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When I started this blog, I cited my vocational discernment and invited you along for the journey.

Then I fell away and decided I wasn't "Called", but still wrote about the topic and what I had learned.

My friends, Discernment is Hell. It's awful. It's painful and tumultous and uncertain and polemical. It's one of the WORST experiences you can ever have in this life, but the ends are amazing.

And it continues. I wish I could say this is a summary and I'm at the end, but truly, I know that this is where it really begins.

Maybe it's easier for those who are just out of high school or college and haven't purchased a "real life". As it is, my life owns me because I've done everything the "American Dream" has told me to do and all it has done has separated me from God and His Call.

I own a house and a dog and once I thought a guy loved me enough to marry me. In reality all I've obtained is debt I can't control, a house worth less than nothing, and a broken heart not worth the sound of even random beats.

At least I got a good dog out of the deal.

And what I know is that this isn't why God called me into existence.

For the last few years, I've struggled, very publicly, with my vocational discernment, even denying it for a time. I've denied it to friends and acquaintances, but had to finally acknowledge that it wasn't over. God wouldn't give up on me. It never mattered to Him that everyone else had...He wasn't to be dissuaded.

Nor would the communities that have been in contact with me. The Sisters I go to visit confronted me very directly, upon our meeting, with the question, "Are you discerning?"

My answer that November was "I don't know!"

That ambivalence lead to an invitation...and then another. And constant invitations to visit the Motherhouse.

I knew, always, that I wanted to follow Christ. I am in love with Him.

Yes, others recognized that as well, but I needed very direct contact to do something with that love.

So it is, finally, that I am headed out to visit the Motherhouse of that very community. I'll spend a week or so there, living the life of a Sister, which is amazing to me. All I've ever had is a small family, one that has been shattered and is only now finally healing. And so God brings me into another family of Sisters, and through that incorporation, I know my own will never be left.

For over a week, I'll be immersed in prayer, work, Mass, and family...one to which I might be given. They are discerning me even as I am discerning them. One community is active, one cloistered. Could either be my Home?

Only God knows. Only He Calls.

All I am doing is trying to respond and see where this leads....

(to be continued.....)