discerning prayer and the garden of my heart

for the past 5 months i have been meeting with a spiritual director. a spiritual director, if you do not know, is, well... someone who directs you spiritually. pretty self explanatory right? her name is kristen and she is positively wonderful. never before have i met someone so comfortable to be around. she has a way of inviting you into the presence of God to simply remain and be in his spacious, non-threatening gracious love.

the last time we met together we began a discerning prayer process as i seek the voice of God in my journey of education. for 7 months now i have been praying over a list of colleges that offer the major and the minor i am pursuing, and slowly but surely the list has narrowed it's extensive way down to one school; bethel university. and the discerning prayer process kristen and i are on is focused primarily on this school. 

today's meeting with kristen however, surfaced deeply intimate emotions that i am cautious to expose. as she directed me through discerning prayer, god tilled the garden's soil of my heart and brought the burrowed roots of these emotions into the life giving light of his presence. it was profoundly liberating. 

i received vibrant visions of myself bringing these sacred hopes, longings, and emotions to christ and as i did so, i never left his side and he never left mine. together we ventured into this vulnerable place and for the first time in 2 years, i felt safely and warmly welcomed to share with him the rooted desires that run through my soul.