Discernment

Good discernment.... is it possible?

I am an amateur at this wonderful art.  My life has been permeated by second-guesses and perfectionistic standards, which often handicap forward motion. 

We all discern differently - and because we are all unique, God speaks and relates with each one of us differently.  Imagine God speaking to a bear the same way He speaks to a flower!  But I want to share some things I've gleaned from the experience of trying to discern.

I can see patterns in how God has spoken to me between one situation and another.

 For me, discerning a new move or a new decision has followed the same arc, regardless of the decision at hand.  It looks like this:

1. "Hunger Pang" Stage: Gut senses that something is not right.

2. "Indigestion" Stage: Months or even years of indecision, usually painful.  Seeing many paths but no awareness of the "right" path.  The only certainty is the pain of the current situation and the desire to work towards resolution.

3. "Labor" Stage: Usually in a very short period of time, multiple people or sources reveal the truth in a way that, to me, feels like several "Aha!" moments.  It might be a choice word of advice that I hear from several friends that week.  It has often been seeing things in my life begin to move (the thing I have been afraid to let go of falls apart, people announce their own decisions that will affect my own). Once, the very week that I was ready to announce to my boss that I had decided to quit and go to grad school, was the same week that he had been preparing to tell me he would need to cut my hours. Another time, I kept hearing "what are you waiting for?" in various ways in a 3-day period. Looking back, the Labor Stage is often a very joyful time because it reveals things coming together in a way that feels serendipitous.

4. "Action" Stage: This is the time (usually a strong gut impulse, literally), where it suddenly becomes clear to me what to do, how to act, in a way that may not have been clear even yesterday.  I often call this the "burden of action." No longer are the painful thoughts that something isn't right just fluttering around - now it is certain that action must happen. 

It really helps to know which stage you are in.

Once, when I was in the "Indigestion" stage, a friend pointed out to me that when you make a pot of chili, there is a really active time of putting ingredients together, and then there is a time when the chili is done.  But the greatest, longest period of time is when the chili simply sits on the stove, simmering.  No action appears to be happening, and yet this is a very necessary time.   Often, during "Indigestion," we want to rush the answer, bring it to fruition, create a burden of action.  But we can't get to the burden of action without time to simmer. 

On the other hand, there are definitely times to take action, when we have gone through the "Labor Stage" but are finding it impossible to move to Action.  Why?  Maybe it's the fear of letting go of the unknown and exchanging it for the known.  Maybe the writing is on the wall but it is not exactly the writing we want to see.  Maybe some of our values are competing with other values and we can't choose one in favor of the other. 

Think - what does a good decision feel like?

I have been imprisoned by so many mind games in the past, sometimes even in bondage to what I think God would want for me (aka - "God would want you to be a martyr", "God wants you to do the hardest, most dislikeable thing you could imagine"). 


Once, a priest challenged me on this way of thinking.  "Have you ever experienced God's presence?" He asked.  "Yes," I said.  "What did it feel like?"

"Light," I said.  "The greatest love I could ever imagine - beyond what I could imagine.  A sense of my own beauty and dignity.  A sense of him laughing with Joy at my very being alive.  A sense that he was with me no matter what."

And the times when I have experienced God's movement in my heart toward a new path - this is how it has always felt:

A world of new possibilities.  Freedom to explore endlessly with delight.  Joy - a deepened sense of joy and hope and an increased sense of how well God knows me and plans for me.  A sense of having been taken care of.  The excitement of all the things that bring joy being together in one place. 

What have been the stages and lessons you have learned about your own discernment?