Worthy of the Call

Do you know what's great about the beginning of a new year? You get to start over. You don't have to repeat old mistakes, and you're even encouraged to think of how you can change and do better this time around. It's life's way of saying you get another shot at this, and it's a little bit of new hope.

I've never really been one to set goals for myself; it just seemed like a waste of time to think of something I wanted to spend more than a couple of days getting done, and then resolve to keep myself on track to do it. Even new year's resolutions seemed sort of pointless, and the only reason I kept my Lenten sacrifices before last year was a vague sense of divine repercussion if I didn't. This year is different. This year, the real world has started bearing down on me, and I can't really avoid the necessity of laying out things that have to be accomplished in what all of a sudden seems like it is going to be a very short year.

All at once, I have an awful lot to do, and no time at all. Or, it seems that way, at least. So this year, I have made resolutions. Real ones, that I intend to keep, in order to prepare myself for the firestorm of my junior and senior years. Academic resolutions, while important (especially considering my current plans for grad school), are not what I want to talk about here. More difficult, and I think, more important, are the spiritual resolutions I've made to prepare myself for the tentative start of my discernment process next year. These are things that still frighten me to think about, but such is the occasional unpleasantness of life, that we must sometimes think about and plan for those things we would rather not.

Looking at this year, I'm thinking of what I'm going to do as discernment prep. Last year, I was commanded firmly not to discern because I was too new to the faith, and my foundation wasn't yet strong enough to handle the pressures and stresses of discernment. I also had an immature faith that really needed better formation and much more knowledge added to it before I could be considered fit to try to discover what God wanted me to do with the rest of my life. Though my faith is certainly more mature now than it was a year ago, I'm still not ready to discern, so I'm going to take this year to mature more and try to make sure than I am equipped spiritually and experientially to start discerning my vocation.

This year, what I want to do is:
1.) Develop a solid, consistent prayer life,
2.) Date, and
3.) Set myself up properly for grad school.

Developing a solid, consistent prayer life: This is most important. Prayer is one's relationship with God, and as such, ought not to be neglected. Over this summer, though, I got lazy. I wouldn't say a particular prayer if I didn't feel like it, and some of what I experienced at home made it more difficult to pray like I did at school. This year, I'm not taking any excuses. A good prayer life is one of those things I consider absolutely essential to the discernment process. If you're going to pray about God's will for your life, then you have to have an established pattern and habit of prayer first. I consecrated myself to Mary last year, as some of you may know, and I do say quite a few Marian prayers, but I want to get back in the habit of praying a daily Rosary, and doing at least Morning and Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. I want to know that I have a solid foundation in prayer before using it as my main tool to find out what God wants me to do with the remainder of my life.

Dating: This, though less important than prayer, is still very important. Last summer, I broke up with a long-time boyfriend, and all through last year, I struggled with chastity. As my faith has matured and refined this past year, and as I've learned more and more about the hows and whys of chastity, I think I've become properly prepared to begin dating again. But this time, I'll have a clear head. What's great about taking a year off and then starting (hopefully) to date again is that now I really do know what I want in a man. I know what is actually something I will not negotiate on, what merits compromise, and what are the silly fantasies of a little girl which I can (or should) do without. This will help with discernment because if I am called to the single or religious life, I will know that I haven't left any stone unturned, and I will be secure in knowing that this is truly a calling, not a personal inclination. If I'm called to marriage, on the other hand, I will already have a little experience of Christian dating, and what I need to do to prepare myself to be someone's wife.

Setting myself up properly for grad school: Again, important. No matter what my vocation is, there will always be the chance that God won't want me to pursue it the instant I discover it. Many religious orders want women to have a Bachelor's Degree and some experience living on their own in the world before they enter the convent. Living as a chaste single, I will need to have something to which to devote my life, and a higher degree of some sort will be a good way to get my foot in the door of a career I can have for my whole life, and be something I can use to consecrate my life's work to God's service. If I'm called to be married, I want to be able to help support my family, or if I don't get married particularly young, I will need a way to support myself, and a great number of employers want to be able to hire people with a Master's Degree or whatever the terminal degree is in their field. I need to be thinking about my future, and as far as I can tell right now, grad school is definitely in it. I know the plans I have for myself, and until I find out God's plans, I need to have some form of security, and graduate school is it.

So this hectic year, pre-discernment, I have a lot of work to do, but I'm looking forward to it. I am an uber-planner, and it is serving me well now. I finally have long term goals to work toward, and I will do my best to make sure they are accomplished. I know this post makes me sound very driven, but I am still vastly uncertain about where my life is going, so this is my small effort at making sure that I am set up for whatever comes my way. Last year was my grounding in the faith, and the next two years will be discerning God's call for me, so this year is all about self-improvement. I want to start next year knowing that I have become a woman worthy of whatever God is calling her to. A tall order, indeed, but I'm up to the challenge.