Following Where God Leads

Even though my children are still very young, I bring up the topic of vocations with them on a regular basis. One day I was discussing the priesthood with them. I was telling them how priests give up marriage in order to dedicate themselves solely to serving God and others. Six-year-old David popped his head up.

"What happens to their person?"

"What person?" I asked quizzically.

"The person they were supposed to marry."

David is very concerned about finding the right person to marry. As for the priests, I told him I didn't think that they had a person.

A seminary student was speaking to the children this morning at mass about his own calling. He asked them how many of them had ever thought about becoming a priest or a religious sister. No one raised his or her hand. He told them he understood that it wasn't a very popular option. He said when he was young he never raised his hand, either. He encouraged them to think about it, though, and talk to people about the possibility of religious life.

With my own children, I encourage them to pray to God to make the right decisions for their lives. I don't know what God wants from them. I tell them to try to listen for what God is telling them to do. At the moment, David tells me that God is telling him to be a toy maker. Maybe He is. Four-year-old Isaac claims that he is never getting married and is going to live one street away from me so that he can still come home for breakfast. We have lots of time for them to figure it all out.

Trying to figure out what God wants of us is not always an easy thing. As a child, I wanted very much to be a cloistered nun. There is a Dominican monastery nearby which my mother took me to often. I always felt at home there. It was, and is, so beautiful and peaceful. I could imagine nothing better than spending my life there and serving God.

Then, puberty hit and I discovered boys. Any thought of a religious vocation was put on the back burner. As I got older, I would take out the idea and dust it off a few times, but there was always a man in the picture and marriage seemed like it was my future. I prayed every day for years and years to marry whom I should when I should. Even that decision wasn't easy. I was engaged twice before I met and married my husband. I truly believe it was only due to my prayers that I ended up where I belonged. God helped me marry the right person for me.

Yet, my desire to serve God never left me. It just took a different route than the life as a nun that I imagined as a child. I would go on to get a master's degree in theology. I got the degree for personal reasons, simply to learn more about God. I never thought that I would put it to use. Then, after the birth of my children, I felt called to start writing in order to help others, especially women, make their relationship with God their first priority. I have been doing that ever since. I feel that in my marriage and in motherhood and in my work, I am where God wants me to be for right now. In the future? Who knows? I will keep praying for myself and for my children that we will follow where God leads.