As today marks Good Friday, I find myself meditating on God’s presence in my life. Last April I attended a religious retreat at the Sisters of Life Villa nestled in Connecticut. It had been my second in two years, and I like to view these retreats as “spiritual resets” where I go completely off the grid for the weekend sans technology, sans any agenda. I sit with myself in the presence of God with miles in between me and my hectic NYC life. It’s a beautiful thing, I even wake up to the birds chirping and fall asleep to the crickets doing what they do. I digress.

I would like to note that before I left for my first retreat, as I was packing up to leave my then real estate office for the weekend, my colleague looked back at me and said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for”. I go back to those words often. Here’s why: journeys typically imply a destination and to have found what I was looking for in that one retreat weekend would insinuate a destination. A spiritual journey, however, is contingent on shifts and turns and recycles endpoints as starting points, so that we are present in a constant state of flow. The fact is, here we are two years later and I’m still looking, and I will always be- that is my journey and the essence of our divine healer. We don’t meet him at the destination, we encounter him along the way. Ask. Seek. Knock. Repeat.

At Villa Maria Guadalupe (beautiful retreat house, google it) I show up without any expectations and hold myself to only one self-kept promise: to be open. Adoration runs through the night, and for some reason, I feel like a little child on Christmas Eve staying up into the wee hours of the morning sitting in the presence of Jesus while the whole world sleeps. During the second night as I was deep in meditation, I continued to hear the word “Go”. It was forceful, yet gentle, soothing, yet stern. I’m a stubborn one, so he knows he has to be loud and clear, but I’m also a softy, so he meets me halfway between stern and gentle.

Go, a simple two letter word that has since shaped the way in which I live my life. Go, without fear. Go, without expectation. Go, with love. Go with openness, faith, and trust that you are being guided. Because you are, and when you’re open he’ll find little ways to make you feel seen and heard in your everyday life- divine fuel to keep on going.

I hope you’ll join me in making this your prayer this Easter: “where would you have me go, what would you have me do, and who with“?

Today especially I pray for openness. Openness to receive what is meant for you, me, and everyone in between.

Easter Blessings!  

Xx, Sab