A Season of Waiting

Getting distracted by facebook when blogging is irritating, just deleted my post by mistake.

I don't think I'm going to be blogging much about discernment for a little while. With the blessing of my Spiritual Director, I'm taking a step back for a little while. I need to come to terms with where I am now, and I think I can only do that if I don't try to work out exactly where I'm heading in the future. I guess too Advent is a great time for this. More than any other time of year it's the season for waiting. I'm sure if people want to reflect on this they can find marvellous works by spiritual giants on the net, I want to talk a very little about what it means to me. I'm not quite sure what I want to say... we'll see I guess.

At mass today Fr J told us that this Sunday is traditionally called wilderness Sunday... I don't know if it is(!) but it makes a bit of sense... we're not at the begining of the time of waiting, when we think, "Yes! The time of waiting is here! How exciting that God calls us to live in a period of waiting!" and we're not near enough to the end to look with eager anticipation. Next week the Gospel is going to be John's baptism of repentance... and we celebrate Gaudete Sunday because the Lord's coming is a little nearer. But this week we are preparing with St John the Baptist in the wilderness, which (for me at least) has lost it's glamour.

Last year, this time last year, I had just come back from New York. I went expecting the Lord to speak to me, to let me know one way or the other if He wanted me to be a CFR sister, of if he had other plans for me. He didn't let me know. I faced Advent last year in uncertainty, God gave me a blessed and fairly peaceful time of waiting and discernment, which I suppose has prepared me a little for this Advent's far more intense, and far more painful, period of waiting and discernment.

There are a couple of questions I want to look at, and to try to understand, over the next few months. So hopefully I can blog about those. This is supposed to be a discernment blog, and if having not the slightest clue about where God is leading me is discernment, I'm definately there! On Wednesday I'm meeting Fr K (Spi Di) again and I want to talk to him about how one can love God so much... and yet love someone else as well. Right now I don't understand how that's possible, which is probably very offensive to those married people who love God so much more perfectly than I do. However I don't get it, so perhaps when Fr K sheds some light on what it means to love God in marriage I can talk to you more about that. I haven't stopped discerning the religious life, I'm certainly pausing for a while, but it's still there as a possibility. But now it's Advent, and I'm waiting.

(this picture is just beause I like it)