How do I begin discernment?
The best way to prepare for discernment is to make a time line of your life story from birth to present:
- Significant Relationships
- Who have been the people in my life?
- What has my relationship been to them?
- How have they influenced me positively and negatively?
- Who has had the most impact on me?
- Reflect on your experience of family
- What have I learned?
- What do I value?
- What do I want to let go of?
- Educational Experience
- What is your educational background?
- What did I like, dislike, favorite memories, activities, friends, significant events, people?
- What did I learn of life that I want to keep?
- What gets in the way?
- Social/Sexual Development
- What do I enjoy doing with others?
- What do I do just because it’s in?
- What do I find relaxing and renewing?
- Who have I dated, what circumstances?
- What has been my relationship to men?
- What has been my relationship to women?
- Review your sexual history
- From whom did you first learn about sex? What have been your experiences as a child, teen, young adult, now…
- What impact have various relationships had on you?
- Work History
- Jobs held, how long, where, colleges, preparation for positions, responsibility, initiative
- What did you learn and what skills did you acquire in each job or preparation process?
- Faith Experience
- What’s your earliest recollection of God?
- Who taught you about God?
- Who has had the greatest influence in faith development?
- How was church, faith, God in your family?
- What practices do you do to care for your faith life?
- Where did you learn about these practices?
- Who is God in your life?
- Name your experiences of the Divine in your life.
- How did that feel, what impact did these have?
- How do you see God in the everyday circumstances of your life?
- How do you nurture this relationship?
- Life Choice
- When did you first think of religious life?
- What has been the pattern in this?
- Why religious life?
- What about marriage? Or single life?