love that will not let me go

on unexpected vocations

“You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or no saint at all.”
– Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

“Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.”
– Ron Swanson

I never wanted to get married. I suppose that sounds odd to say and perhaps odder still to actually mean. But I meant it. For many years, I meant it. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the only thing I ever felt when watching weddings in films or hearing others talk about marriage was relief. Thank God I wasn’t going to to do that. Because I was going to do absolutely everything for God.

Even when the sweetness of the Holy Spirit had assured me that my priesthood was something possible, good, and real, there was a profound sense that I would commit the entirety of my life to God in a special way. I wanted to wake up for Him, breathe for Him, speak with and to and for Him. I wanted to rise and sleep and move and die entirely and unconditionally for Him. I figured that I would be a nun, and this would bring me a great and unspeakable joy.*

There was a plan for my discernment, and it involved three years of seminary. I imagined late nights up reading in a single bed in the student dormitories, my heart set upon my work and my life in community. I imagined a little room that would prepare me for life in a convent (again - this time as an Anglican). What rapturous prayer I would know, clothed in peace and humility and glorious solitude. Even remembering these plans brings me back to an evening in Los Angeles where I walked the lengths of my office shelves and evaluated which books I would give to whom when I entered religious life, this time for good.

The Holy Spirit, as it happens, is not all sweetness, peace, and humility, but also in possession of a brazen and demented sense of humor. On February 15th, 2015 – back fresh from time at a monastery and reveling in Jesus Christ as my only and truest Valentine – I met an unexpected and inconvenient person. It was a Sunday evening at the Cathedral, and I was officiating Compline for the first time. In the darkness of the candlelit chancel, I began the invitatory: May my prayer be set before you as incense; the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.

He tells this story differently. He was in a choir stall, staring absently at a candle until the service began. I didn’t see him there, this stranger – a newcomer to the church, the city, to me. We were introduced after the service. Eight months later, we were engaged. Five months after that, we were married – the most shocking and impossible thing, and yet the only possible thing.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I share this to write just a little bit about humility (a virtue I cultivate because I am so very in need of it). I had an idea about how I had hoped to serve God, but surely some of that was wrapped up in hopes about how other people would see me serving God. There was something comfortable and solid about the idea of myself as a nun that made sense to me, and I wanted it desperately. It felt like I was always working toward it, always striving to gather the fragments of my life and being and personality and pack them neatly into an idea of the “holy religious” with a faithful Christian heart. So much thought, so much work, so much ego, so much longing.

But when I met the person who became my husband, something happened within me that I can only describe as being set completely free.

No more was I working, striving, sorting, calculating, posturing, or longing. I was simply overcome by love. I was love. Everything I did became love. Everything we did together somehow felt – and feels – not so much like we are building something, but rather like we are gently, marvelously witnessing something extraordinary being revealed.

I attended seminary, but I lived in an apartment. There was a heap of boots inside my door, and only half of them belonged to me. There were late nights of reading and late nights of doubt, and when I had closed the books or the internet, I did not retire to hours of private prayer. Instead, I slipped silently into a darkened bedroom covered in laundry and into a bed already warm. I whispered I love you to a person and to God. And God answered I love you back to both of us.

It had been my understanding that there was one particular way to love God completely. There seemed to be one specific way to wake up for Him, breathe for Him, speak with and to and for Him, to rise and sleep and move and die entirely and unconditionally for Him.

But there was another, more perfect way for me, as much as admitting it felt like free-falling from the moon. There are so many holy and perfect ways. There is one for you. The graces of our vocation lie in the reality that our vocation will show us the fullness of our capacities for love. This love flows from the Source of all love - the purest and first love: the heart of Jesus Christ. When we are attentive to the true songs of the Holy Spirit and finally permit our hearts to be quietened enough to learn them, we will be breathless with the joy of what we discover.

O love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be

*Yes, there are nuns who are also priests in the Anglican Communion. Rare, but present, and far too few, in my humble opinion.