Monastery in my Heart
sharing my faith and my creativity
This website is still under construction. Please check back for updates and contents. God bless you!
About
About Me
Despite much enjoyed careers as a cartographer and preschool teacher, my life felt empty and lost as I came to my late twenties. I begged God for guidance. In response, and almost miraculously, God took a lonely, mixed up woman and said, “Go there” while pointing to a convent of Dominican teaching sisters halfway across the country. I could not explain fully why I had to go, but I had this strong foreboding that only darkness lay ahead unless I embarked on this new path.
From 2010 to 2015, I received an amazing formation as a teaching sister in a thriving active congregation. I learned so much about God and how to love Him more fully. It broke my heart to leave that vibrant community, but I had ceased to thrive. In an act of great love, the community refused my request to renew my temporary vows, assuring me that "God wants you to be happy."
Before long, another new and quite unexpected path opened; in 2016, I entered a local community of cloistered Dominican nuns. Within the enclosure, I began to truly learn about myself and how to let God love me. I longed for forever, yet the cloister would prove to be only a stage, a time of healing and spiritual growth, on my journey with and to God. After much prayer and counsel, I rejoined the world just as everything was closing down in fear of a deadly new pandemic. In this strange period of transition and uncertainty, I created the first version of monasteryinmyheart.com. I had so much to share and so much time on my hands!
In March 2022, God finally let me make vows for "all the days of my life", not religious vows but wedding vows. I married a wonderful man of deep faith who each day shows me God's love and allows me to tangibly express my love for God.
In February, I attended the Solemn Profession of Vows of a dear friend. The presiding Bishop described the nuns as the praying heart of the Church, quoting Saint Therese: In the heart of the Church, I will be love. I heard those words still calling to my heart. Laying my hand over the place where a new little heart had only just started beating, I realized that I am still invited, like so many woman before me, to be a woman of deep and profound prayer, a beating heart of love in the domestic Church of my own little family.
About MonasteryinmyHeart.com
I first started www.monasteryinmyheart.com in 2020 as a place to share the fruits of almost ten years discerning religious life in the Order of Preachers. The phrase monastery in my heart captured "my project to live the universal call to holiness hidden not in a cloister, but in everyday life." The blog, I hoped would be a place to share my journey, as well as to fulfill the words of my older brother in faith, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Contemplate and give to others the fruits of your contemplation.
With much gratitude, and a little surprise, my original website gained a following even as I proved to be a very inconsistent blogger. In 2021, I invited Mary Rose Kreger to become a contributer. She shared a poem about her time in religious life before becoming a wife and mother, then wrote regular posts over the next year and a half. Now, she is working on a new book about her experience of healing while discerning religious life. Please visit her blog at maryrosekreger.com. Another friend, encouraged by my having jumped blindly into the world of websites, also started a blog to share her quirky, yet profoundly learned spirituality: www.shalomsnail.com.
After over a year of inactivity online, I decided on a new simpler approach for monasteryinmyheart.com. I hope to provide a beautiful resting spot on the turbulent internet sea, where I can share my experience, inspirations, and helpful resources as we continue to follow God through the twists and turns of this adventure with and to Him.
Thank you for visiting www.monasteryinmyheart.com.
Know that you are in my prayers.