I am 45 years old and have been a Poor Clare Sister for twenty years. I am the webmaster for our community and maintain an online ministry from the cloister, called "Catholic-Cards". Each day I send out a "Peace Card" to about 6000 faithful followers. I am not the typical Poor Clare Vocation - but then I guess there is no such thing as a "typical" vocation. When God calls, he calls. He doesn't even care if you are muddy and dirty and tainted by numerous bad life experiences. I entered at the age of twenty-four in 1981. Before entering I had "been there and done that" to almost everything. Immediately after High School I left my small hometown of 1600 and joined the Navy. I experienced all that the Navy had to offer - the good and the bad. I was stationed in Iceland and Germany as a Communication Technician with a Top Secret clearance and ended up with a six month stay in a drug rehabilitation program. I had my ups and my downs. 

During my Drug Rehabilitation program I went on a retreat and "realized" I had spent my whole life "running away". It was a beautiful awakening experience - a powerful one. When I returned to the program, one of only two women among some 30 guys, I had the night watch. I had to go from bed to bed of each of the men and shine a light on their beds to make sure they were all alive. I was crying the whole time.... I don't know if they were all "asleep" but at least they pretended they were. A few days later we had a "drug bust" and that meant the person "caught" was placed in the center of the group and got told off by everybody else. My number one priority in life until this point - was that of being "Casper Milk Toast" I never ruffled anyone's feathers or did anything to go "against" the peer group. But after my new experience I was incensed. I jumped up from my seat and went to the person who was sitting there "getting the treatment". He was a young black man - who was at odds with the world because he came from a rich, highly educated background and stood out like a sore thumb against most of the group. He was crying. I went up to him and I put my arms around him and I told him that "it was okay, he was a good person and he was loved" and I turned to the group with my eyes streaming tears and a real mess myself and I shouted at them. "Don't you see what he needs is love? Not all this tearing apart!" I come from a family of seven brothers - I like men ( and allowed myself to be used by some) but I never thought of them mostly as anything but another "brother". Know what happened? That whole group started crying! It was so emotional and so healing... one after another of them got zapped by their need to be loved - that they broke down like dominoes. The Spirit blows where it will. 

A few weeks later I was discharged from the program and reassigned to a unit in Coronado, California. I had been "touched" by grace but not totally healed. In a short time I was doing much harder drugs than I had ever done. I remember one night I had taken so many different things the whole world had become "plastic" and my whole obsession was to get out of the car I was in - because even though I was not driving - I didn't want to kill anyone in my drugged-up state. Amazing how even totally blown apart by drugs one still can reason. 

The next year I received my honorable discharge and returned home. I was not "steady", on drugs just once-in-a-while type of thing. I was staying at my grandmother's apartment while I went to college. One day when I was driving from my parents home to the apartment - I was at a very low ebb. It was all I could do not to drive the car off the road and over a cliff. I decided when I got to the apartment I would take a lot of my grandmother's sleeping pills. The last time I had taken a number of them and didn't wake up for three days - this time I decided I would take more. When I got to the apartment I wandered around rather aimlessly - looking at different things before I took the pills. I went to her library cupboard and started scanning over the titles of books. My eye fell on one called, "Hear My Confession" by Father Orsini. I have to explain one thing about my walk with God. For me - it was either 100 % "for" or 100% "anti." In High School I hung out with the Jesus Freaks and spent my lunch hour praying in a classroom with about eight other students - I went into the Navy and took my Bible with me? but then that fell away and although I had a few times when I "found God," nothing was permanent. I think I only went to Mass outside of Boot Camp a few times. At any rate the title of this book attracted me. I was actually more addicted to books than drugs, so this was not a hard decision to "take and read". This book was the catalyst that swung me back into the Church (a lot more went on) but I started going to weekly Mass and daily Mass when I could. In fact, with my "anti-establishment" attitude, I found myself wanting to go to Mass every day of the week except Sunday! I did go on Sundays - but liked the quiet weekday Mass a lot.  

Then one day I was reading the book, "Seven Storey Mountain" by Thomas Merton. I got to the part where Merton asked his friend Lax, "How does one become a saint?" Lax looked up and answered simply, "By wanting to." "That's it?" questioned Merton, "that's all it takes?" Lax answered "Yes". I remembered that right then I closed the book with a snap and said to myself, "I want to be a saint." The next day, I went to my parish priest and talked it over with him. I went through a lot more soul-searching but by the next year I had entered the Poor Clare Sisters (a contemplative community) in Spokane, Washington. 

I am still a long way from being that "Saint" I still want to be, but I know that I am on the way. Probably not the canonized type? but I think I will be a Saint. God is doing the driving in my life now, and he wants us all to be Saints if we just say "Yes" and go along with "His" program. 

Sister Patricia Proctor can be reached at srpat@calledbyjoy.com.