Ever since I started wondering if God wanted me to be a priest, it became my preoccupation. Ever since I started actively trying to discern God’s will, almost all of my praying came down to that one question: God, what do you want me to do?

Actually it wasn’t just that general question; it was very specific: God, do you want me to be a priest, or are you calling me to marry someone? Every time I approached God, every time I prayed, every time I did anything that had anything to do with God, what I wanted from that event or from that prayer or from that time away was an answer to that one specific question.

Of course, God has his own timing, and he did not answer that question in any way, shape, or form for ten years. Every time I went on retreat, every time I prayed, every time I went to Mass, every time I prayed a Rosary, God was giving me graces and gifts. The problem was that I couldn’t see them or I refused to see them because I wanted one thing in particular. I wanted one specific thing. I wanted an answer. I would leave every one of those retreats or prayer times upset because God did not answer my prayer.

As I look back on that, I recognize how ungrateful I was. The entire time, God was giving me himself. He was giving me graces; he was giving me the different virtues that I would need—he was giving me exactly what I needed for the moment. And I was preoccupied with what he wasn’t giving me.

A massive part of discernment is recognizing that even when God doesn’t give you the answer you want when you want it, he is still present. He is still working, and he calls us to return again and again to prayer, to be grateful for what he’s doing and what he’s giving us, and to allow him to help us according to his own time.

Discernment