Bringing God into Decisions (Part 2)

If you read part one of this blog, I shared Fr. Mike Schmitz’s four steps for Discernment. I am now going to use these same four steps to share my story. Enjoy! 

1. Is this a Good Door? 

When I was a student at Franciscan University, I remember talking to a friend who was also discerning religious life about how when the devil knows you aren’t going to choose mortal sin, he likes to trick us with another good that we are not called to. We are torn between two options that are both good and can lead us to holiness. For example, if we’re called to married life, since religious life is a “supernatural” calling, it looks like the “better” calling. It is easy to think that you are supposed to be married or supposed to be a priest or sister, but we have to think and pray hard about this. You have to look at the desires that were placed on your heart since you were a kid and ask the Lord to reveal what He has in store for you personally, for your good and your sanctification.

In my last semester at Franciscan, I went on a discernment retreat with the TOR sisters and one of the sisters gave a talk on how religious life is a living of Heaven here on earth. As a sister, the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are lived out in marriage to Jesus their Bridegroom. We will be fully united to our Bridegroom in Heaven, and religious life is the ability to live this here and now on earth. This really resonated with me. It was on that retreat that I felt resolved that the path the Lord had me on was to pursue religious life. I left that retreat knowing I had some news I needed to share with my friends before graduation that was soon approaching and with my family back home, although I didn’t know yet where or which religious order would be my home.  

2. Is this an Open Door? 

I was set to do a discernment visit with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's community, who I grew up volunteering with in Sacramento, California. A week or two prior my grandfather dropped off a book on discernment by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist (Ann Arbor, Michigan) called And Mary’s 'Yes' Continues. In reading this, I felt strongly that their charism aligned to mine and so I reached out to the community, who I also knew well since they were at my home parish. I received a call almost immediately from two sisters I knew that said they had a discernment retreat in about a week and I should attend. I felt it was the Lord’s prompting and so I changed my flights and attended this retreat instead of the one with the MCs.  

When I arrived, I came to find out this retreat was for the girls who had already applied to enter and would be entering in a few months' time. I see what the sisters did there! I listened to a talk on Dominican spirituality on this retreat and felt this spirituality was where the Lord was leading me, but I also kept feeling the call on my heart for more Eucharistic adoration. The vocations director told me that everyone hits a road bump in their discernment, and she thought mine would be that I would always wonder if the contemplative life was for me, so she said I needed to go look at a Dominican cloister. She said my long search of finding my right order to enter seemed to be coming to a close soon, as I was very close. She thought I would realize the cloister wasn’t for me and come enter her community, as I had studied teaching and hers was a teaching order.

She told me there is a Dominican cloister 30 minutes away (of course!) and she would make a call. Her community orders communion hosts from that cloister and had just spoken with them that day, but for some reason their phone lines were down and they could not get in touch. I told sister I thought I should go visit and so she said to pack up and they would take me there to the monastery. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to the other retreatants as a sister drove me to the Monastery of the Blessed Sacrament, a cloister that didn’t even know I was coming! It would be quite the adventure to share with my family when I got home! Who randomly knocks on a cloister door and asks to stay a few days? Me, I guess, ha! I arrived at the monastery's bookstore where a woman was at the desk and joyfully told me the sisters were expecting me – they had been able to reach the sisters. A squirrel had chewed the phone lines (what!) so they were down but a sister had received an email. The crazy story continued!

I knelt to pray for the first time in that chapel and my desire for adoration was quenched – with 112 years of adoration and counting! I started to cry and knew without a doubt: I was home. Finally home. I was drawn immediately to the three extern sisters who are the sisters allowed outside the cloister to take care of the needs of visitors, grocery shopping for the cloistered nuns, and the bookstore. This is where I wanted to be- a vocation within a vocation. Things continued to get better as the vocations director told me there was a conundrum. There was actually construction going on in the passageway between the guest room outside the cloister and the public side of the chapel. Because I was dropped on their doorstep unexpectedly, the nuns held a council meeting and although they don’t usually do this, I was invited to stay inside the cloister on my very first visit (God is good!). Little did they know, I already knew they were to be my sisters! In the couple days there, I even got to visit a sick sister on her deathbed right before she passed, who had given her life in particular for vocations. I met 26 Dominican sisters and was home. God kept opening doors for me, and I kept stepping through them. I entered this cloistered monastery 6 months later.  

3. Is this a Wise Door? 

As I was there for a year as a postulant, I kept mulling over if this was actually where I was called to be. He had clearly called me there for a time, but the Lord continued to work on my heart for if this was where I was to be for good. I wondered if a different order would be a better fit. I wondered if I was supposed to be married with a family. I was on my retreat to prepare me for my Investiture, where I would receive my new name of Sr. Maria of the Immaculate Heart and receive the Dominican habit and rosary. As Christmas and my Investiture ceremony were approaching, I sat in our little hermitage in the back yard, away from everyone, and had time to think and pray. I found a CD and listened to the songs of the Fiddler on the Roof, my favorite musical, with stories of love and family. As a piano player with Christmas approaching, I pictured playing Christmas carols with family and kids all around, singing along to the carols, something I would never get to do, by giving up my own family and future family. The desire to be a physical mother, not just a spiritual one, increased. I knew what I needed to do, and it wouldn’t be easy. I asked to leave, and was at peace in my decision. I called my sister and remember her saying, “I am confused, but I trust you.” It was what I needed, when many religious sisters gave me reasons for this decision not being wise.

I arrived back in California on December 22, 2018, to a home full of extended family who annually on this day celebrate my family's conversion to the Catholic faith. My convert grandfather who flew out with my grandma and family to attend my entrance ceremony at the cloister had prayed for me by name 3-4 times a day in that year. He asked if he still needed to pray for me, with a chuckle. He told me that Thomas Merton's best advice was, "Don't try to figure it out. Just trust," words I often think about today. He ended up passing away a few months later.

4. Do I Want This Door? 

It was a very challenging decision to leave the convent, but the transition back to the world was even harder. To go from 22 hours of silence every day to TVs, grocery stores, and talking is a huge culture shock. With the healing only time can give, 6 months later, I found a job working for a homeschool curriculum provider and moved an hour from home to Napa, California. A coworker invited me to a Catholic young adults' group at Sonoma State’s Newman Center that was doing a series by Fr. Dave Pivonka (President of Franciscan University) called the Wild Goose, and the group was doing Vespers and Compline together, a type of young adult’s group I was looking for!

The first day I went, I chatted with of one the guys running the group. He told me about the local churches in the area and that he had discerned out of seminary a few years prior. I withheld I had just left the convent. I was busy judging how he was unschooled and obsessed with Lord of the Rings and he was judging how I was a Catholic school girl. After coming back week after week, this guy kept telling me about the nuns he was close to in the area and teaching me about religious life. I finally broke the news I had freshly left a convent and soon enough we started dating, with a lot in common.

I wouldn’t say the dating journey was all butterflies. We broke up for a time, in March 2020, and the Pandemic led Peter to move to Steubenville, Ohio, to finish his bachelor's degree. During this difficult year of long-distance dating, I was starting to feel more confident about Peter as my future spouse and had asked Our Lady for a sign that this was truly my vocation, to marry this man. I asked for yellow roses and sure enough, yellow roses arrived at my house from Peter! Although an answered prayer, there would still be more time before we would even be in the same state. Peter wanted to stay in Ohio for two more years for his Masters, so with a lot of conversations, I moved out there too and we got engaged. Even that wasn’t the perfect story of the fairy tales as we were trying to find community and jobs on top of planning a long-distance wedding.

Despite the ups and downs, by the time August 13, 2022 came around, we were ready and at peace. We were married in St. Eugene’s Catholic Cathedral, in Santa Rosa, California. The Marian sisters of Santa Rosa were the choir, two priests who were fellow seminarians with Peter back in the day were at the altar, the traditional Latin Mass was celebrated, the Missionaries of Charity were present, and we were surrounded by the love and support of many family and friends. The Marian Sisters learned and practiced the Dominican Salve (that I sang in the monastery) to sing while Peter and I brought yellow roses to Our Lady, dedicating our marriage to her and as an act of thanksgiving.

We enjoyed a lovely day and were touched by family and friends who came in town from Louisiana, Texas, Indiana, and more. We were surrounded by a lot of people who had been our rock and prayer support over the years, all in one spot. At the reception, my matron of honor (and goddaughter) started to cry giving her speech and Peter's little goddaughter supported her with a loud empathetic "Oh no" and everyone thought it was a joy and delight. My household sister (Catholic sorority) from college took me and all the young adult women to the back patio to pray over me, as is tradition. Peter and I danced to Love Songs and Lullabies by Luke Spehar, a song from a man who also left seminary and married the love of his life. I danced with my dad to our song Sunrise, Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof and sang. Peter and his mom danced to Pavarotti. We danced and enjoyed each other's company. As wedding favors we gave decks of cards with our names and little candles made by Dominican cloistered nuns. We concluded the night with everyone in a circle as we sang Piano Man and then on the patio our family and friends lined either side holding sparklers as Peter and I processed out. It was a blessed evening.

We've now been married for three and a half years. During my sophomore year of college, I consecrated myself to Jesus through Mary for the first time. In my diary I wrote, "I wonder if my future husband is starting this consecration tomorrow too." Sure enough, on December 8, 2013 (6 years before we would even meet) both Peter and I made the Marian consecration for the first time on the exact same day and year. At the time, I was with my eventual bridesmaid and household sister in the grotto at Franciscan University and Peter was in Nebraska at seminary, but the Lord knew. God has blessed me abundantly with the husband He picked out for me from all time. I hope my journey inspires you and pushes you forward to keep trusting in God's plan for your life.