I look into my husband's eyes across our dining room table, and they are so tender and alive with love. How humbling it is to recognize that he has not only seen me at my best, but also he's seen me at my worst and my most vulnerable. He's smiled at me when I'm singing, gloriously happy, and he's consoled me when I've been sobbing in raw grief. He's experienced me hugging him, and he's experienced me pushing him away, crying out to him in anger, misunderstanding what he's trying to explain to me. And he's accepted the whole package. All of me.
I've never believed in love at first sight. Yet, how else can I explain that after spending an evening together with him at a party, that I went home and told my sister Donna that I'd met the man I was going to marry? Sure, I thought he was cute, and I loved the curl that fell over his forehead. But it was more than that. It was a soul deep knowing that not only did I want to marry this man, but that God was calling us to join our lives in the vocation of marriage.
A similar experience that I've found was that of Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis, and how he discovered his vocation to the priesthood. He was almost seventeen, walking to meet his girl friend and his Catholic Action and school friends, when, as he was walking past the Basilica of St. Joseph, he felt an urge to go inside. He said later, "I went in, I felt I had to go in - those things you feel inside and you don't know what they are."
Once the young Jorge was inside, he saw a priest walk in and go into one of the Confessionals to hear Confessions. "I felt," he said, "like someone grabbed me from inside and took me to the Confessional. Obviously I confessed...but I don't know what happened." He talked to the priest, a young man and "right there, I knew I had to be a priest. I was totally certain." (from a biography of Pope Francis, "The Great Reformer" by Austen Iverleigh)
The future Pope Francis accepted this call to the priesthood not so much as God's will for him, but as his own deepest desire - and he believed that God knew this before he did, and "woke him up," showed him his own desire very clearly.
So often, if we try to stay on God's wave length, we are mysteriously led to the right place at the right time, an experience that shows us that God knows us better than we know ourselves and that God will always help us to discover our best and truest selves. God showed me the Best Place in the world for me - my husband's arms. Because God knew that together we would be the right ones to help each other on the most difficult and rewarding journey of our lives - the journey to our salvation.
Our married life together has moved in strange, mysterious circles. My husband at twelve years old wanted to become a priest, later left the Seminary and got married, then later cycled back to the Church to pray and discern and be ordained a Permanent Deacon. I walked out of a Grammar School, determined never to teach again, and, years later, found one of my greatest joys in laid-back teaching in small faith sharing groups with adults. The Church we were married in is the Church our son was buried from three years ago.
God's pattern for our life often cannot be understood until years later, or not at all on this earth. Sometimes, our decisions take much time, much investigation of possibilities, and much prayer. All God asks is that we trust that we have a sacred life journey to make and that He is the most reliable Captain of the vessel of our soul, even if He often guides us quietly and gradually.
If you haven't found it yet, trust that He knows what the Best Place in the World will be for you. It may be in a biological family. It may be in a family you choose for yourself. It may be in the joy of marriage. It may be in the joy of a life dedicated to a much-loved job or cause. It may be one Best Place, followed years later by another one. God knows you. Listen, and follow wherever He leads you! The path He will show you is meant to be your personal path to save your soul.
"Worshipping the Lord means giving Him the place that He must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing - not only by our words - that He alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before Him that He is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history." - Pope Francis
"Lord, my allotted portion and my cup, You have made my destiny secure. Pleasant places were measured out for me; fair indeed to me is my inheritance." (Psalm 16, 5 & 6.)
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