This powerful bit comes from Joan Chittister. If we’re free to choose our spiritual mentors, I use one of my top picks to select her.

“When the monastic makes a vow of stability it is a vow designed to still the wandering heart. There comes a time in life when everyone else’s family seems to have been better than my own. There comes a moment when having everything seems to be the only way to squeeze even a little out of life. There comes a day when this job, this home, this town, this family all seem irritating and deficient beyond the bearable. There comes a period in life when I regret every major decision I’ve ever made. That is precisely the time when the spirituality of stability offers its greatest gift.

Stability enables me to outlast the dark, cold places of life until the thaw comes and I can see new life in this uninhabitable place again.

But for that to happen I must learn to wait through the winters of my life.“

THOSE moments… I know them.

Winters of life… I’ve had those.

Stability… I seek that.