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?

Spacers

On my first trip to the orthodontist, they put spacers between my teeth.

These are little rubber bands between your teeth to get them ready for braces, or to help set your teeth straight (pun intended).

If you have never had spacers, I will tell you something: they hurt SO MUCH.

Here are your poor teeth - they have been best friends for years, side by side.  Maybe one is a little lopsided. Maybe one is growing diagonally instead of straight.  But through thick and thin, these teeth have stuck together.

And then comes the spacer. 

The spacer is a disturber of the peace of your mouth.  The spacer shakes things up.  The spacer creates division. The spacer breaks up the close friendships of teeth.

The spacer creates room for growth.

Without spacers, we might become convinced that the below image is normal, healthy, good:

 This has been a time in my life for painful uprootings, for painful spacers.  For me, the past few months have been a time where I have had to reevaluate many relationships, where the only clear answer is the need for space.  The space hurts greatly.  I find myself fighting all my natural urges to rush in, repair, heal, create closeness again.  And yet, everything inside of me says, "Give it space.  Give it time."

Just like my 13-year old self, I am once again rebelling against spacers. 

Spacers provide silence.  Spacers provide aloneness.  Spacers show us who we are apart from the whole. 

Spacers show us where we might have been drifting off course.  Spacers can reveal dysfunctions or unhealthy dynamics which might have become so ingrained as to seem normal.  Spacers provide room to breathe, room to view the entire, room to heal. 

Space away from our crowded worlds, chaotic social calendars, enmeshed social patterns and habits,  shows us the inner threads of our deepest longings.  Space reveals the natural trajectory of our lives, values, beliefs. 

Spacers come before braces. 

Sometimes we need the space to see where we are, where we want to go, before we are ready to embark on a new journey.  Sometimes relationships need a space of quiet in order to reach a real place of healing and true cooperation. 

Space reveals us in the eye of our fondest Beholder - God.  Only in God is my soul at rest.  Only at rest can my soul speak.  Only when my soul speaks can I move in the direction of His love, light, joy and peace.