Help! Crippling Discernment Anxiety.

[Pax_et bonum]

We've discussed marriage and religious life on other threads if you want to search, but here's a link to one along with part of my input (and I still have no idea if I'm right about the math part if anyone wants to correct me).

 

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/127932-dicernment-woes/

 

In lauding the religious life, it should not be done at the expense of the dignity of the married vocation. Objectively, it can be said, as the Church and saints have said, that priesthood and religious life are higher than marriage, but it doesn't seem to mean that marriage is lesser. Priesthood/religious life is on a supernatural plane while marriage is on the natural plane. They're different (I'm not good at math, but I don't think it's mathematically possible to compare things on different planes though I could just be making that up), and subjectively, the vocation that is highest is the one to which God is calling an individual.

 

 

[Ducky]

Thanks Pax! I read through that thread that you linked to, and it helped a good bit. I think I feel selfish that I want to be married and not give everything to God.

 

Intellectually, I want whatever will make me holiest. I know St. Teresa became a sister because she saw it was the surest path to heaven, which makes sense to me. I would become a religious to save my soul, but I don't know how much joy it would bring me, although I guess if I prayed for God to give me joy in religious life, He would. I just feel like God would give me the graces necessary to live religious life if I chose it, so I should choose it.

 

I just feel so much GUILT about desiring marriage! When I reflect on being married vs. becoming a religious sister, I have far more peace in considering marriage, but there's always that nagging doubt that perhaps I'm supposed to be a sister. There are some orders that seem nice when I look at them online, but I just don't get that sense of "THAT is where I want to be." I was actually somewhat interested in the Daughters of St. Paul for a time about a year ago. I contacted them about a retreat, but never heard back, so I took that as a sign. That interest waned, however.

 

It's especially hard as I'm dating someone now, which I think I mentioned above, and this most recent bout of anxiety began soon after we began dating. I want to be able to discern marriage, but I feel a responsibility or something to "try out" religious life first, just to be sure and to get rid of that anxiety, though getting rid of the anxiety doesn't seem like a good reason really. 

 

If God would just TELL me what His will for me is, I'd follow it and this would all be solved! I just don't know what it is because He won't tell me...  :unsure:

[organwerke]

Hi Ducky, I understand you very well and I'm sorry for you, but I would ask you: why are you interested in religious life if you are not comfortable with the idea of it? Do you think God would be happy to know that you are in religious life only because of feelings of fear, of guilt, of anxiety? And what image you could bring to the world of religious life if you see it as a sort of prison?

And, about God's will, remember that it is revealed us through peace, not anxiety.

So, if you go before the Lord in the blessed sacrament and you try to figure out what you feel about marriage (and you feel peace), and what you feel about religious life (and you feel anxiety), well, you have had the answer of what  God will is for you!

[organwerke]

Oh, and as a side note I would add that marriage too could bring to a very high santity as this wonderful and remarkable story of a modern saint tells us:

 

http://www.focus.org/blog/posts/saints-are-still-being-made.html