A long van ride home

So I have a low grade infection in the kidney they did the operation on. It's not too serious, but it's causing a lot of inflammation, so the doctor said I had to do a run of methylprednisolone (steroids) which makes me more than a little crazy. I almost never talk about my past at work unless someone asks me about it directly. Tonight though, it was like I had no filter - so what started out as a conversation about which beers I like at my favorite microbrewery turned into a pretty detailed description of my former life. I think this was good for two reasons:

1.) I've tried to explain to my coworkers on literally hundreds of occasions that even though I'm going to be nun I'm still a regular person just like them - nothing special, nothing better or worse than anybody else. Some of them get it, but most of them still have this tripped out picture of the religious life that seems to be a cross between Sister Act and The Sound of Music (maybe with a little Dogma thrown in.) I want them to understand that I'm not this perfect person who had some vision and now is locking herself away with Jesus in an ivory-tower-convent. I'm a person who encountered the Love of God and was blown away and said "I want to love like this too, please will You show me how?" And when the answer took the form of a vocation to the Poor Clares I said yes because even though I was scared shitless something deeper than the fear said that if the call came from that Love it would be okay somehow - more than okay actually.

2.) When one coworker asked me if I ever miss doing some of the things I used to do I was able to answer that question for myself as well as for her. When I look back and remember the drugs and the sex and the parties and the craziness there are a few images that make me shudder, but most of the time I really was having fun. And I do miss it a little sometimes. But my life now is so much more than fun - it's filled with a significance that was there all along but that I was unaware of before. It's not that I wasn't happy - I was, but that happiness seemed fleeting and superficial and directionless. I used to think that religion, especially Christianity, restricted people and made them less than themselves. Turns out that understanding who I am in relationship to the God who created me and loves me is making me more myself. Living in the awareness of perfect Love is absolutely liberating. Now and again, I catch glimpses of this person I never would have thought I could be - couldn't even have imagined - and I realize that this is who God wants me to be - who He created me to be. Faith tells me that the love of God is turning me into that person and that He's doing this for all of creation as well. I want to cooperate with Him, give Him free reign to keep doing what He's been doing. So yes, I do look back once in a while, and I miss some stuff. But I'm much more intigued by, and grateful for, what I see when I look ahead.