Followup on Ordination Craziness

I wanted to followup since the comment thread on the ordination post (couple days ago) has gotten quite long. So here's some stuff that came up with my spiritual director yesterday.

While I agree that passivity is not our calling, I'm not being passive. I am waiting on God. That's quite different. I am praying through and being formed by this process.

I find that each time I go through this cycle (gifts recognized, process started, doors slammed) I change, and I believe that each time God is forming me into the kind of priest God wants me to be. I am certainly being humbled. I have learned to trust on a much deeper level (with the occasional slip up such as when I got jealous of my classmate).

The point is that I really trust the process, and I really trust the Church to be God's representative on earth. So I don't mind submitting to the process, however long it takes, and I find that this journey is molding me, and I believe making me into a priestly person more and more. I would have been such a different priest had I gone through at any other time, and I will be different if it takes another 10 years.

It has become far from a bunch of hoops to jump through (I told her that they've removed the hoops entirely! I can't find a hoop to jump through anymore!) and really become a long journey of stepping forward each day in faith, thrilled that my gifts are used as they are right now, and knowing that God has wonderful plans for the future.

[I'm not so much a "God has a wonderful plan for my life" kind of believer, but more one who trusts that if I find a place in God's story, the overarching plan, I will do well by my Lord.]

So, all this is to say that I really want to allow this process to continue as it is. I absolutely do not want to circumvent it by taking myself to the bishop. That is not appropriate. And in the meantime I am not sitting here doing nothing, I am learning tons about myself and about my gifts and about the Church and about my place in the Kingdom. Submission may be a dirty word in a lot of contexts, but here I truly believe that it is helping me become a better disciple, and perhaps someday a better priest.