Sr. Kim

Portage, MI

24 years old

My vocation is really a story about God’s mercy and grace. The thought of a religious vocation never crossed my mind until I went to a Steubenville youth conference in high school. I remember praying in the chapel and sensing a call to consider religious life; I didn’t know anything about sisters and I was frightened by the idea!

I spent the last year or two of high school timidly researching different religious orders but without really finding any answers. So I went to college, “discovered” boys and conveniently decided I was called to marriage. Meanwhile, I found little support for my faith and my relationship with God suffered. I was miserable but couldn’t do what I needed to set things right with God. Finally, in my junior year I started volunteering as a CORE member for Life Teen and, by the grace of God and the new relationships I formed there, was able to start growing in my faith again.

When I graduated, I volunteered to teach Vacation Bible School for the summer with a program called Young Disciples. This program deepened my faith and prayer life and surrounded me with teammates who were discerning. When I realized that I preferred spending time in prayer to talking on the phone with my boyfriend, I knew I had to break up with him and start discerning my vocation again.

I returned home, found my spiritual director – Fr. Larry Farrell – and attended my first retreat with the Dominican Sisters of Mary… in November of 2007. God still had a lot of work to do on me! Through regular time in adoration, I gradually discerned that I had a religious vocation; it was just a matter of finding out where.

I continued to attend the SMME retreats, but started looking around at other congregations hoping I could find a “better” match. Slowly, the wall of objections started coming down, brick by brick. Before long, I found myself saying things such as, “I love the Dominican charism.” But in my stubbornness I held out because I mistrusted Catholic schools and did not want to teach in one!

God finally delivered the message loud and clear. I visited another religious community in February and found myself, once again, not fitting in. In a private conversation with the vocation directress, she told me that when she had been discerning, something about this community resonated with her, and she knew that she belonged there. Shortly after this, I went on another SMME retreat. As the sisters began talking about the Dominican charism again, my heart leaped with joy and yearning and my eyes filled with tears for I knew where my home was. I surrendered my last bit of resistance to God, and now I thank Him every day for His overwhelming mercy, patience, and grace.