When i left on Friday, Sr. Mary didn’t say goodbye, she said i’ll pick you up at the airport!
She left for up north yesterday.. since she told me the news i keep wondering how hard it is for her to leave this home she has known for five years. As a sister this would be the first re-assignment she has had. I imagine it would be a bit difficult to have to just pick up, say good bye to new found family/ friends and the community of sisters you’ve been living with and just go. That’s the sacrifices she and others have to make as religious.
Devoting your life to God and trusting in your superiors i would find to be on one hand rough and on the other freeing. You have to trust their judgment in where they place you and the new position you are about to undertake, whether you feel prepared or not. Yet, at the same time if you are whole heartedly able to trust, i could see it being more of a breeze as you go where life leads you.
I’m still not sure how i feel about it or if i am called to live this life. This is the first move of sisters i have had to deal with and its difficult. Today’s Mass though was about trusting in God and letting Him be your guiding strength. It was perfect. There was also a message in their about how He doesn’t expect us to be perfect which was quite uplifting since i lost count of how many times i messed up when doing different tasks this past week… Between writing in permanent marker on the dry erase board, to messing up dates and numbers on forms and exams, to laughing during a solemn part of prayer… the list goes on.
Another analogy i heard though is how every time we mess up a rock is placed in our back pack, but God does not want to only remove these rocks, He wants to take the back pack completely off our shoulders. It such an awesome image, we don’t have to live in fear of our mistakes and the uncertainties of the future because God promised He would take care of us. Whether we believe it or not, God will prove time and again the truth of His promise.
However, at the same time it is written that there will be hardships, that we have to pick up our Cross and follow Him, so even though life isn’t going to be always easy, He is still looking after our best interest and we have to trust in Him through the pain of goodbyes, through the pain and sorrow of death and through the uncertainties in our every day.
The Sisters are such a great example of this trust and whether or not that is where God leads me i still need to learn this lesson because my life still rests in His hands.
