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a life
to come home to
sharedprayer purpose community
Benedictine Sisters
St. Mary Monastery
Rock Island, Illinois
www.smmsisters.org
theirs, I have come to realize there
are three basic steps of discernment.
I call it the BLT method of discern-
ment. To discern God’s way in our
hearts, we must: Believe, listen,
trust.
BELIEVE God loves you
The beginning of discernment is a
step many forget. You must first be-
lieve that God loves you very much!
God created you in all your unique-
ness, beauty, gifts, and weaknesses.
God wants your good, your peace,
and your happiness.
But already in this beginning step, we can get derailed! We
become overly self-conscious; we
feel inadequate; we become unempowered and lose energy. We stop
short of discerning and responding
to the Spirit’s call within us when
we do not believe that we are good
or talented enough or do not believe
we are forgiven.
Many of us see our gifts as half-gifts. “You know, I’m really not special; let someone else who is better
than I am do that.” This is a sin that
we suffer; it’s the sin of not believing God’s action and grace in our
lives. It is easy to say, “I believe in
To discern your
vocation means to
sort through the
movements of your
heart and unfold the
truth of who you most
deeply are.
“
God,”—a powerful God somewhere
out there far away from me. But our
faith falls short when we fail to make
the next step, saying, “I believe in
God living and working in me.” God
desires to use even our “half-gifts”
and weaknesses according to God’s
wonderful and wise plan.
Thoughts of doubt came eas-
ily to my mind when I first began
my journey in the Lord, and they
can continue to tempt me when I
get caught up thinking I must be
perfect to serve God faithfully. The
danger is that I can become knot-
ted, insecure, and splintered when I
focus on myself, my weaknesses, my
inadequacies. I get scared at times
