What if the desires you had as a child were clues to the plan God has for you today?
Perhaps it is time to take another look at the dreams you once had—and ask God whether He is still calling you to follow them.
Watch this inspiring episode of Terry Modica’s Footsteps to Heaven show and discover how to follow the dreams God put in your heart. Listen to how God led Sister Mary Catherine Blanding toward religious life as a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Wichita. Learn how St. John Henry Newman’s journey of conversion can help you discover God’s will for your own life.
📚 Get Sr. Mary Catherine Blanding’s book St. John Henry Newman: A Doctor of the Church for Our Time – Spiritual Guide for the Catholic Heart, available at
enroutebooksandmedia.com/catholicheart
Are you wondering?
- How do I know if a dream in my heart is something God wants me to pursue?
- What if I gave up on a dream because I was afraid of what other people would think?
- How can I tell the difference between my own desires and what God is calling me to do?
- Could my childhood dreams be clues to what God wants me to do with my life?
- What should I do when I feel called to something but I’m afraid to take the first step?
- How do I know whether I should keep pursuing a dream after experiencing rejection or setbacks?
Discover:
- How childhood desires can reveal clues about God’s calling
- Why fear and doubt do not necessarily mean you’re on the wrong path
- How prayer, retreats, and spiritual direction can help with discernment
- The importance of saying “yes” and acting on God’s invitations
- What St. John Henry Newman can teach us about personal transformation and discovering our mission
- How parents, especially mothers, influence the faith and vocations of their children
KEY TAKEAWAY: The dreams and desires God places in your heart—sometimes as early as childhood—may be important clues to His plan for your life. Don’t let fear, rejection, or the opinions of others keep you from taking the next step toward the dream God has given you.
Chapters:
0:11 Introduction: Discovering God’s Plan
2:38 Sister Mary Catherine’s Call to Religious Life
4:57 Overcoming Doubts and Taking Action
6:09 Early Signs of a Calling
7:38 How God Speaks Through Childhood Dreams
8:53 Don’t Let Others Discourage Your Dreams
10:39 Saying Yes to God’s Call
11:03 Look Back at Your Childhood Dreams
11:28 God Places Desires in Our Hearts
12:46 Finding the Vocation That Feels Like Home
14:16 A Lifelong Relationship with the Blessed Mother
15:09 The Sacred Calling of Motherhood
17:45 St. John Henry Newman and God’s Will
18:19 Personal Transformation and Discernment
22:17 St. John Henry Newman’s Mission and the Oxford Movement
23:50 Why Newman’s Sermons Still Speak to Us
25:04 Starting a St. John Henry Newman Discussion Group
31:35 Final Advice: Trust God’s Plan
33:00 What Is God Calling You to Do?
Excerpt:
Sr. Mary Catherine: I was a teenager in Southern California. We lived near the beach, and if you asked me at 15 years of age that I would be a Sister in Kansas, which I barely knew, I would be shocked. But I was very attracted to a small Catholic liberal arts college called Thomas Aquinas College, in California, which my father suggested attending as not just nominally Catholic, but really Catholic.
So I went, and I was already getting spiritual, but there I found adoration of the Eucharist, Holy Mass reverently celebrated, peers who would say the rosary three times a day on their own, as well as a solid reading of the great books. And these two things kind of helped me be braver. I mean, it was a little voice saying, “Yes, I’m calling you.” But I was very cowardly about it.
And then this separation in the truth, and in living the faith, and trusting in the Lord, and also my friend St. John Henry Newman, whose poster I had that said, “Lead, kindly Light, one step is enough for me.” It helped me say, “Ues, I will investigate religious life and see if it’s really my call.”
Terry: Tell us more about that, because there’s always steps involved. Did it happen for you like a voice from Heaven that made it very clear from the beginning? Or did you have some doubts that you had to overcome? How did you overcome any doubts?
Sr. Mary Catherine: Well, it was a very hard time, because I was in an ideal setting, ideal peers, ideal campus, and it was kind of, you know, the choice of two vocation, good vocations.
But my friends and I went on a retreat that really helped me — a five-day Ignatian retreat. And I would recommend it to your listeners, if they’re discerning something, a change. And the spiritual director there really helped me see that if God is calling me, I need to really act upon it.
And so I did, and that the retreat gave me strength.
Terry: Did you ever have an inkling of this when you were young, or did it only start when you were in college?
Sr. Mary Catherine: Well, in second grade (a lot of cradle Catholics have this experience), somebody comes in the room who’s a missionary priest or something, and all the hands go up, and I did think about it in second grade.
Also in eighth grade, a young seminarian came in the room, and he asked, is anybody interested? And I was halfway interested. My peers kind of made fun of me and said, “Don’t do that. Don’t get information from him.” But I went ahead and did it.
And then I kind of lost it in some of the teen years, but then it came slowly back. Actually, what helped me was a visit to the Daughters of St. Paul. As you know, Terry, this is a wide, wide group of sisters devoted to spreading Catholic news by books.
And one of the sisters said on a movie that they showed that she was a Bride of Christ. That had never entered my mind, that a sister is a Bride of Christ, and that did something to my heart. It just stayed there.
But I was too, as I say in my vocation stories, too chicken to act upon it.
Terry: God often speaks to us through our childhood dreams, our childhood desires, our childhood encounters with others. My own story of becoming a writer in second grade, as soon as I was able to put together a sentence and start collecting thoughts and putting it on the paper, I said, “Yeah, I want to be a writer.”
I really felt — I didn’t know it was God’s call — but I really felt this desire — and a very strong desire. And as I was growing through my childhood, there was opportunities in school to do some writing. I often would turn a homework assignment into a short story.
And the teacher — I always got A’s on those because the teacher loved it because it was so different. I accomplished what the assignment was, but I put it in the form of characters learning it.
Sr. Mary Catherine: Oh, how delightful for the teacher!
Terry: Yes. And then I started talking to my parents about it: “When I grow up, when I become an adult, I want to be a writer.”
And my father said, “No, you don’t want to be a writer. You want to do something else, because I tried to be a writer when I was young and I was unsuccessful. It’s too hard to do. So don’t even try.”
I knew in my heart that he was wrong. I knew in my heart that was not God speaking to me, but yet the voices of influential people like a parent stick in you. And as I grew older, when I got married, I became an adult. I was living away from my parents. I said, “Now is the time to become a writer.” I joined a writer’s group and I started sending out articles to magazines, and everything got rejected.
And I very quickly gave up and said, “Well, I guess my father was right.” It took some time before God got through to me that my father wasn’t right: “Try again, Terry.”
And so I did the, it becomes like, you know, St. Paul said, unless I speak, unless I teach this, uh, how do you put it? Unless I teach this, woe is me, you know, woe am I. I felt the woe of not writing. And so I finally decided to try again, get serious about it, get serious about handling the rejections. And that opened the door.
That was the yes that God was waiting for. That was back in 1984 when I started becoming a published writer. So it’s something that I want to encourage all people listening to this to think about. What in your childhood did you have a dream for? God speaks to us when we’re children, because we’re more open to hearing Him at that time.
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And if you know someone who might have a vocation to religious life or the priesthood, or anyone who is struggling to make their dreams come true, please share this episode with them. It could be exactly the encouragement they need right now.
This episode is a companion to Terry Modica’s workbook “Knowing God’s Will and Doing It Well“.
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