random driving thoughts

Three years ago, I started my bi-weekly drives from Portland to Seattle for "groovy sister reserves" - my term for my adapted candidacy program where I kept my job at City Hall in Portland and spent extended weekends living with a group of my groovy sisters in Seattle. Candidacy is the year before the Novitiate, where you are still financially independent but have a chance to live in community to see if it's something you want to explore further. But I digress.

During that year, I got to know the stretch of I-5 between Portland and Seattle VERY well - every nook and crannie, the good places to stop for a bathroom break, the places to make very certain you are driving the speed limit. I also had some good quality alone time. Time to listen to books on tape. Time to read. Time to think. I sometimes think that a great deal of my vocation discernment was completed in my old Honda Civic on those drives!

I drove back from Portland today - this time I was there for a Human Trafficking presentation I helped organize as part of my ministry (which, by the way, was standing room only!). Naturally, it made me think back to those bi-weekly solitary drives. It also gave me some time to reflect ...

It's been almost a month since I professed my first vows as a Sister of St. Joseph of Peace, two months - tomorrow - since I started my ministry position, and a little over two months since I came to live here among the trees at groovy sister hq. And you know what?????

I'm happy. It's really that simple. Yes, there are some stresses in life and adjustments but all in all I am happy and content and that, my friends, is a gift indeed!

Periodically I find myself singing this line from the Talking Heads song, "Once in a Lifetime."

"And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here? "

That, though, is not really the question. The question is, "how did God manage to break through and help me to realize this is the life for me, despite how crazy it seemed." And on my solitary drive home to groovy sister hq this evening I realized, the only answer to that question is, "However you managed to do it God, Thank You."

And those, my bloggy friends, are my random thoughts for this evening!

Peace Out,
Susan