Dating and Discerning

Over at a vocation forum I frequent, my friends Jean and Natalie expressed the wonderful idea that discerning a vocation to religious life as a nun, brother, or a priest is very much like dating. You have dates and "flirt" around with different communities and eventually you find "the one". No religious community is the same as no date or person will be the same.

Today when I met with the vocation director of a certain order I'm considering, he asked me if I was dating at all. He thinks people should be open to dating since that too can come from God, but he feels that when candidates discern with a community, they're in essence "dating" or getting a feel for that community.

I spent most of my college life going back and forth between a desire to join religious life and a desire to date. I never acted on either desire (I began to get close to someone once but remained single for the remainder of college) so it was difficult to determine what I really wanted since I would inch toward each option but chicken out at the last minute.

At the same time, I don't want to spend my entire life in a perpetual stage of discernment. Discernment as a whole is gradual, but at the same time there comes a point where you have to decide between yes I want to do this and I'm going to take concrete actions to make it happen, or no, it's best that I stop this process and move on to another path in my life.

So here's hoping I find "the one"...