My college and graduate school years were not without trials and tribulations. These times tested my faith in God's goodness and His love for me. In three different seasons during these years, I went to three different priests respectively for spiritual direction...all of whom happened to be Dominican friars. Somewhere in the middle, I had one spiritual director who was not a Dominican, but I never quite clicked with him nor felt like he truly understood me or my struggles.
However, the friars were not only faithful to the Truth, but highly attuned to me as an individual with specific circumstances. They preached what was true, good, and beautiful, but in such a way that was very relevant to me. Their method wasn't "one size fits all." It was tailored to myself and my situation, yet retaining its integrity.
The first one, a soft-spoken, elderly priest, patiently talked sense into my anxious self during my freshman year. His guidance was a firsthand attempt to get me to see my faults objectively and stop blowing them out of proportion. (I'd found out he had passed away a few years after that...eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.)
The second friar came unexpectedly to me in my senior year of college. I encountered a spiritual crisis--the crux of another journey at that point-- when I went to the SEEK conference that January. Having already known him through campus ministry, I felt compelled to share my troubles with him.
That was also where I met several more Dominican brothers, and their booth became the one I visited the most that weekend. I felt an immediate sense of home with them. This priest offered to continue the conversation when we returned to campus, which I gladly accepted, having gone without spiritual direction for several months. He was gentle, but could be firm with truth especially when I was being stubborn.
After a year and a half with this second friar, I had to switch to a new spiritual director (who is probably reading this right now. I'll try not to embarrass you too much). This again was not the plan. At this point, I was in graduate school and dealing with a new and even more difficult season. I began to uncover wounds from the past in the midst of my pain, and harboring anger at God. What did it mean that God was my Father? That He wasn't just out to get me or punish me?
This priest answered those questions very clearly with his words and example. In the midst of my self-loathing and insecurities brought on by this season, even through some of our frustrating and argumentative conversations (mostly because of my hard headedness), I slowly began to realize the Father's love for me because of him. His straightforwardness forced me to awaken to the reality I could not accept. His intentionality and care surprised me, because I ultimately did not believe that that was God's disposition towards the brokenness with which I closely identified.
God was not indifferent to my pain, nor causing it; He was with me in it. He saw me, He knew me, He loved me. For the first time in my life, what Christ suffered on the cross became real and personal to me. Not only His death, but His Resurrection.
And it all culminated in that year's Easter Vigil, when my entire life radically transformed.