The Grass on the Other Side

“…discerning that I was not called to consecrated life after over a decade and instead being called to marriage...I’ve experienced a first-hand perspective... I have filled up the gas tank and taken out the trash - in both walks of life.”

I was sitting in the basement of a family’s home, cutting out paper chain people, somewhere north of Atlanta. We were helping run an overnight retreat for a local catholic middle school and I was preparing a night activity with the 8th grade teacher. Her name was Sarah. She was an attractive young woman in her mid 20’s and she had a special spark. I had seen her amazing leadership with the 8th grade girls. Her personality, combined with her walk-the-talk authenticity meant that she could call them out and challenge them to go higher in a way I had rarely seen possible in a teacher/student relationship. I had heard that she had discerned consecrated life for six years and had subsequently discovered her vocation to marriage. 

I was living with a community of consecrated women at the time and felt a mounting pressure to consider their vocation as a possibility for my life. I was so intrigued by this woman’s journey. On the surface, to me at least, it seemed like she had the perfect story; discern consecrated life, discover it’s not for you and then get married. You’ve been generous with God, had some up close and personal time with Him along the way, and then you get “released” and get to have that happily ever after you always wanted in the first place. 

Although I was unable to articulate it at the time, I recognised that she had a pool of faith and life experience that was far deeper than the superficial ‘summary’ I had made of her path. I also knew I was light years away from that kind of depth and maturity in my own relationship with God and my ability to be open and honest with Him. That is, the spiritual depth and courage to follow God regardless of the challenges that might entail. I couldn’t imagine the depth of discernment and trust it would require to believe that God was not actually calling you and leave a consecrated vocation.

Desperate for some kind of formula for my own vocational journey, I summoned the courage to ask Sarah directly about her experience. She was happy to share and I was amazed to hear her speak about how much she loved Jesus and her beautiful journey with Him. She spoke about how one day as a young adult she was in prayer and told Jesus, “I am going to give myself to you completely until you tell me to stop”. And she did. She gave him her whole life in fact, as a gift in the form of a consecrated vocation. 

Six years later she found herself travelling through South America working as a missionary for the evangelization of youth and families. After arriving to stay in a convent one evening, and sharing dinner with some of the nuns, the conversation turned to growing older. One of the elderly nuns commented to her that she would be a wonderful elderly consecrated woman. She was struck by the thought that she couldn’t imagine herself old and consecrated. She made a visit to Jesus in the Eucharist and spoke about this with Him. And right there in prayer, she felt Jesus speak clearly into her heart, “STOP”. 

At first, she wasn’t sure what He meant, until she remembered all those years ago when she had told him in prayer, “I’ll give myself to you until you tell me to stop”. It struck her to the core and she instantly knew this vocation was not her true calling. She followed the path of a discernment waiting period that her superiors advised at the time, and it took a further six months before she was able to go home. 

I was fascinated, asking how she felt now, given she was about to embark on the journey of marriage. Perhaps it was her authenticity of life or her age and stage as against mine, but her words always remained with me, 

“Caroline, in every vocation you have to fill up the gas tank and take out the trash. There is no vocation that is 100% easy or beautiful. It actually doesn’t matter what path we are called to, because all of them will have their own joys and sorrows, what matters is that our eyes are fixed on Jesus and that we follow Him; where He leads us personally. This is where we will find happiness”.

I never forgot those words. 

It was the first time in months that I felt a little bit lighter when faced with the question of a vocation. My understanding of vocation and God’s will at the time were based on a fallacious concept that God’s will for me was always the hardest most difficult path, and that choosing this was always the most pleasing to God. I also felt that while Sarah’s path seemed like a happy ending, I didn’t think my psychology could withstand “getting it wrong”. I remember at the time telling God, 

“Please, help me not to make the wrong choice. I think my psychology would break if I consecrated my life to you and then found it wasn’t for me after six years. I don’t think I could do it”. 

God obviously had a sense of humour - it took me twelve. (If you want to read a little more about that journey, you can do so here)

So while my path - discerning that I was not called to consecrated life after over a decade and instead being called to marriage - has involved it’s fair share of challenges and change, I’ve experienced a first-hand perspective as well. I have filled up the gas tank and taken out the trash - in both walks of life.

I remember, about eight years into my consecrated journey, I was speaking with a mom who was picking up her daughter from a retreat. She was an incredible woman with six children. Incredible not because she was getting it all right in marriage or life or motherhood, but because she was always in the battle with Jesus, seeking truth and trying to live her life by it. And yet she looked at me this one day and said, “Sometimes I wonder if I should have been consecrated”. 

I knew her well enough to know that it wasn’t coming from a lack of love for her family or evasion of her vocation to marriage and motherhood. No, within that comment there was a desire for prayer, for reflection, for a radical surrender that maybe wasn’t quite so chaotic as the one she was living everyday of that hectic season of life. 

It wasn’t the first or only time I had heard similar comments from moms I interacted with. I remember feeling unable to articulate that while the desire was founded on a very real sacrifice of time alone for prayer or quiet, that consecrated life was not all the spiritual cloud-walking that it might sometimes appear to be.

Absolutely, there was a privilege I experienced in consecrated life that I won’t ever experience in quite the same way again - living in the same house as Jesus, sneaking down to visit him in your pyjamas (who me?), receiving the Eucharist in your home every single day and having access to confession on tap? Yes please! In fact, in my own discernment journey, I recognised that fear of losing those very things was part of why I was scared to leave, and go it alone so to speak. 

Would my relationship with Jesus change forever? How would I pray if I wasn’t in this vocation? 

Side note - I will share about the particular journey of how my prayer has changed in another post, but I will say that having a specific uninterrupted time set apart to pray each day in the consecrated life is a real and beautiful aspect of living a life of total dedication to Our Lord. And while we are all trying in different ways to make that happen in day to day family life, it might not always happen. I do think however that Our Lord gives himself in other beautiful and bountiful ways in marriage and motherhood.

So here’s the main two reasons I think that while the grass might be a slightly different shade, it is equally green on both sides of the vocational fence in the walk toward sanctity in marriage and consecrated life.

Number One 

As Sarah revealed to me all those years ago, you have to fill up the gas tank and take out the trash...and do your laundry, and fulfil obligations, and get your work done, and find ways to rest and clear your head and avoid burnout...and, and, and...there is no cloud walking in this world if we are aiming to live a life of sanctity and reach heaven. 

For a long time, as an idealistic young Christian, I liked to ignore this fact; I liked to imagine that sanctity was about always feeling positive, happy, uplifted and doing whatever I needed in order to sustain that ‘feeling’. Thankfully, I learned that although the “high” moments aren’t what make up most of life, it’s the “how” of what you live that sanctifies it, not so much the “what”. 

In consecrated life, I experienced some of my greatest highs in personal prayer time, my own personal retreats, preaching retreats and mentoring women, accompanying them and being entrusted with their sharing the most beautiful and sacred spaces of their hearts and souls with me. But all of those moments - which gave the day, week or month - a deep sense of purpose and meaning, all of them were preceded and followed by mundane tasks like cooking dinner, doing dishes, answering emails. In other words, taking out the trash and filling up the gas.

As a mum now, I also get to live simply delicious moments every day. 

Like last night, when my 3 year old told me “No, you don’t do it, I do it” and proceeded to say her “grace” for the family meal which has consistently followed the same framework for several weeks. It goes something like this:

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Bless us our daily bread and give us our trespasses. Amen”

Or when she climbed into my bed at 6am one morning and asked if Jesus could give her a hug. I explained that Jesus usually gave her hugs through the people in her life. She was silent for a few moments, so I asked “What else is on your mind?” wondering what other deep theological questions she might pose at this early hour. Instead, she seemed content in her own thoughts and replied, “The dogs in my life”. Fair enough. 

You get these incredible daily moments where as a mother you literally get to witness the unfolding of a new life and unique human personality in every moment. And yet these wonderful moments are sandwiched between the ever-present chores; cleaning up toys, cleaning the kitchen floor a million times, doing the dishes another million times, inconsolable 3 year old tears because the cookie is broken in two and you cannot convince her that it really will taste the same as if it were still whole.

Number Two 

Here is the bottom line in this vocational reflection: both my twelve years on a journey through consecrated life and my four years of marriage have the most fundamental path toward holiness in common: 

You bump up against other humans. Every. Single. Day. 

I promise you that while the mode may be different, if you are walking a self-reflective journey with Jesus, all the deepest ongoing life lessons and the purifying path of deep transformation takes place through this constant experience of friction created by the daily interaction with other humans.

In community life, I found this tricky. People would often comment about how beautiful the community was, and how lovely this or that person was. It was always a sort of awkward and almost superficial moment. On the one hand, they were right, and with this in mind, I usually politely nodded and smiled. But it always left me feeling like I could never really give an accurate impression of how our life journey was not so different to the average lay person with a spouse and children. Some community members were loud, a little obnoxious, lazy even. We had older people who came with their set of perspectives, and younger members of the community who had more life experience to gain. We all had our own family of origin issues we brought to the table, not to mention personality quirks, cultural differences etc. I used to say, “It’s a little bit like being married, but to like six other people at once”. 

Everyday was about making space and grace and forgiving and communicating and making an effort to show up and be vulnerable. Just like in marriage. 

Make no mistake, in every vocation you can be silently selfish, and choose by default to not “show up”, not put in the work to make the relationship or the community or the home a better place. It’s drop by drop, tiny little daily decisions.

And that is the hard and scary part, only us and God really know when we are really showing up and putting in the work to give of ourselves selflessly to those around us.

Conversely, I have learned that while there are obvious differences, marriage is much the same. Once the infatuation phase wears off and life sends a few knocks your way, it is all about choosing how to show up for the other person, and what shows your love each day. 

When we really want to experience that true intimacy with Jesus, in whatever vocation we are in (or even if we are still on the journey of trying to figure that part out), it is all about showing up and choosing to receive the gift of being moulded and transformed by those around us, each and every day.