I was raised in a beautiful family in which the faith imbued the whole of our life. My vocation began in this home of love as it was here that I first experienced the Lord’s personal love for me. I grew up going to Catholic school and truly always try to be in relationship with the Lord. My relationship with Him deepened greatly in high school, specifically through my prayer and the community of a youth group.
As I was trying to figure out where to go and what to study in college, I was invited to consider some ministry options, which resulted in my working with NET (National Evangelization Teams) Ministries for a year. In this year, I was living with ten other young adults traveling the country as we ran Catholic retreats for middle and high school youth. It was a year of great growth and joy! My prayer life deepened in a way I could not even have envisioned before. I experience what a great gift community is, how it challenged me to grow, and very practically showed me how to love. I also discovered the great joy of sharing the gospel with others.
Following this year, I began college. To help pay for school, I began working part time for the older Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration doing some simple housekeeping work. As I worked around these sisters, I very quickly fell in love with them. I was impressed with their joyful peace, the way they loved one another, and the way they cared for me.
During college, as my intimacy with Jesus grew in prayer, I began to become aware of the invitation to be totally His. I prayed about religious life more and more, talked to family and friends about it, and felt the Holy Spirit’s confirmation. Thus I began to visit religious communities, which continually affirmed the Lord’s call for religious life in general for me but I felt unaware of the specific community. I spend about a year in this place and frustrated with the lack of clarity, I finally came on a discernment retreat with our sisters (after about three years of invitations).
At one moment on that retreat, I was praying in our adoration chapel. The Lord brought back to my mind many moments in my life in which I had prayed for a greater Eucharistic love and that the entirety of my life would be ‘spent out’ in adoration of His most holy Eucharistic Body and Blood. As Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, this is precisely our charism- to make of our whole lives a single act of adoration to our good God! In the moment, I realized this is where He wanted me to dedicate myself to Him. For years, He had been instilling the charism of this community in my heart so that I would be prepared to receive the gift of the invitation to religious life in this community. From that moment on, I believed Jesus was inviting me to become a Sister of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration.
Thus after graduating, I entered our community and continue to be in awe of the pure goodness of our Lord! As a sister, He continues to draw me to Himself through solitary moments with Him in prayer, through my sisters, and through those that I encounter daily. As I spend time before His Holy Eucharist, my prayer remains that I may be transformed to His very self and bring Him to my sisters and to a world longing for His good, good love.