Taking a Risk {or Reflections on Doing God's Will}

Are you a risk taker?

I am SO not. I'm so far from being a risk taker that I could reasonably be called risk averse. I get too comfortable with the status quo and don't step outside of my comfort zone. 

If you are anything like me, your blog reader and Instagram feed seem to be full of people stepping out and doing something BIG. And possibly something agrarian.

Cari and Dwija and now Rosie are moving out of the 'burbs and into the country. 

Haley and fam didn't just give up the corporate gig to give farming a try, but made a road trip of it before they got there. What the what?!?

Here I am, happily ensconced in that suburban life with the minivan, the ballet class, the preschool. The family dinners and the commute. It looks so common and so boring. Their lives look so interesting. It's easy to start thinking that to be a good, Catholic mom, you gotta get your homestead on. But no. No no no.

Just no.

God wants us to do his will for our lives, not theirs. He's asking us, like he asked his disciples to leave everything and follow Him. 

I look again at how I'm living God's will for my life. I do a little reframing, to try to see my life how God does. You know, the life where I moved halfway across the country with my husband and two kids under two to a small Midwestern city far from family where we barely knew a soul, to set up shop for three years, so my husband could work a million hours a week, receive amazing training, and not have to worry about (or be alone in) not prescribing contraception or referring for abortion?!?

That one. My boring little life.

Yeah, I'm living my own brand of stepping out. But you know what? It didn't feel like that. It just felt like living. It felt like prayer and response. I think that that's the key: a life of prayer, so that when we hear God's voice, we can respond. 

Maybe it was a risk, but it didn't feel like one. I trusted that God is guiding our path. 

How is God asking you to step outside of your comfort zone? Maybe He's asking you to be Abraham, to move your tribe across the desert on his promise of something great to follow. Maybe he's asking you to be Mary, to simply give your fiat. "Be it done to me according to thy word." But know that by making the radical choice to give your life over to Him, you, like me, are becoming that risk taker.