“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.”

So ends the Gospel at Mass this Sunday.

I have found, with my experience of discerning religious life, that this promise of Jesus is so true. However, notice the first part: COME TO ME.

We need to COME to Jesus. We need to honestly bring him all that is in our hearts: all our worries, all our pain, all our confusion, doubt, and anger.

Jesus knows what is in our hearts, of course, already. He doesn’t need us to tell Him for Him to know it. But because He LOVES us, and love desires intimacy, and love never forces itself, Jesus wants us to freely bring Him what weighs down our hearts and spirits.

I learned this the hard way. I was a postulant for nine months with a community of Dominicans, and when I left the monastery, I was full of all the things listed above.

I kept praying, by the grace of God. I stayed in the sacraments and in the Church, but I felt full of disorientation and doubt: not doubt of Jesus per se, but doubt of myself and my own discernment, my own ability to hear and follow Him.

The disorientation was the worst aspect of things. I am a melancholic and an intellectual, and I am always craving CONTEXT and CONNECTION. I need a big picture, and I need to be able to place things within that big picture.

My big picture was ruptured.

Well, some 18 months after leaving religious life, I went on a silent retreat with a spiritual director I could talk to each day of the retreat. She told me to be honest with God about what I was feeling.

So I was. I got honest. I tried to stay respectful, but I was brutally honest. I was honest writing a letter of sorts in my journal. I was honest praying in Eucharistic Adoration. I told God how angry and confused I was.

And when I left that Adoration session, I was shocked that I simply felt . . . peace.

That wasn’t shocking in itself, but the reason I felt peace had my head reeling.

I had just railed at Jesus, had opened up my heart, had internally screamed at Him, “I DON’T UNDERSTAND!” After it was over, I walked away with a sense in my heart that He was smiling at me, simply loving me, overjoyed that I had finally been honest.

And the crazy thing is, after that retreat, THE DISORIENTATION WENT AWAY. Pretty much completely. Gone.

It’s not that I didn’t still grieve, or wonder why. I still had questions. I still didn’t get why things didn’t work out. But the disorientation was gone, replaced with the gift of being able to put my time in the monastery and my discernment of religious life into the larger context of my individual and intimate relationship with Jesus.

I went to Jesus with my burdens. I gave them honestly to Him. And I found healing. I found REST.

He promises that if you go to Him, somehow, some time, in some way, He will do the same.