Growing up as a kid, I was the one who broke up the street fights, calmed girls down so a fight didn’t erupt, and helped people to solve problems. Overall, however, I was usually quiet just listening while the other kids talked. I never thought of myself as a ‘listener’ but in hindsight I was. I also was often hanging around as grownups talked amongst themselves, knowing I was there and not concerned that I would hear. I learned as much outside the classroom as I did inside it.
Entering the workplace at age 15, throughout my working career I found people would talk to me privately and confidentially. What they shared would be so personal I would be taken by surprise, and I would even find myself telling them not to let others overhear what they were saying.
For most of my life, people would share private things and ask me what I thought. They didn’t ask what I knew. They asked what I thought.
I didn’t go to church for the decade of my 20s. I didn’t leave the Church. I simply procrastinated getting up on Sunday mornings for 12 years. I returned to mass attendance in my early 30s and discovered teachings that contradicted those I had learned growing up: sermons saying miracles didn’t exist, the devil didn’t exist, and our devotions of love for our Lord were silly. During those years that I was absent from mass, the American Church had embraced much error and even heresy. Fortunately, faithful parishioners introduced me to new converts like Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, and Jeff Cavins, who inflamed me to learn and grow in my faith. By 1998, I was invited to take the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, the 19thannotation, which involves weekly spiritual direction over 7-9 months.
I continued my life as a single working parent learning and living my faith. Now in the 21st century, I had a growing desire to help people learn to live the Christian life, this life lived in Divine Intimacy. Nothing was provided in our archdiocese and opportunities online generally were not faithful to the teaching of the Church. I didn’t know much about spiritual direction, yet I knew that I needed and wanted a director, someone who was already living in this Intimacy. Then, in 2008, I had chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for rectal cancer. The treatments have left me permanently disabled with chronic illnesses. I continued to work 14 years but, most importantly, I entered into a new and deeper stage of relationship with my Lord.
I began to occasionally look online for some sort of training to become a spiritual director. No one had suggested it to me. It was merely an interest that grew in me, a thought that would come to me, an urge to look once again and see if there just might be something ‘doable’ for me that was also solid faithful teaching. At one point, I realized I had to decide: should I get a masters degree in theology or find training as a spiritual director? The thought of a master’s degree was intellectually intriguing. I would fill in knowledge gaps while obtain a solid understanding of our spiritual theology. That thought would comfort my insecurities. But these only consoled my intellect and emotions. When I prayed about being a spiritual director, something I knew much less about, I would be consoled in a much deeper place in my heart. While having the degree would be useful and made sense, becoming a spiritual director wasn’t about me doing good things for God. Rather, it would form me to love Him more. I decided if this was His will for me, He would make it happen.
Around 2011, things began to happen. God had placed me with my spiritual father, an ancient Jesuit with an orthodox faith and well-schooled in the spiritual life. I began to receive mail from the Oblates of the Virgin Mary (OMV)—I never figured out how I got on their mailing list and I knew nothing about them. That year, I also watched a series on EWTN on the discernment of spirits by Fr. Tim Gallagher (who ‘just happens’ to be with the OMV) and literally jumped off the couch with excitement! I knew with complete certitude that my Lord wanted me to lead others in this, and my pastor was excited when I asked him. Despite poor health, I was ready to attempt traveling, and I went to an Archdiocesan conference in Denver for a few days. Staying downtown, I prayed and attended mass at the beautiful Holy Ghost Church which, as it turned out, ‘just happened’ to be administered by—you guessed it–the Oblates of the Virgin Mary! I was able to meet with the director of the Lanteri Center, a ministry of the OMV, regarding leading small groups in the discernment of spirits. Without me seeking, God kept bringing these things to me.
While there, I saw that the Lanteri Center was beginning its first spiritual direction training program for distance learning. It had been training directors for several years. This program was for people who did not live in the Denver area. It was a summer intensive supplemented with reading and learning throughout the year. Finally, a program faithful to the teachings of the Church through St. Ignatius, and one that could accommodate me living out-of-state! My spiritual father was highly supportive of me; in fact, his usual quiet demeanor had erupted into excitement. One of the questions asked was if people had a tendency to come to me with problems. I realized this had gone on my entire life. I completed the training and was missioned in 2015.
In 2016, I found an old journal from 1998, my prayer notes for the months after my Ignatian Exercises were completed. I was shocked by one entry. In 1998, I was active in my church and community. But in this entry, I had described a vision of God and wrote that I was certain it was God’s plan for me to minister to those already well catechized, already in ministry for the Church. Not the uncatechized. He wanted me to lead people in these Exercises and guide them in this relationship with Him. I had no memory of this such that if it had not been written in my own hand, I would not have known it to be from me. After 1998, He continued to form me through my participation in RCIA leadership, pastoral council, homeless ministry, and other services. But all of these were part of His plan to form me for a different type of work. The itch, the growing desire to guide others, the hunger to learn more from saints and holy authors, the certitude and suddenness of His interim calls…all were to culminate in my becoming a spiritual director.
We commonly hear that embracing one’s vocation is ‘answering the call’. Yet I think it is more accurate to say that we follow the call. And in my case, it seems more akin to Hansel and Gretel following the pebble trail back home. In my Ignatian Exercises, I had learned to live in the grace of the present moment and to only look for the next best step to take. Doing so led me ‘home’ where He had always planned for me to be. And now as a spiritual director, I am still listening—to His Spirit and to the directee—and staying in the grace of the present moment.
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Editor’s note: For information on the Avila Institute’s School of Spiritual Direction in partnership with Heart of Christ, visit Avila-Institute.org.
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