with quotes from my beloved Bl. John Paul II. From time to time one of the quotes resonates with me so deeply that I have to write a blog post on it.

Peace is a word that I love. My spiritual director begins each of our meetings by greeting me with "Peace," and the very word, spoken aloud, settles my heart and soul. I have a good friend, who through all of the changes of her life, has impressed me with her trust in God's plan and the peace that she posesses. My mother posesses that calm and quiet peace about her as well.

I long for peace in my heart. There is an extreme difference between peace and complacency. At times I am complacent, where I don't care about my troubles. Probably the opposite of peace, and yet deceitful enough to mask itself as peace. For if I don't care about my troubles than they can't distress me. So for a time I am lulled into a sort of counter-productive calm.

Peace is a total and utter trust in God's plan and faith in its fulfilment. So it's not that a person chooses not to care about his troubles, but that his troubles really are weightless. It's the knowledge that even amidst troubles, God's glory shines and finds its fulfillment.

“If peace is God’s gift and has its source in him, where are we to seek it and how can we build it, if not in a deep and intimate relationship with God?”

The Traditional Birthday Reflection Post

I ran late to Mass on the morning of my birthday. I got there in time for the Gospel, so was very thankful I could receive Jesus on the day of my birth. I stayed a little extra after Mass to read the readings I'd missed. Good thing I did because God had a great message for me on my birthday:

Isaiah 48: 17 - 19
17	Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: "I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
18	O that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
19	your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me."

I'm not often frank on my blog. I dance around what's on my heart, hinting and posing questions that I then try to answer. This reading spoke to my heart in ways that only my Beloved could. The truth about me is that I spent a year with the Community of St. John to discern whether I had a vocation to religious life. At the end of the year I discerned that religious life was not how God was calling me to love or how he was calling me to be light to the world. Praise the Lord! But that started me on an infinitely harder journey filled with a desire for something more and an obvious time of waiting on God's timing.

This year I have said goodbye to three of my friends who have left to enter convents. The other two in this picture are in India and Texas waiting to enter at the word 'go.' It's been so beautiful to see how God has spoken to each of their hearts differently, and called them forth to be who he created. They still have a long journey to vows, but they're most certainly living God's will for them. How beautiful! How difficult it is to remain here waiting and hoping in God's plan for my life. How difficult it is to remain in the fire of desire.

"O that you had hearkened to my commandments! 

Then your peace would have been like a river..."

Such a beautiful challenge on my birthday, God calling me forward and beyond my limitations toward his heart. I'm of the firm conviction that God is using this time of waiting to prepare me for the trials of married and family life. Looking back I certainly wasn't ready for them when I was in college, and even looking back one year I can see how I was not ready. If only I would listen!!!! It is so hard to live by God's laws. To be humble and obedient to Him, to remain faithful and always listen for His voice in my daily life.

"Let me rise then and go about the city, through the streets and squares; let me seek him whom my soul loves." I sought him but I did not find him. 

Song of Songs 3: 2

Oh that I might so desire God's will that I actively seek him each day. If you think of it, my desire for God's will would compel me to be most myself. It's that kind of desire that compelled the saints to live heroic virtue. It's that kind of desire, which will build a culture of life and a civilization of love. As young people we are given a beautiful gift in our unique ardor for life. For my birthday, God woke me up to my unique call to live life now, living in hope of what is to come in His plan for my life. Then peace shall abound.

Checking In

I recently went to confession. The strength of this beautiful sacrament always fills me with awe.

One of my many goals is to discover how to live each stage of my life well. To be fully alive throughout my whole life. It's a hard mountain to climb and my second winds come from Confession. It's not always easy to continue to climb when I don't know how much further until I reach a peak.

This week the priest spoke with me about trusting God. He touched on the very thought that it's hard to always trust God when it's uncertain what the plan is. The wisdom he gave me was that God's plan is never static, it's constantly moving forward, and if you're living life fully alive you are always in God's plan. He advised that I take some time in prayer to check in to see where God is moving in my life.

God is moving in the silence. In this non-fulfillment of my vocational desires he is moving.

We are always called to hunger and thirst for truth, for fullness, for life itself! This paradox of not being satisfied with where I'm at and yet resting in the knowledge that His grace is sufficient is filling me right now. The audacity of hope is not something that's easy to define.

The challenge is to be fully alive and fully myself in all things. Never to hide behind fear or complacency, but dive fully into life. This trust that I so yearn for must be propelled by my firm resolve and desire for the fullness of life. If I am always striving to be more myself, I shall always be walking in God's plan for my life. The time will come and His timing will be better than my idea of perfection. For even when I do discover the fullness of my vocation the next journey will begin to discover how to live well that call.

Hope: It's a lifestyle choice.

Toward an End

As days of my life continue forward, each marching into the next to the same rhthym, that same beat, I sometimes wonder where I'm going. To move forward and to move toward are two different ideas. To simply be moving forward doesn't necessarily imply an end goal, merely life as usual. I so much desire to be moving toward an end.

I would like to be out of vocation limbo, but I have no idea when God is going to reveal that particular end to me. Endless days of the unknowing make it hard to feel like you're moving toward anything. It can wear on a person, and without the proper guidance can run a person into the ground. It happens to some of us whether we'd like it to or not. Which is when we need to throw ourselves even more deeply, more passionately and with more conviction into the burning love Christ has for us.

The beautiful thing about God's creation is that he created each with a plan. Praise the Lord that this doesn't exclude me! If God created each with a plan, then to discover the fullness of that plan, each must be fully alive. My spiritual director was very encouraging (before he left me for the whole summer) in that to encounter God's plan for my life all I need to do is go where I am most fully myself, and ergo most fully alive. Do things that are mine to do, and live this stage of my life waiting for the fulfilment of my vocation with the same zeal as when I encounter my end.

To do this I need to be detached from those 'familiar' things that will pull me down into a pattern of predictable nothings. Each day is comprised of choices, shall I go for a walk and breathe fresh air OR sit on my couch and watch another tv episode online? When spelled out like that the choice seems obvious, I would be more awake if I went for a walk. If I can come up for a million reasons to remain asleep and join couch potatoes annonymous, you can imagine how many more reasons I give myself for why I'm not in the chapel every day.

The truth is that I cannot fight this battle alone and lately I've been trying to. Not in anything like active rebellion but those small choices I make every day that rob me of zeal and doom me to mediocrity. If I want to be moving toward my vocation, then I need to live my life walking toward it. Daring to choose to embrace my life as it is and dive into it with full abandonment.

For the love... of vocation

I have a calendar on my desk, mostly to remind me what day it is while I'm doing my bookkeeping, but also as a moment of inspiration. It's the "Bl. Pope John Paul II: Words to Live By" calendar and I love it. Yesterday there was a quote that resonated with me:

"Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man an woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being." (Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation: On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, November 22, 1981.)

This one paragraph is packed with meaning and depth, as is all of Bl. Pope John Paul II's writing. Our late holy father reminds us of our responsibility to love in truth. For written in our very nature as human is the capacity to love. The unique treasure of self-gift, to put another before your own wants and needs, is inseperable from our call to live our vocations.

A monk, Br. Isaiah CSJ, once said to me that, "Every vocation is a vocation to love." His words have stayed with me over many years of my life. How simple the answer of love, how complex the question of how am I called to love? It's the journey of discovering your vocation.

For me, I know how I am called to love, the problem is that I'm waiting for the fullfilment of my vocation. Who am I to argue with God's timing? The beautiful thing about love is its freedom to grow. Even though my vocation isn't standing tangibly before me, I am still called to grow in love and to be fully myself in the expression.

Bl. Pope John Paul II just gave me a friendly reminder to never say "It's not time yet." The fullness of life is in your ability to be who you are.

"Be who you are and you will set the world on fire." -Catherine of Sienna

Zeal

I wrote before Lent that my resolution was to Live Life again! Lent has come and gone and the Easter Season is over. Somehow my flawed and very human attempts to refocus and rediscover a drive for life led me to the heart of God's will for my life.

God wills that I live life. Now that I've been led there, it all seems so simple, but the journey has been quite the experience. Each day I am faced with small choices, moments where I can decided to surrender my will into the Father's hands or keep it for myself. I will be the first to say that I do not understand the Father's will for my life! Makes surrender a little more difficult, yet he asks it of me anyway.

I met with my spiritual director recently. Our meetings are always a delight but this last one was healing and challenging all at once. Fr. Nathan asked me where I feel most alive? Good question. For someone who is still in vocation limbo, trying to define moments where I feel most alive is difficult at times. To go off what I said in my last post a little bit, I found myself facing the desires of my heart again and again.

Did I really want it? Do I really want to allow the desire for the fulfillment of my vocation run through me? To do so would require that I accept the stage in life I'm in and move forward anyway, even though I don't know what the end is going to look like. My desires are so strong and the fire of my heart is burnign so steadily that I fear that if I let loose the horses they may ravish me. What does it mean to truly wait in anticipation: to allow the fire of desire burn away your imperfections and ideals into a reality that you do know yet?

I may not know what the end is, but I can say confidently now that I do know what it's like to be alive. My sleeping soul is awake and ready for God's will. To discover what His will is exactly, I am called to be fully alive and fully myself every day. Changing and growing toward God's plan, embracing who He created me to be and the mission He has placed on my heart.

"Make haste my beloved for I am sick with love." (Song of Songs) Yet I will wait in the flames of desire.

Desire

Some thoughts about my banner.

The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Let the hearer say, "Come."
Let the one who thirsts come forward,
and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water."

Revelation 22:17

Well, first I should walk you through my thoughts whenever I read this verse. For any of the people reading this who has ever done Lectio, or a Bible Study with me, you can probably imagine the sound of my voice... out of control.

We've got the Spirit and the bride, as this verse begins. St. John shoots us back to the incarnation. Our Lady is always in John's heart. And then they say "Come." The movement required of this verse is striking. They're calling us forward. They're not going to make us move, just invite us to join them.

Here comes the good stuff, "Let the one who thirsts come forward." Ugh!!!! Love it! They're calling everyone onward, but only the ones who thirst come forward. The great thing is that it gets even better, "Let the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water." Not only do you need to be thirsty for it, but you have to desire it to receive the gift.

This verse has been growing on me, or should I say challenging me to grow? God has been softening my heart. It takes time and is filled with the burning pain of longing for more. He's showed me, slowly, over time and giving me the strength to desire the gift. The beautiful thing I've discovered is as I open myself to desiring God's plan, He takes it and makes it more beautiful and perfect than I could have on my own. The desire growing and changing each day, carrying me deeper into His love.

It takes a choice, will I move toward God or not? Will I have the audacity to desire the fullness of life? Can I stay on the fire of His love? Can I move forward?

Let the hearer say, "Come."

Embers

"I came to cast fire on the earth and how I wish it were already blazing."

Luke 12: 49

Pentecost is coming this weekend and the fact that this just dawned on me today explains a lot about my thoughts these days: all over the place.

I recently helped run audio for the St. John Summer Conference, put on by the Community of St. John in Princeville, IL. The conference itself is meant to help young adults go deeper in their faith. I've been around the Community of St. John since I was 16, and I learned early not to settle into complacency with them. "Same old retreat..." The schedule may be the same, but it's never the same retreat.

I'm blessed that I have the skills necessary to monitor audio levels and enter into prayer. I may not always be able to split my attention, but I was able to find enough moments of calm to give God my full attention this weekend. And boy is He moving!

I came away from each day of the retreat with my heart pulled in new and deeper directions. He called me to come and rest, but I feel like I'm getting a spiritual workout these days. He is asking me to trust Him with my heart. I've spent so many days thinking I could protect it myself under frail fingers that opening them is terrifying. All I had to do was ask, and not only has He taken my fear, but He's been remodeling. "Yes, that's right, knock down that wall right there, we're going to start over." Beep, beep, beep. A truck backs up and the pendulum swings into those moss encrusted walls.

PAINFUL! "Shoot Lord, be nice! St. Anthony, talk to Him, will you?" Also thoughts of "I'll tell your mom on you!" but Our Lady is already here, she's been holding my hand while I watch the destruction. Even while writing this, I can't help but smile, because the joy of the reconstruction far exceeds the pain I'm suffering now. And then it dawned on me that Pentecost is this weekend, and the anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit has taken me. It seems God wants to make a little extra room for the Holy Spirit to move around in me. I am filled with hope.

"Tongues as of fire settled upon the apostles." Acts 2:3

The image of fire is standing out strikingly in my mind's eye today. It's the only facsimile to what's going on in my heart. Consumed by fire. There is a reflection that my spiritual director is fond of using when wrapping up a campfire. By this point the stars are at full shine and the only thing illuminating the front field is the glow of the embers. Father compares the embers to the fire of God's love, burning off all the imperfections, giving heat and light. He says it more eloquently than I ever could, but the image is striking.

What pain and what joy, to be consumed by the fire of God's love. Saints like St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross knew it well. I know I haven't reached any lofty heights of contemplative prayer, but the spirit of silence is setting me ablaze. God is moving the walls of my heart and He's given me the grace to watch.

I was not expecting the pain. It's not like breaking your heart, it's a consuming and sweet desire to allow Christ to do what He wishes. I've been praying for patience, so of course during this time Christ is testing my desire for that virtue. He's keeping me discombobulated, trusting from day to day that His love is sufficient and His will is perfect.

The hard part is staying on the fire.

"Did that hurt?"

I was back in Iowa a couple weeks ago and Roman and I were "taking turns" with my computer. I would look at this or that and then after three seconds he would want to play with the keyboard. One of the pages I went to was my blog. When I opened it, Roman asked "Did that hurt?" I didn't know what he meant but then he pointed to my old banner. I tried to explain that the pens I'd superimposed weren't really scratching my face, but he didn't really get it. Needless to say it was time for a change.

We're at that point in Lent where our Lenten sacrifices start to hurt. Slowly giving up caffeine entirely is starting to make me drag a little, which is making it harder to get up for Mass, which is making it harder to focus. etc. etc. etc. I'm sure you have you're own "the frog ran from the cat, who ran from the dog, who ran from the pig, who ran from the cow..."

The true test of Lent happens in these moments. Yes, there are moments where I fail and watch tv shows on my computer even though I said I wasn't going to. The question is, do I try again? Refusing to let the weight of the world pull me down into nothingness is why Lent is so beautiful. Each day I can choose to love Christ through giving him my failings and asking him to make them new.

The mystery of the cross is my nephew's question, "Did that hurt?" The answer of course is yes, but the beauty is that Christ thirsted so much for my love, that he chose the cross! That was his perfect act of love for my soul. I'm so used to my comfortable life that when these little offerings start to hurt and I'm face-to-face with my own weaknesses, I tend to say "tomorrow."

I pray every day for Christ to help me choose the cross with Him.

In the words of my friend, Graceanne, said with an Irish accent: "Joyous March to ya!"

Full Throttle

I was taping some receipts together today at work to make copies of them. One of my more glamorous and illustrious tasks during the day. This is usually the part where I think about reasons why I'm not where I'm supposed to be.

Today I was filled with a simple joy. It might be because the weather outside is so delightful. Birds singing, sun shining, and it's still breezy. It might be because I'm more active now that it's nice outside, I've taken a walk every day for a week now. It might be that I've kicked the caffeine haze from my slow downward slope of giving it up and now feel awake and refreshed in the morning.

Though all those reasons are good, the only one that can really explain my joy is that Christ is once again the center of my day. Go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor from your shock at this statement.

For so many months I've been walking around in a daze. Going to daily Mass because I know it's good for me. Oversleeping a morning one, so straggling into an evening Mass when I'm tired, cranky and hungry. It's so easy for me to justify my lack of zeal and attention by a few simple words "at least I'm here." HA!

You do not make it to heaven by saying "at least I'm..." Not good enough. I realized today that my joy came from the attention I was able to stoke up for Mass this morning. My heart was open and thirsty and Christ certainly filled me up. These rare moments are glimpses of what my life could be like if I really let Him drive.

I wish I could live every day full throttle.

Living Life

I am the gate, if anyone enters through me he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

John 10:9-10

I know some of you have been waiting to hear what I have decided to do for Lent. Simply put, I have decided to Live Life!

If you're like me, you pause and wonder at that statement. It may not be a list of specific things I'm giving up and another list of things I'm adding into my day, but this Lent I choose to live. I've decided that it's my goal, but I'm still discovering what that means. It's part of my journey through the desert.

Last Lent I mentioned that the desert was a place where God calls us to himself and renews us. It's a place of temptation and victory, a place of granted promise and an intimate place God can speak words of truth to us.

Taking that with me more deeply this year, I am confronted with life itself. Do the daily choices I make lead me to live life abundantly? Probably not. Lent, itself is a journey. It's not about succeeding the first day, but challenging yourself to constantly grow throughout the 40-days.

Some things I've seen the need to work on:

• Waking up in the morning! so I can go to Mass early instead of late when I'm tired.
• Giving more time to God in prayer each day.
• No more tv-shows on my lap top in the evenings.
• And so much more.

Praying for everyone's Lent, please pray for mine.

Advent

It's Advent again! That along with the idyllic snowfall outside my window that seems to hang in the air gives me a lot of joy.

I feel like my life can be measured by Advents come and gone. I have discovered so much about myself and life since the last Advent. Now that the days of Advent have come again the anticipation of the coming of Christmas fills and drives life.

I've been with my sister-in-law during the month before she's given birth to my beautiful nephews. The knowledge that after eight months, she would finally see the face of her babies gave RuthAnn such a quiet joy in anticipation. Amidst the nesting and long moments of waiting there are also the natural tendencies of human nature. RuthAnn is a beautiful example of the feminine heart and its genius, her love for her unborn babies is apparent throughout these days. For the human heart, it is hard to wait, especially for things that we long for in anticipation.

If my sister-in-law can be such a beautiful example of authentic femininity and what it means to wait for Christ's birth, how much more so the Blessed Virgin. Our Lady is one of my favorite people to speak of. She possesses virtue perfectly. What does it mean to wait perfectly? To know that the life inside of you is destined to save the world by the wood of the cross and to say yes in confidence?

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to trust in God's plan and His timing. Waiting is not natural to human desires. Yet, Mary's "Fiat," her "Yes" shows me so much about what it means to trust in God's plan. If Mary could say yes to the death of her son for my sake and yours, it sends a chilling awe through me at the knowledge of my own dignity. Christ desired that I be here in this time for a purpose. Just because I don't know what that is, does not mean that He is not already fulfilling it. Moment by moment, I endeavor my own fiat, asking Our Lady to purify it through her own.


May the anticipation of Advent enliven your heart and show you what it means to be loved.