Of Dresses, Discernment and Detachment

It’s highly probable that the NET fundraising dinner we’ll be attending on Thursday night will be one of the classiest events of my life so far. At $150 a ticket, it’s undoubtedly the most expensive (not that I’m paying – poor missionary representatives get in free!). Not only will dozens of wealthy Catholics from the upper echelons of society be there, but also the Archbishop himself. The dress code is strictly formal – suit and tie for the men, cocktail attire for the ladies. 

Thus it’s only natural, that I, as a person who is eighteen, female and, well, breathing, would want to look nice. For the past week at least, our house – especially the girls’ room – has been abuzz with talk of dresses and make-up and heels and hair. As volunteer missionaries with little available spending money, our adopted strategy has been to beg, borrow and pray for an outpouring of glamorous accessories. Yesterday morning our room was transformed into a fitting room as Niamh tried on a large pile of borrowed dresses. Yet my own pile of options was much smaller – one dress, black, purchased months ago, and, worst of all, already worn several times in public. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful dress, and I love wearing it – but I was thoroughly discouraged by the sight of it lying on the bed yesterday while Niamh pranced around in novelty after elegant novelty. The thing was, I wanted something new. Something lovely. Something especially selected for this special occasion. But it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

So I put the black dress on, decided that I did indeed look lovely in it and resigned myself to wearing it – and strangely enough, I became happy with the decision.

Somewhere between putting the dress on and taking it off again, my heart changed. I remembered the reason behind the mission. I remembered “the vanity of vanity”. And I suddenly became not only content, but perfectly delighted that I was to wear my black dress to the dinner. 

I gave the whole situation no further thought until later that afternoon. While walking to the shops with Pia and Peter, we decided to duck into Vinnies to browse and bargain-hunt. I leafed through the racks, fairly disinterested, until I stumbled upon a pretty pattern. I eyed up the dress – nice style, good length, no visible damage. It was also devoid of a tag, so I had no clue what size it was.  A quick glance over my shoulder notified me that my compatriots were still browsing, so, without a word, I slipped into a changing room and tried the dress on. I loved it. It fit perfectly, it was modest and pretty, and, best of all, it was only ten dollars. I bought it without any deliberation – and without even one thought of the NET dinner. Only after we returned home and I tried it on again to show Niamh did it click in my mind how perfect the dress was for Thursday night. A beautiful new outfit had been virtually delivered into my hands with minimal effort, little expenditure and absolutely no initiative on my part. 

And how I laughed. Because the lesson of the dress is the same lesson that God has been trying to drill into my impenetrably thick head for months.

All things were given to me from the moment I no longer sought them.

St John of the Cross

I did not seek out the dress. Perhaps six hours earlier I might have. But it was not until my heart was disposed to go without the thing I initially desired that God let me have it. 

And I often find this with God – that He will withhold things that are, in themselves, good and true and beautiful from us at the times when we want them most, only to deliver them to us when at last we’ve made up our mind to do without.

Last year, I spent three and a half months firmly convinced that God was calling me to be a religious sister. No longer were my notebooks filled with doodles of “Mrs. Kate So-and-So” but with “Sister Cecilia Rose”, “Sister Maria Grace” or other such saintly combinations. Instead of experimenting to see how my right hand looked with a ring on it, I began to experiment to see what colour habit best suited my complexion. I was even in contact with the order I wanted to join: my mother seemed somewhat concerned when she handed me a large rectangular envelope from Nashville, Tennessee and asked why I was getting mail from the Vocations Director. I believe my response was to turn bright red and mumble something about having met them at World Youth Day. I was fairly made up, in my mind and in my heart, that religious life was where I was needed and where I needed to be.

One of the factors that prompted this period of discernment was, in fact, a rebellion against my own desires. I’d spent the first seventeen years of my life wanting nothing more than to be a wife and mother. My heart positively ached for it. I planned and wished and dreamed about the days when I would nestle a tiny baby into the crook of my arm or finger-paint with toddlers.  My heart was so consumed with imagination that I very nearly made an idol of it. And so when, one day in adoration, I felt God prompting my heart towards openness to a different vocation, I freaked out. From one extreme to the other, I became adamant that the only way I could claim to be a Catholic or make a pretense of wanting to do God’s will was to renounce my desires, love God alone and get my backside to a convent as quickly as age regulations would allow. There was a definite dose of guilt involved with my conviction in this calling – I wanted to be as radical as possible for the God who loved me so much, and I felt, for the first time, the tragic error I’d made in putting my desire for earthly happiness above my desire to serve the kingdom of heaven. Guilt there was, in spades. But there was also a genuine attraction to religious life.

I’d always loved nuns. Ever since meeting Sister Mary Rachel and Sister Cecilia Joseph at my first Catholic youth conference, I’d been convinced that religious sisters were the most radiantly lovely, joyful and peaceful women in the world. Visits to Tyburn Monastery (the most beautiful place on earth!) and encounters with other incredible women who have given themselves completely and utterly to Jesus had solidified in my mind a high esteem for the vocation. And the more I found out, the more I fell in love with religious life. The lifestyle – prayer, song and apostolic work – seemed perfect, and I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life serving God’s church. Contrary to my initial horror of having to renounce a husband and babies, life as a nun now looked the more appealing option. There was, and definitely still is, an enduring attraction to religious life in my heart. And that appreciation of something that is objectively good and beautiful certainly played a big part in prompting my discernment.

But I think most of all, my period of discernment played upon one of the deepest truths we as humans need to learn: that God alone can fulfill the desires of our heart.

“Things will eventually fade – things break. They don’t fulfill. For a moment they fulfill, and then it’s emptiness again. You get a new toy… All of this passes away. I think the reason why [I would want to be a sister] is because I’m living for eternity, and I can start that now.”

Sister M. Talitha, Light of Love

Contrary to everything the world tells us, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.” (St Augustine) Nothing else can fill the God-shaped hole in our heart. No human love can satisfy fully the thirst for truth and acceptance that is written on our hearts. God alone is capable of that.

When I realized that fact, I was content to enter a convent. I was ready. In fact, I was delighted that God had this in mind for me.

And then, virtually overnight, He changed my heart. “Thank you for being open,” I felt Him say, “Because you never were before. Thank you for wanting to love Me first, and for being willing to sacrifice every one of your desires for My will – but, actually, it’s My will for you to marry. It’s My will for you to be a mother. But it’s still My will for You to love Me first.”

That’s when I understood it.

The reason I needed to believe, for a time, that God was calling me to religious life was to discover the greater calling on my life: a calling that far surpasses a vocation to marriage or the consecrated life. The universal vocation: to love God – infinitely, unconditionally and with a whole, undivided heart. 

While my disposition of heart was stubbornly controlled by my own desires, it couldn’t be open to that kind of love. But in renouncing my own will and becoming content with the loss of my own dreams for the sake of God’s plan, I was transformed. And though I do know now that God is calling me to marriage, the truth yet remains that my first Love, my first desire must be for Him. My discernment of religious life, I realize now, was never about figuring out my vocation. It was about detaching my heart, little bit by little bit, from the things to which it clung, so that I could cling to Jesus instead. And then, as the good Lord tends to do, He gave me back the very thing I had let go of.

Very frequently, the Lord asks only an attitude of detachment at the level of the heart, a disposition to give Him everything.

Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr Jacques Philippe

One of the dramas we use here on NET, Divine PC, has a message that unfailingly hits me square between the eyes every time I hear it. God is writing a story – the “Kate” story, for instance – on His laptop. While the character usually acts out what God is writing, she will occasionally complain that God’s getting it wrong, and ask Him to change a detail or two. In the end, the character becomes so frustrated that she pushes God out of the way and finishes typing the story herself. God lets her, but is sad, because He had an incredible plan in mind for her story, but “she thought she knew better.”

I think I know better than God. I know I don’t know better than Him, but there are still so many things in my life that my heart is not detached from. It’s no secret that I have an overzealous imagination. I’m “richer in dreams than in reality” and spend far too many hours of the day lost in visions of the future and plans for the path ahead. But day after day, God whispers in my ear, “Don’t you see that My plan for you is so much richer than your imaginings?”

God is infinitely more capable of rendering us happy than we ourselves are, because He knows us and loves us more than we can ever know or love ourselves.

Searching for and Maintaining Peace, Fr Jacques Philippe

At the end of the day, God asks that we abandon to Him everything in our lives – be it discernment, dresses or dreams for the future. He knows the plans He has for us – plans which far surpass anything we could ever hope or dream of. Much as it sounds appealing to try and secure everything for ourselves, this striving and seeking will never satisfy our restless hearts.

Whoever would save his life will lose it, while whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 16: 25

It often happens that in giving God permission to take us where He wills, He’ll often take us in the direction of our hearts any way. Our desires are written on our hearts for a reason, and if we give these most intimate aspirations to Christ, He just might give them back to us. Perhaps they won’t be fulfilled in the way we think or dream they will be – but they’ll be fulfilled in God’s perfect way.

Love is patient. It trusts God’s timing and does not attempt to control the future. It waits until the right moment according to God’s will, trusting in His infinite goodness and eternal love.

Stop striving. Stop seeking. Stop wishing and dreaming and planning. Just let go, and let God. He’s got this.

AMDG