When I took French in high school, I had to choose a French name for myself. “Kendra” doesn’t translate very well, so one year I was Patrice and the next year Genevieve and then Rose.
But my senior year, the teacher had her own name for me.
She called me “The Girl Who Refuses to Speak French.”
You see, I could read and write French very well, but I was terrified of speaking it. I was terrified of making a mistake, of sounding stupid and I wasn’t interested in asking for help.
For the record, I still received an “A” in that class.
Over the past year, God has really been working in my life to put in me in situations that are completely outside of my comfort zone and then giving me the choice—much like I had in my French class in high school—sit mute and let others do all the talking, or risk something, risk everything maybe and learn something new and perhaps grow and change because of it.
And while I have taken some tentative steps outside of my comfort zone (like driving two hours by myself to the Diocesan Convention last weekend), I still retreat frequently to that quiet girl in French class who was content to take her “A” and be safe rather than take the risk of failure.
In his book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, David Platt writes about Jesus calling the first disciples. He says, “Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.”
In a few weeks, I will be attending the BACAM conference. BACAM stands for Bishop’s Advisory Council on Aspirants for Ministry. It is another step in the discernment process, another step in my journey to discover if God is really and truly calling me to the priesthood.
After I received the invitation to BACAM, I immediately sent an email to Pastor Debbie and told her that receiving the invitation was just another thing that reminded me that this journey I’m on is real.
It’s very real and very exciting and very terrifying.
If at the end of the discernment process, I am accepted as a postulant, my world will change in such magnificent and awe-inspiring and perhaps completely chaotic ways, it will make mumbling a few words in French seem like a fairy tale.
As David Platt wrote, I will be leaving certainty for uncertainty. And ultimately I will be abandoning who I thought I was all these years in an effort to embrace the “me” that God is slowly—baby-step slowly—introducing me to.
In the end, God doesn’t ask us simply to step outside our comfort zone, He obliterates that comfort zone and asks that we trust Him when we’ve gone so many years not even trusting ourselves.
And yet, as frightening as that all may seem, there is a comfort, there is a peace in giving it all to God. I have no idea what my future holds and that should send me to bed, quivering in the darkness.
But it doesn’t.
Because the truth is, I am more at peace, I am more whole, and I am more “me” now than I have ever been in my life.
And that is the beauty of God.
It’s like that moment when we’re children and we jump off the couch confident that our father will catch us.
There is freedom in flight.
And there is comfort in the safety of His arms.
