First off, this is more of my own thoughts. I don’t have the answers here, but I thought my reflection might be worth posting.
Today I found out a good friend of mine from college is engaged! I am so happy for her!
Emily is one of the more remarkable women I’ve ever met. She was a girl on campus who when you’d talk to about her to other people you’d say “She’s the one that looks like our Blessed Mother” even though she’s tall, blond and pale. It was the way she held herself, her loving gaze. She lived out so many virtues that I long to live out. I tend to feel like I’m blundering my way through, and at times coming across as cold and blunt. But Emily has such a graceful smile. She looked at you with love. It was so simple.
In other ways, we were very much alike. While I would have never guessed it up her, in my private conversations with her, I discovered that we both cared way too much about what other people thought of us. We were prone to perfectionism and shyness. In some ways, Emily seemed to express to me that she felt she was hiding behind her shy pleasantness. We both had so many similar fears and I remember being completely astonished when she expressed that she admired me as well, this bumbling sister who could never get up in time to go to Thursday morning household Mass.
Admittedly, I reacted to the news of her engagement first with excitement and then with a twinge of jealousy. How come she’s found a husband? Emily was the one who was going to join a Carmelite convent in CA where her older sister is. Granted she left school before graduation to join early and then surprised us all by returning. The vocations director had recommended that she first finish school. She graduated and moved back home instead of the convent and sad to say I haven’t kept much in touch since.
Meanwhile, I found out that another household sister of mine, Katie, is entering her noviciate in the CFRs. My first semester at FUS, Katie lived next door to me. After asking a bunch of my friends about possible rides to the airport for getting home for springbreak, I found out Katie was on the same flight as I was. That summer we both ended up walking Crossroads, a pro life walk across the country, though we were on separate teams.
When I met her, she seemed primarily focused on marriage. She visited convents and was going through a process of discernment, but she always came across to me that her preference was to be married. Once we were in household together, I would say we never really got that close. She shared a few things with us about her discernment process. I knew bits here and there, and I do remember her dating a guy and being frustrated that she lacked peace with her. She longed to be closer to God and felt like the guy was more of a distraction.
In her testimony on the CFR website, she writes: “I transferred out to Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH in 2000 and pursued a degree in nursing. It was during my first year that I began to feel “the call.” Questions about motherhood, marriage, missionary and religious life started to arise in my heart. I started to visit religious sisters around Steubenville (now that I finally met Sisters!), but my heart was still closed to hear all God wanted to say… I was too afraid! I just wanted to get the “discernment” over with so I could move on with my life. “God, what do You want? What is Your will for me? You know best, so, all that needs to happen is for You to tell me and then let’s move on!” I’d say. The only reply I’d get to that was, “Katie, what do you want?” And so, this dialogue went on for a few years… but little did I know that Jesus was stripping me of my false perceptions of marriage, religious life and ultimately myself, so that I could come to know my heart of hearts.
After four years of intensely struggling with the fear of being called to religious life… after almost being engaged and running to every other outlet to escape my inner restlessness… I finally gave up the fight. I was asked to join a friend to visit the CFR sisters and agreed to go only on the basis to see New York City after the retreat… But, during this three-day “Come & See,” God outpoured His graces and revealed to my heart His Truth… He has been calling me to be His alone!”
When I was reading her discernment I felt a little like it was talking about me. The whole fear of being called. The stubbernness of wanting to tell God “Don’t call me.” I may want longingly to ultimately be with Jesus, my beloved. I may want to pass on the faith, pray for people, live a truly devout life and have my butt kicked with discipline. But as soon as I start seriously thinking about it, I …even now I start crying. It used to be before that the desire to have my own children to raise. Not other people’s children to teach but children to teach and raise in the faith from infants to adulthood. Now its no longer just children. Its the idea of a husband. I want one so badly, so strongly. I’ve been dreaming of my wedding since I was 4.
I know I can’t force God to give it to me. I’ve been in one relationship my entire life. The men I have been interested in have never pursued me. I’ve been praying for a more placent heart and I feel it is more content than its ever been in my life. But I still want to dream of marrying, of it being someday. Having that hope that someday God will give me the a wonderful husband and children.
If I die without Him giving it to me, than I know I will have my Lord in Heaven. Everything that appeals to me about religious life, can I not have it in marriage? Can I not grow closer and closer to God? Can I not volunteer at my parish and pray for people’s spiritual journey? Can I not go to daily Mass and pray the liturgy of the hours? Can I not go on spiritual retreats?
It seems the only thing that makes religious life appealing to me at all is that I’d rather be a religious than a single person forever. I feel like the vocation of a single person is like working for a temp agency.
Yet if God is calling me to religious life, and I’m stubbernly saying no, will he keep me in this temp field forever till I finally give in and so “All right. Religious Order it is.”
God, if you want me to join a Religious Order, than there has to be some desire for it in my heart besides simply the fear of being alone and single.
I know I shouldn’t be closed to religious life. And I’ve been told that you can’t properly discern when you feel under pressure. When I ask God in prayer, “Are you going to give me a spouse?” I get no response, or just a sort of nudge telling me not to look so far ahead, not to be anxious, not to worry, to focus on how I’m to serve Him now and to work for Him in the present.
So off to my temp assignment (which I feel like the single life primarily is. The freedom of having short lived temporary assignments by God). If He wants me to be a religious, He needs to make me restless on my path…a restlessness that finds peace in religious life. The only type of restlessness I have now is the anxiousness and fear that I will never been married.
