I often feel like ‘the other’ – part of a group of people that no one knows how to deal with or react to.
There’s married people, parents (who may or may not be married), widowed, divorced, singles, religious…and then there’s me.

Yes, I am single, but I don’t identify at all with the single life, or at least those that are single and around my age (32).
Why? Because singles that are in their 30s have usually spent the past decade or so dating, perhaps having at least one long-term partner along the line, exploring different careers maybe.
Me, on the other hand? Not so much. I voluntarily lived a life of celibacy. I explored different careers, yes, but not really through my own choice (not that I minded). I moved around the whole country, but again not through my own choice (again, not that I minded). My long-term partner was God.

Except for my work, the rest of my life feels stagnant. Since leaving the Sisters, I haven’t gained many other friends, though I kept those I already had. I did join an all-female Bible study group at church, which helped a little, though I tend to only see them on Sunday nights. Almost all the women (just by happenstance) are divorced, a stage of life that I can relate to the most, and, as you can guess, they are almost all older. [Truthfully, I think this tendency to form friendships with older generations stem from the average age of those I lived with when I was a Sister.]
Because I mostly only see that group on Sunday nights and because the rest of my friends have families, I lack friends to do spontaneous things with…like go to festivals or try out a new restaurant or just hang out.

So, I do many things alone. Having an introvert side, I don’t mind this too much. But doing so, I realized how much society assumes we do everything in groups.
I even had someone try to skip ahead of me in an ice cream shop once because he assumed I was waiting for a friend.  I wasn’t – just getting some pistachio gelato on a nice night. And there was one time in church that they squeezed so many in the pew that I wondered if I was going to be asked to move to a different part of the church because it was obvious I was the only one in the pew by myself.
And pretty much everywhere, I’ve rarely had anyone talk to me when I’m alone.

Oftentimes, if I share my story, many (regardless of age, religion, or vocation in life) don’t know how to react to my story of being a Sister, leaving, and then the grief of transition – that is, if I even feel vulnerable enough to share that last part. Usually I get a shocked face, a “wow, that’s interesting!”, and the conversation ends. When I was deeply sharing with someone once, I was told “I can’t relate to your story at all”, which I’ll admit made me feel sad. That comment truly did make me feel like ‘the other’ – like saying ‘you’re different than the rest of us and I just can’t understand that’.

Brené Brown once wrote

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

The truth is all that – my vocational discernment, being a Sister for five years, leaving, and the transition to lay life – is all part of my story. I can’t erase nor would I want to, really. The key is to embrace who I am, who I was, and what happened. I can’t pretend I’m anyone else. It may seem like it makes me more acceptable but, really, it just makes me more fragmented.

Being ‘the other’ – at least for now – is part of that story. On some days, when being alone is difficult or when I hear comments that emphasize my “different-ness”, it’s easy to give up. It’s easy to believe this is the way it’ll always be. But maybe it’s realizing I’m different, maybe it’s reflecting on the murk of my story, that allows me to pick up the shards left of my brokenness.

And hopefully, one day, I’ll find people, like most of the friends I have right now, who understand my story or at least feel comfortable with its uniqueness.

If I think about it, if there’s one thing I’ve been this past year, it’s brave. I’ve stepped into the unknown by becoming a lay woman. I’ve wrestled with grief, having lost my lifestyle, my community, and even some friends. I’ve chosen to remain in a city with no family and only a handful of friends. I changed jobs in September, leaving the ministry I knew for three years. Does that mean I haven’t been fearful? Or depressed? Or lonely? Oh God, no. Ask any of my friends. They can share those times they’ve had to calm me down. Yet, I feel that bravery doesn’t exclude those emotions but it means choosing to wade through it all anyway.

Sometimes bravery is in the small things, in trudging through life when it feels like it’s not going forward, in going out of your comfort zone, in sharing your story anyway, in believing God has a bigger plan.

I may be ‘the other’ for a long time. But screw that. I don’t have to be anyone else. My story is mine. And everyone’s story is worthy of being told and listened to.

Quote of the Week: Mary Doria Russell and Creation

“There are times...when we are in the midst of life - moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness - times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. 

It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion.It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. 

If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it's unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it's higher truth.

...when my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.”

                                                               - Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

Read The Sparrow. Now. The plot may sound crazy, but it was the best book recommendation anyone gave me.

(Sidenote: Way back when, I had Vincentian Quotes of the Week. I certainly still count myself as Vincentian, but I felt it was time to revive the tradition with quotes I find meaningful from all around the spectrum.)

Rachel Scott: What She's Teaching Me 15 Years Later

I have a number of heroes in my life.
I have heroes that have passed on long ago, never having known me physically, but somehow reach me and walk with me through life in some way.
And I have heroes who have literally been by my side at the right moment and with their personalities, life stories, and work teach and inspire me more than they know.

Lately, in this time of transition for me, I've been thinking and praying of all my heroes.
And silently thanking them.

I've written a lot about the first type, some of those who lived in seventeenth century France, one who died just a few years before I was born.
But before St. Vincent de Paul, before Ita Ford, there was Rachel Scott.

When I was in high school, I received a copy of The Journals of Rachel Scott: A Journey of Faith at Columbine High (which, by the way, aren't really her journals but writing based on her journals). Rachel and I had lots of differences but I connected with the similarities.

We were Millennial high-school juniors, she being born in '81 and I in '85.
We were aspiring writers.
We avidly journaled our thoughts, fears, and prayers.
We struggled with the faith journey - the joy of finding Him, the grief of His silence, the confusion of not knowing His path.
We believed, against all odds, that we could somehow change the world.

With her, I felt like I had a companion on the journey. Her story pushed me to continue on as I grew deeper into figuring out life and faith and the future. It didn't matter to me whether her life ended with the "do you believe in God?" question or not. I still felt that I had a hero that taught me that people like me could change the world.

 As my life went on, Rachel and her story phased out of my mind. New heroes came in, accompanying me in new ways that I needed at the time. She didn't appear again until I saw on Facebook that a movie, I'm Not Ashamed, was being made about her life.

At first, I was just excited that a movie was being made about one of my heroes almost twenty years after her death. But now, watching I'm Not Ashamed, I realize the movie's timing, Rachel Scott's story re-entering my life, was Providential for me.

It's easy to narrow Rachel's story down to her not being ashamed of Jesus. After all, that's the thought process behind the title and I could certainly understand why. It's something to admire about her - something I admire - but I think it's just a piece of the bigger message for me (and probably a message that everyone can relate to):

Be true to who you are.
Don't pretend to be someone else just for the convenience of it.

Because it's you, the true you, that will change the world.

Or, in her own words,

"Don't let your character change color with your environment. 

Find out who you are and let it stay its true color." - Rachel Scott

It's a very appropriate message for a high school student. Peer pressure, trying to figure out who you are, discovering the depths of faith and all that.

But it's also a message for me now. Almost 20 years later after her death, 15 years after reading the book.
The truth is, when you leave a religious community, you lose an identity. You're no longer "Sister". You're just you, a face in the crowd. But if being "Sister" was an identity that you discovered never fit you anyway, there's some soul searching to do.

Who is my true self?
How do I show my faith now?
How will I change the world?

And then this question appears - is "changing the world" youthful naivety?
In a way, yes. I no longer believe that the entire world can change because of someone I did or said or wrote. I'm 31 now, not 16...
...yet I think of those heroes in my life that I mentioned earlier - the ones who have physically been at my side. They've changed my world for the better, giving me the inspiration to do the same for others. That's changing the world.

I'm still trying to figure it all out but I'm following the example of Rachel -
I'm letting myself be me, even the parts of me that may not be too popular;
I'll wrestle with the words and deeds of the faith journey;
and continue to believe that one day, I will change the world.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

"You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope." - Thomas Merton

When you lose traditions, you have to create new ones. 

One of my newest traditions is buying a cheap bouquet of colorful flowers when I go to the grocery store. I bring the flowers back to my apartment, cut the stems down, put them in a pink plastic cup and place them on my dining room table. 

Some days, the flowers are as simple as something to cheer me up when I get home.

Other days, the flowers remind me of life. Of blooming.

I've heard the saying "bloom where you are planted" plenty times, but I've never given it much thought. I've never really planted myself anywhere, moving from place to place even before I ever joined the Daughters, never staying anywhere more than two years. I prided myself on being a Vincentian nomad.

But now...now life is different. When I left the Daughters, I decided to stay in San Antonio, where I was already missioned. Part of it was because I love my ministry here. Yet, another reason I stayed was to actually plant myself somewhere. To my surprise, I was getting tired of the nomad life.

And now that I'm actually planted, it's time to bloom. Just my flowers in the water.

But blooming isn't instantaneous. Or easy.

Sometimes blooming feels like you're just running in place.

Sometimes blooming feels like a jump of joy.

Sometimes blooming feels like a Rubik's Cube of frustration, either with yourself or others.

Yet, either way, it's happening. I know it's happening. 

Five years ago today....: Divine Providence Alone at Work

I have great reason to say, in truth, that it has been Divine Providence alone at work. Going there, I had no knowledge of what there was to do. I can say that I saw what was being done only when it was completed. In encounters where I could have met with obstacles, the same Divine Providence provided, totally unexpectedly, persons who could help me . . .. It also seemed to me that I was doing what I was meant to do without knowing how. May God be forever blessed for it! - St Louise de Marillac (L. 159)

Hna Paula and aspirant me
meeting an American Daughter of Charity

Five years ago today, I rolled in my suitcase through the front doors of the Divino Niño Convent. By doing so, I started my first day as a member of a Salesian religious community. I was very nervous. In fact, I spent the night before crying (which, in hindsight, I should have considered a sign...) A few weeks later, I would receive the aspirant habit and start my second job as a third-grade religion teacher soon after that.

The doubts started pretty soon after that first day. For many different reasons, I was unhappy there. And about six months later, I finally decided and got up the courage to tell the Sisters I was leaving the community. I don't like talking about the details of those months in that community because I find those experiences and emotions to be very private for me. However, I will say one thing....

...I know now it was all part of a plan of Divine Providence. Like St Louise said, I was doing what I was meant to do without even knowing it.

And it led me here five years later, in late 2012, in the final months of my postulancy with the Daughters of Charity. And I can't imagine myself anywhere else but with the Daughters. I had no idea that my journey would be like this, that a relative "mistake" would bring me to what I was always meant to be - a Daughter of Charity.

Almost four centuries ago, our foundress Saint Louise wrote to a Sister that was leaving for Poland, one of the first foreign missions of the Daughters of Charity. She wrote this, showing her dear affection for the Sister that she quite possibly would never see again. Yet, quite egotistically perhaps, as I read it, it's as if Saint Louise is talking straight to me and I can feel her comfort and love.

With all my heart I wish you the joy and interior consolation of a soul that is lovingly submissive to the most holy will of God . . . Oh, what an excellent way of life, hard on nature but sweet and easy for souls enlightened by eternal truths and by the awareness of the joy to be found in pleasing God and in allowing Him full mastery over their wills! This, it seems to me, . . . is the road that God wills you to travel to reach Him, however difficult it may appear. Enter upon it, then, wholeheartedly as would a vessel that will carry you where you must go. - St Louise de Marillac (L.448)

I pray that I may always lovingly submit to Divine Providence and remember where He has already taken me....and I wish the same for you, readers, wherever you may be on the journey.

The Sister and the Pelican: Loving the World as Jesus Did

A statue at the Colon Cemetery in Havana, Cuba
Monument to firefighters who perished
in the great fire of 1890

Sitting in a Communist country on top of a monument to fallen firefighters, is a Daughter of Charity immortalized in stone. Her face is somber, clutching a cross to her chest, and she sits with a mother pelican and her two babies.

The image struck me when I came across it browsing the St Vincent de Paul Image Archive at DePaul University (one thing a Vincentian dork such as myself loves to do). I recently discovered, thanks to a friend from Louisana, that there is a legend that mother pelicans stab themselves to give blood to their young when no other food is available and that eventually the pelican evolved into a Christian symbol. As for the Sister, is that Daughter based on a real person or rather a representation of the Daughters of Charity as a whole? I may never know, but there is some reason for her to be sitting next to the pelican. 


But this blog post isn't about the Daughters of Charity. Nor is it about pelicans.

It's about my assumption of why she and the pelicans sit on that monument to firefighters - that is, they represent self-sacrifice. As Christians, self-sacrifice is our whole reason for being. It's the reason we attend church services every Sunday, it's the reason we pray, it's the reason we believe with deep conviction that God loves us and it's the reason we've been persecuted and martyred.

To us, Jesus is more than just a companion, more than just a moral leader, more than just a miracle worker, more than just an advocate for the poor. He is the Son of God, God incarnate sent from above. But most important, he is God who sacrificed Himself for us - not out of pure obligation, but rather out of deep love. He is that mother pelican who wounds or even kills herself to feed her young. By His death two thousand years ago, he fed us. Somehow, through such a sorrowful event, He changed the world entirely. When He died, the veil of the temple tore into two, the earth shook, and rocks split. It was only a physical representation of what changed within us ourselves. When we accept His self-sacrifice as a Savior, something within us changes. Our lives become dedicated to him - our hearts catch fire.

We admire those who practice self-sacrifice - people like Saint Maximilan Kolbe who, upon hearing a family man picked out of a crowd in Auschwitz to be starved to death in a bunker, volunteered himself to go instead (the father died 53 years after this incident, in 1995). We admire those that throw themselves in front of a bullet or train or car, pushing another out of the way, whether they be mother, father, friend, priest or nun.


But self-sacrifice is more than an event. It's a life. And that's actually the hardest, and probably most frightful, part. Jesus gave us the ultimate example - He gave His life to save it. Will we die to save someone else? Probably not. Yet, there is a reason the Gospels are more than just about Jesus' death (and resurrection). Jesus preached self sacrifice - "greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). He lived a life of a nomad, sacrificing a life at home with a family he loved, in order to preach the Good News to all who will hear. He faced great temptations - temptations that would certainly make his life easier - yet he rejected them all in favor of being a Messiah of love, not power. Even apart from His death, Jesus sacrificed so much for us during His life. If our hearts are truly set on fire by conversion, by accepting the sacrifice of His death, we know that Jesus becomes our one desire and that includes imitating Him in all, including self-sacrifice, not just to gain eternal life but to love the whole world as Jesus did.
Henri Nouwen wrote "I know that I have to move from speaking about Jesus to letting him speak within me, from thinking about Jesus to letting him think within me, from acting for and with Jesus to letting him act through me. I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes."

Let us see the world through Jesus' eyes. Let us allow Him to speak through us and to act through us.

And by doing so, as hard as it may be, as much as all of us struggle with it, let us be examples of self-sacrifice - as those pelicans, as that Daughter of Charity, as those firefighters to whom that monument is dedicated, as many who live among us and have gone before us - truly given to living our lives for others rather than ourselves, truly loving the world as Jesus did.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Living in the Moment

Take every day as a ring which you must engrave, adorn, and embellish with your actions, to be offered up in the evening at the altar of God. (Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Prayer

Prayer rejuvenates the soul far more truly than the fountains of youth the philosophers speak of rejuvenate the body. . . . In prayer your soul grows quite vigorous; in prayer, it recovers the vision it lost; ears formerly deaf to the voice of God are open to holy inspirations, and the heart receives new strength, is animated with a courage it never felt before. . . . it is a fountain of youth. (St. Vincent de Paul)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Receiving Communion for the First Time

Elizabeth Ann Seton was born and raised Episcopalian, a denomination I've heard referred to as "Catholic Lite" or "Diet Catholic". Nevertheless, one of the biggest differences is that the belief of transubstantiation - the real true presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, a belief that Catholics have that Episcopalians don't. Shortly after her husband's death, Elizabeth Ann converted to Catholicism and writes to a friend about her First Communion:

At last....GOD IS MINE and I AM HIS! Now let all go its round - I HAVE RECEIVED HIM! The awful impressions of the evening before, fears of not having done all to prepare, and yet even then, transports of confidence and hope in his GOODNESS. 

My God, to the last breath of life will I not remember this night of watching for morning dawn? The fearful beating heart so pressing to be gone - the long walk to town, but every step counted nearer that street - then nearer that tabernacle, then nearer the moment He would enter the poor, poor little dwelling so all His Own.

And when He did, the first thought I remember was 'Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered', for it seemed to me that my King had come to take His throne. Instead of the humble, tender welcome I had expected to give him, it was but a triumph of joy and gladness that the Deliverer was come and my defense and shield and strength and Salvation made mine for this world and the next. (Elizabeth Ann Seton, letter to Amabilia Filicchi, 3/25/1805)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & the Power of God in Vocation

If it was not God, my daughters, who brought about that which is visible in your vocation, would it have been possible for a girl to leave her native place, her relatives, the pleasures of marriage...to come to a place she has never seen, to live with girls from places far distant from her own, to devote herself, in voluntary poverty, to the service of convicts, to poor children abandoned by their parents, to the sick poor rotting in filth and even those in dungeons? Oh! no, my daughters, God alone could effect that! (St Vincent de Paul)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Louise & Hearts of Good Will

Trust that the difficulties will pass...may they keep you humble. Please God by serving your masters [the poor] and His dear members with devotion, gentleness and humility. Do not be upset if your senses rebel, but reflect that our good God is satisfied by a heart with good will. I beg His goodness to fill yours with His holy love in which I remain, my dear Sister, your sister and servant.

 (St Louise de Marillac; letter to Sr Claude Brigide, p81)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Worrying

‎"Do not worry yourself over much… Grace has its moments. Let us abandon ourselves to the providence of God and be very careful not to run ahead of it." (Saint Vincent de Paul)

I really needed to hear this today.
Like, really needed to hear it.

In midst of the craziness that was today (and will be tomorrow as well), it's nice to know that our Founder knew what it was like to worry and what we should do instead. Truly providential that famvin's Facebook page had this as their quote of the day.

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Elizabeth Ann Seton & Courage

"If only we keep courage, we will go to Heaven on horseback instead of idling and creeping along!" (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli & Vocation

Sister Giuseppina stole the words right out of my mouth. Here in prepostulancy, I have thousands of thoughts running through my head constantly, some about how I failed to do this or that today, some worrying about my teaching ability, yet I still feel that not only do I belong here, but that I am happy here. Blessed Giuseppina Nicoli sums it up well:

A vocation is a gift from God...no talent, no riches, no ability, no nobility can make us good Daughters of Charity if God does not call us to this life. As for me, I feel really well and, in spite of the thousand thoughts and preoccupations of each day, in spite of my faults and daily failings, I am happy, happy in my dear vocation for which I bless the good God with all my heart. (Bl. Giuseppina Nicoli)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: Mother Suzanne Guillemin & the Poor

We have chosen the Poor, those who lack the goods of this world, whom the world despises, for our friend, for our Master, as Saint Vincent said. Perhaps a simple sentiment of pity for the flagrant injustice of certain human conditions was the origin of our first reaction: but we quickly discovered Christ in the unfortunate, and it was then that our choice became fixed, that we made the total gift of ourselves, wholeheartedly consecrated to God's service. This mystery of Christ in the Poor we have not yet fully penetrated nor shall we ever be able to do so; it is at the center of our heart and our vocation. It was grow in us continually by inspiration to the degree that purifying ourselves, we draw nearer to God. "Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God." We must ask in prayer the grace of a clear discernment, capable of discovering this mystery of Christ. (Mother Suzanne Guillemin; circular letter January 1, 1968, the last she wrote before her death)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Chosen by God

"Is your heart not touched at the thought: 'God has chosen a poor country girl for so holy an employment?'?" (St. Vincent de Paul)

If St. Vincent were alive today, I feel that he would laugh at me.

Seriously.

He would probably laugh if he would see me, the pre-postulant, mentally pacing back and forth, focusing on my own weaknesses and inabilities. "Oh, that poor girl!" he would think, chuckling. "Why doesn't she just see that she should be thanking God for His choice of her instead of subconsciously trying to tell Him He must have picked the wrong person! Why doesn't she see that He picked her with weaknesses, inabilities and all!" He would shake his head, smiling, and think "One day, she'll get it. One day."

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Louise & Spelling

I've been reading Praying with Louise de Marillac, our foundress, as part of my morning meditation, and this quote almost made me chuckle in the middle of the chapel. I thought, with so much seriousness in this blog, I needed some lightheartedness! Anyway...Louise was always writing to her Sisters; most of her letters have luckily been preserved and not lost. One day, she wrote to one house:

Remember to send us news of yourself from time to time. Do the same, Sister Andree, but, for the love of God, learn how to spell so I can read your letter easily and answer you as you would wish. (Writings, p588)

Now, St Louise could have been asking Sister Andree to learn how to spell literally for "the love of God", but I like to think she used the phrase as we use it today because that makes me laugh :)

Vincentian Quote of the Week: Frederic Ozanam & The Journey

“"Let us go in simplicity where merciful Providence leads us, content to see the stone on which we should step without wanting to discover all at once and completely the windings of the road" (Frederic Ozanam) 

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St Vincent & Vocation

Does our Lord not reveal the greatness of a vocation to follow Him when He says to His apostles 'you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you'? Therefore, you should greatly esteem your vocation. Humble yourselves for this grace, my dear Sisters, and be grateful for it. - St. Vincent de Paul (Spiritual Writings, A.89B)

More on this topic to come!

Vincentian Quote of the Week: St. Louise & A Message for the Prepostulant

"Remember always, dear Sisters, that it is the most holy will of God which put you where you are, and that it is for the accomplishment of His will that you must work there as would an ambassador for the King...all must be done with gentleness of heart and humility, as we consider the interests of those with whom we are working rather than our own or even those of the Company." (St. Louise de Marillac, Spiritual Writing p208) 

Just a small reminder from my foundress to the now completely official, now completely moved-in, prepostulant blogger ;)