Discernment: the Wild Ride

I've been reading back through this blog, and I just have to laugh. This discernment process has been up and down and around in circles! OK, so there are some essentials that have not changed: I want to live a life consecrated to God, dedicated to God, dependent on God. I want to live stability, conversatio mora, poverty and chastity. Obedience, not so much, LOL -- no, really, obedience to God as He speaks in my heart, absolutely.

But the particulars? The path? Ay, ay, ay. I'm sitting here sipping a glass of wine -- thankfully I haven't had any violently upset stomach since the one that drove me to all of about 3 or 4 AA meetings a couple of months ago. Who knows what made me sick. I said I would go to 30 meetings, but I didn't ... I just wasn't there, ya know? Anyway, I don't think I'm an alcoholic, even though I should quit drinking because of poverty, and fasting, and fattening, and depressing, and etc, and I haven't actually quit drinking. I don't think I am an alcoholic, I just think I am undisciplined and self-indulgent. I went to the wine store today to buy wine for my cousin's party, and while I was there I grabbed a big handful of Smarties candies. Ate them all -- must have been 20 rolls -- one after the other, on my way to the party. Oh, Regina! I have the AA insanity, it's just not particularly tied to alcohol.

Well, and going back to how convinced I was that I would enter the convent, this time last year. That slipped away, even before I found out about Canon 603, that was just a happy reinforcement of the lifestyle I was already feeling my way towards.

And I haven't done that whole deep memory-dredging about my 20+ year-old sexual history. My spiritual director wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea, for one thing. And then I lost enthusiasm, too. Maybe I chickened out, took the easy way. Or maybe it was just emotion stirred up by a dream, and I took it too literally? Who knows.

In every case, a seed has been planted. I am not just zig-zagging, I'm circling. I come back to poverty & fasting over and over; the same with penance, and virtue, the same with sloth vs. holy leisure, the same with society vs. solitude. None of these "false starts" are really dead ends. None of them are even false starts! I get frustrated with myself because I make a commitment and then turn back on it (like 30 AA meetings). But then I think, maybe I am too glib about making commitments, given how my whole life, my vocation and my whole definition of myself is in flux these days. Take it easy, girl! All in God's time, all in God's way, no rushing, no pushing. Let it be, let it happen, let it unfold.

Ya -- it's past my bed time. Watch over me, Lord, I am in your hands.