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Confession: I cringe at the term young adult. In my mind’s dictionary, it’s really just a catchy term describing the awkward years of life in which meandering through figuring out what to “do” is the norm. And in the realm of having and attempting a million different ideas for contributing to society in a unique and needed way, there will be aunts and friends and your parents’ friends and your bank teller constantly asking you for updates about the direction you are heading in life, always ending with the inevitable question,”What’s next?” And that is just in the secular world. As Catholics, we also add fancy terms like discernment and vocation.
Most of my twenty-something friends and acquaintances are in this boat, AKA the territory of the unsettled. We obtain degrees, begin new jobs year after year, and always seem to be in transition, all the while prayerfully and seriously desiring to become who the Lord created us to be. But this sincere eagerness to truly determine God’s will can sometimes turn into angst and hinder our ability to see where God is working in our lives right now.
I’m ready to do your will…just TELL me what it is!
Now I wish with all my might, that I could have, like Saint Therese, known and taken action at the tender age of 15 in pursuit of my vocation. But somehow, God chose to lead me down a very indirect and twisted road causing me to realize and appreciate with new depth that He really does write straight with crooked lines. And in the process of finding the straight among the rough and tumble lines of everyday life, I now find myself in the midst of active discernment with a beautiful religious community. For some of my friends, this obviously means I now have a direct line to knowing God’s will. (I don’t.) And that I can provide sound advice on discernment within their own lives. (Not really. I’m still waiting for a postcard from Him in regards to my own vocation.) But this is what I do know:
1. God is Love. And truth. And patience. And beauty. And everything that you yearn for most but sometimes can’t see through the fogginess of our society. And because He loves you, He wants you to be joyful.
2. Prayer is everything. Discernment is not a guessing game and if you are not in regular relationship with God, it becomes much easier to make choices based on selfish reasons. Be in communion with Him. Recieve the Sacraments regularly. Because He loves us (see #1) He gives us the means to draw close to Him.
A wise priest once told me in the midst of one of my unflattering-existential-Hamlet moments, that discernment cannot take place standing on a fence. Through prayer, you go in one direction and if it is not His will, as long as you are rooted in Him, He will turn you around. And sometimes the desire to follow God means having the courage to stand on the edge of a cliff and tell Him, “I’m going to jump and if it’s not what you want for my life, then catch me and turn me around.”