This post is based on Week Five of An Ignatian Prayer Adventure.
It is a gift to witness the profound transformation that happens in a person when he or she grows deeper in relationship with God and makes the Spiritual Exercises. Walking others through them also gives me a deeper appreciation for my own experience of making the Spiritual Exercises. The graces of the Exercises are still abundantly present in my life today.
I look back with fondness on the way God invited me to orient my life fully around God. At the time, it didn’t feel so great to be made aware of my disordered attachments and things that were keeping me from making God the center of my life. But now I see that the uncomfortable transformation back then invites me still today to live with God as my center and to recommit to my relationship with Jesus and to be one of his disciples.
My “yes” back then to answering the Call of the King and to live under the standard of Christ still widens my capacity to discern what Christ’s ongoing calls are in my life. I chuckle to think that I first said “yes” to writing when I made the Exercises almost eight years ago. I had no idea what that call meant for me, but I knew I could not deny it. One of the results was starting my blog. I can guarantee you that I never thought putting words out into the world on a blog would one day lead to me writing a book, but it did.
To live out my call to discipleship through writing terrified me. To be honest, it still does. As my book, Busy Lives & Restless Souls, makes its way into the world, I find myself energized and scared as I seek to embrace the new ways God is asking me to steward my gifts.
But that’s what the Spiritual Exercises do. They transform people by building a deep trust in Jesus, growing the desire to be in relationship with him, and then building our courage to say “yes” to the calls put before us.
At my ripe old age of 72,I’m stilltrying to discern his will. Will I everlive long enough to know it? By reading your blog, I’m hoping it will lead me to it. God bless.
I would like to say thank you and this website for all of your writings, I came across this website about a year ago and being in the faith for thirty years, this website has been a time of refreshing, it has challenged me in my complacency and Has renewed a desire to serve others and to trust and embrace our Savior. Once again thank you!
“I find myself energized and scared as I seek to embrace the new ways God is asking me to steward my gifts.”…thank you for using your gift of words to describe what I feel each day in my role leading an organization that serves the homeless. I often do not know what step lies before me, but trust each day that through God’s call, it will be made clear. Exciting but oh so scary.
Becky, I found as you did that to live out the call of my discipleship through writing a blog was terrifying, though I know that God walks with me and that the inspiration is His and not my own rambling thoughts. I have now been posting for two years. In 2015 I made the Spiritual Exercises as an on-line retreat – not any easy or comfortable path to follow although I had an excellent on line spiritual director. Thank you for your writing. God bless you.
Peter, love how you said, “the inspiration is His and not my own”. That resonates with my experience of writing also. Wow- online retreat! Technology being used for the Kingdom!
Becky, I absolutely love your writing and gain so much food for thought! I’m so glad that you dared to put it out into the world.
Thank you for these kinds words, Laurie. They give me encouragement today as I write something new to put out into the world.