Last week I found myself across the table from a very wise (sometimes too wise) religious sister. We were grabbing lunch, talking about everything under the sun, including my new, most favorite anxiety: marriage. Specifically we were discussing the marriage rush and how, for some reason, I felt that if I did not get married tomorrow that it was never going to happen for me.
I couldn’t have been more wrong, and she was here to tell me why.
As our conversation unfolded I listed all the reasons I was nervous, but as I talked I realized that my nervousness was more like impatience, and that what I really needed, was trust.
Because finding your vocation isn’t about how quick and easy you can wrap it all up. It isn’t some assignment or paper I can complete three weeks in advance, this is something that is going to take time, and I needed to be okay with that.
I needed to trust that the Lord had a plan. I needed to let Him take me outside of myself, to stretch and bend where I wasn’t comfortable.
To wait, because He was asking me to.
If you think about it, it is really interesting, how we spend about a quarter of our lives trying to find the one person we want to spend the next three quarters with. And that this stresses us out? Why? Is it because we as women secretly feel that we need to have a man to validate us, that we are only worthy if we are in a relationship?
The truth is, I often think that being single is shameful. That for some reason if I was in a relationship, I would suddenly have it all together. I would all of a sudden be super holy and finally have a reason to go to daily mass or make my holy hours.
This, is a lie.
I, nor you, nor anyone else, should hide behind that excuse to be as holy as you can be today. Nor should we tell ourselves that we are somehow "broken" or "incomplete" without a man or a woman in our lives. Because, you see, in a way we are incomplete. Until our Vocation is fulfilled in that person that the Lord is leading us to, we will always be yearning for another. But that should not detract us from our small, everyday vocations that will lead us closer and closer to that purpose, the purpose in which we were created for.
So let’s start today by waking up and accepting the best parts of our vocations, and ourselves just as they are in this moment. For me, my vocation is to be a student, an RA, a teammate, a leader, a friend, and a daughter. One day, perhaps my vocation will be to be a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, and hopefully mother, but that is not today. Lets focus on today, and being the most excellent we can be, right now.
"Perhaps this is the moment for which you have been created." - Esther 4:14
