“Follow your heart” is often offered as sentimental advice. For me, it is an invitation to discernment.
Beneath fear, obligation, expectations, and the voices telling us what we should do, there is often a quieter question: Where can I love most fully? Where can my gifts bring life? Where can I make the greatest difference?
I believe Divine Love leads us toward the place where our gifts can bless others.
That path will not always be easy. It may lead toward a closed door, an uncomfortable conversation, or a calling that challenges the identity we have built. Discernment is not simply asking, “What do I want?” It is asking, “What desire keeps returning because it is connected to love, justice, healing, and the good of others?”
Our deepest desires can contain clues to our vocation. Frederick Buechner described vocation as the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need. I would add that this meeting place is often where Divine Love has been drawing us all along.
Look at Jesus. Again and again, he moved toward compassion. He approached those others avoided, touched those considered untouchable, listened to dismissed voices, ate with outsiders, and healed when religious rules stood between suffering people and mercy.
Jesus had a reliable spiritual compass: move toward love.
That is a good compass for us, too.
In my own life, important decisions have often begun with a holy restlessness—something the Spirit would not let me ignore. I have sometimes wished for a detailed itinerary, complete with dates, instructions, and guarantees. Instead, the invitation usually comes one step at a time:
Trust this.
Speak now.
Go there.
Welcome this person.
Say yes.
And sometimes: You already know what you need to do.
Following your heart requires courage because our deepest knowing may challenge traditions, structures, or expectations others consider permanent.
Women throughout Scripture understood this. Mary said yes to an astonishing invitation without knowing where it would lead. Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and became the first to proclaim the Resurrection. The Samaritan woman became an evangelist to her community. Phoebe carried leadership in the early Church. Prisca taught theology. Junia was honored among the apostles.
They trusted the movement of grace, and the Church was changed because they did.
The question is not whether we have gifts. We do. The question is whether we will trust them enough to offer them.
I learned something about this long before I was ordained a priest. On one occasion, I led a Communion service and carefully explained that it was not a Mass. Afterward, a woman came up to me, glowing, and said, “Sister, that was a beautiful Mass!”
I smiled.
I knew this beloved Catholic woman was quite conservative, and I also knew how deeply she loved the Eucharist. In that moment, gender was simply not a factor for her. What mattered was that she had encountered the Holy One in prayer, Scripture, Communion, and community.
Her response stayed with me. Sometimes the people we serve recognize our gifts before institutions are ready to name them. Sometimes love sees more clearly than rules do. She knew that she had been spiritually nourished, and that was what mattered.
For me, her simple words became one of those holy nudges. They reminded me that vocation is ultimately about serving God’s people with the gifts we have been given. When those gifts bring healing, hope, nourishment, and deeper connection with Divine Love, we should pay attention.
Perhaps that is one way we discern where God’s deepest love is leading us: we notice where our gifts become grace for someone else.
If you have a gift for listening, someone needs to be heard. If you teach, someone needs wisdom and encouragement. If you organize, good work is waiting to take shape. If you speak truth, a silence may need breaking. If a dream keeps returning, pay attention. It may be more than a dream. It may be a call.
Discernment also asks us to notice what brings life. After spending time with certain people or doing certain work, do you feel more alive, generous, and connected to God and others? Or consistently diminished and spiritually empty?
This does not mean abandoning every difficult responsibility. Love often asks perseverance. But there is a difference between life-giving sacrifice and a situation that continually crushes the life within us.
God’s call leads toward greater love, freedom, compassion, justice, generosity, and life. The direction may surprise us, but its fruits can help us recognize it.
Our discernment is never only about us. Vocation is connected to community. The gifts God gives us are meant to flow outward. We become most fully ourselves not by hoarding them but by sharing them.
So ask:
Where can the love within me do the greatest good?
Not, “Where will I be most admired?”
Not, “Where will I be safest?”
Not even, “Where will I be most comfortable?”
But: Where can I love most faithfully with the gifts I have been given?
That question can change a life—and a church.
I have seen people come alive when they finally trusted the call whispering within them. Women have stepped into ministries they were told were impossible. Communities have gathered around open tables. People rejected by institutional religion have discovered again that they are beloved daughters and sons of God.
This is what happens when we trust Divine Love enough to follow where it leads.
The path may not always be clear, but love is usually recognizable. It opens rather than closes, blesses rather than diminishes, heals rather than wounds, and makes room at the table.
So listen carefully to your heart—beneath fear, expectations, and noise.
What brings you alive?
What injustice troubles you so deeply that you cannot ignore it?
What gift are you longing to share?
Whose life could be blessed if you said yes?
Perhaps that is where God’s deepest love is leading you. Perhaps the next faithful step is already waiting.
Follow your heart.
Trust the holy nudges.
Use your gifts.
Do the greatest good you can.
And wherever Divine Love leads you, go there.
Graphic generated with ChatGPT by OpenAI.
Edited with the assistance of ChatGPT by OpenAI. The ideas, theological perspective, personal stories, and final content are my own.
