Cloister Garden

This spring, I have stepped back from writing new posts so that I can finish my convent memoir.

"Don't think without Him." For a place that was so physically peaceful and quiet, I was astonished by all the noise inside my head.

I took a deep breath. This was it. I was leaving my old life behind, and entering the cloister.

Do you really mean it, Mary? The Lord seemed to be asking. Will you really give up everything, even marriage, for Me?

The words sprang from the depths of the novice's hearts, proclaiming their longing for the Lord: "While the music played, Cecilia sang..."

I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn't see the road ahead. But what did that matter, if Jesus wanted me?

“I don't think the Lord wants me in Kentucky anymore,” I told my dad over the phone. “But how can I give up my job?”

“Our life here isn’t natural,” Sr. Emma, the vocational director, had told us. “It’s super-natural.”

I was on my way to retreat with the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia.

The Lord gazed back at me silently from His place of repose. He gave me no sign; He didn’t need to. I already knew what I had to do.

When I returned to Kentucky after Easter, the Lord gave me no sign I should enter a convent. Instead, He sent me Aidan.

Kentucky was the last place I lived before entering the convent. Every detail of my life here helped prepare me for entrance day.

Like Abraham, “who went out, not knowing where he was to go,” (Hebrews 11:8), I was embarking on a journey with an unknown endpoint.

The Lord was calling me. He spoke to me in those intimate Thursday mornings before the Blessed Sacrament, and through the beauty of the

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