Drawing from the Well Within: Discernment and Decision-Making
Responding to the Call: Love in Action, Part Three
I love preparing dinner for my husband. Maybe it’s choosing what we’ll eat, gathering the ingredients, or moving around the kitchen as the meal comes together. Truthfully, if I’m attentive to what is really happening within me, I recognize something much deeper at work - I'm preparing for an encounter.
Anthony will come home from work, and we’ll sit together around our table. We’ll share a meal, exchange stories from our day, laugh, perhaps wrestle with something difficult, and simply enjoy being together. And I love every minute of it!
Now, there are certainly decisions involved. What will I prepare? What ingredients do I need? How much time will it take? But those aren’t the decisions that give the evening its meaning.
The deeper movement comes from my desire to share life with my husband. Preparing the meal becomes one small way of responding to that love. Pondering this experience has me thinking about something we’ve been exploring throughout our journey together.
What if discernment and decision-making are not simply about figuring out what God wants us to do, but about becoming so rooted in our relationship with Him that our responses begin to flow from that relationship?
Could this be what it means to draw living water from the well within?
Discernment and Decision Making: Drawing from a Relationship
My friends, for nearly a year, we’ve been tending our Garden Within together. We’ve explored who we are and who God is. We’ve considered the voices that move within us, the wounds that sometimes influence our responses, and the grace of recognizing Jesus alongside those tender places.
We have prayed with the Psalms, explored our emotions, and practiced listening for the gentle movements of God’s voice. And through it all, we’ve been cultivating something. That something is relationship.
This relationship is not simply acquiring knowledge about God, although that certainly has its place. It is not a collection of spiritual techniques that promise us the right answer to every question. No, it is an intimate, living, and ongoing relationship with our Blessed Lord.
I think this distinction matters enormously when we begin talking about discernment and decision-making because the decisions I’m speaking about aren’t primarily the practical choices that fill our calendars. They’re the responses that shape our discipleship:
How am I being invited to love today?
How might I accompany the person before me?
What is God inviting me to share from the relationship we’ve cultivated together?
These questions arise from a different place than simply asking what needs to be accomplished. They invite us to draw from the well of relationship.
The decisions that shape our discipleship come not only from what we know about God, but from the relationship we have cultivated with Him.
And sometimes, when we respond from that place, we find ourselves participating in something far larger than we could have imagined.
Discernment and Decision Making: Participating in the Mystery
Anthony and I are preparing to leave our farm.
Even writing those words stirs something within me. Our farm has been home to so much of our family’s life. There are memories woven into the land, the animals, the daily rhythms, and the countless ordinary moments that have made this place ours.
We have known for some time that downsizing would eventually become part of our future. But we didn’t imagine it happening quite so soon. And we certainly didn’t anticipate how everything would begin unfolding.
Two of our daughters decided they wanted to take over caring for the farm animals. They each have property, and the land between their homes will become the animals’ new home. This wasn’t part of some carefully constructed plan. In fact, it wasn’t even something we had considered possible. Yet gradually, what had seemed like a distant possibility began becoming a real invitation into a new season of life. And when I look back at how we arrived here, I find myself wondering:
How did all of this happen?
Not because we haven’t made decisions. We have made many, and there are countless more ahead of us. And not because the process has been effortless. It certainly hasn’t. It is because, looking back, I recognize a movement that seems larger than any one decision. There has been a willingness to listen, consider possibilities we hadn’t imagined, make difficult choices, and participate in what has gradually unfolded. There has been mystery.
I often recognize this mystery more clearly in hindsight than I do while I’m living through it. In the middle of a decision, I may be uncertain. I may be waiting for something to become clearer. I may make mistakes or discover that something I thought would work simply doesn’t. Only later, when I look back, do I recognize how God accompanied me through those very experiences.
Sometimes I recognize God’s invitation not because the road ahead was clear, but because, looking back, I can see how He accompanied me along the way.
This is important: I don’t believe God moves us around like pieces on a chessboard! We are free. We participate. We can say yes. We can say no. We can hesitate, reconsider, and even get things wrong. But within that freedom, we can become increasingly receptive to the movement of God’s love. That receptivity can open possibilities we never imagined.
Discernment and Decision Making: The Work of Participation
I don’t want to romanticize this process. Sometimes we speak about following God’s invitation as though everything should fall beautifully into place once we’ve discerned the right direction. That hasn’t been my experience. In fact, participation is often extremely difficult!
Think about motherhood. I cannot imagine a more beautiful gift or a more demanding invitation. My love for my daughters is not something I have to manufacture each morning. It is rooted in the relationship we share. But living that love requires participation. It asks for patience when I’m tired, presence when I’m distracted, courage when difficult conversations arise, and, most definitely, the humility to acknowledge when I’ve made a mistake.
Motherhood has filled me with joy beyond anything I could have imagined. Yet, it has also stretched me beyond what I thought I could bear. Both belong to the experience. The same is true of marriage, friendship, ministry, and the countless relationships through which we’re invited to love.
The relationship doesn’t remove the work of participation. It gives that work its meaning.
Our decision to move is no different. There are practical details to navigate, difficult conversations to have, responsibilities to fulfill, and choices that require real effort. And, let me be clear, when I eventually drive down our farmhouse driveway for the last time, I know there will be sorrow - tremendous sorrow.
But there will also be joy. The anticipation of a new season with Anthony. The gift of watching our daughters care for the animals. The freedom to discover what this next chapter might hold. I don’t need to eliminate the sorrow to recognize the joy, and I don’t need to eliminate uncertainty to recognize God’s companionship.
We’ve explored this before in our reflections on difficult consolation. Sometimes peace and sorrow dwell together; often trust and fear are both present in a situation. And more often than not, the invitation to respond in love asks us to carry those experiences together as we move forward.
Discernment and Decision Making: Allowing God to Meet Us
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola offer a beautiful invitation that has shaped my ministry as a spiritual director. Ignatius encourages those accompanying another person to allow the Creator to deal directly with the creature, and the creature with the Creator (SE 15).
I have returned to this invitation countless times. In spiritual direction, my responsibility isn’t to manufacture someone else’s encounter with God or determine what God should be saying to them. My responsibility is to help create space for that relationship to unfold - to listen and accompany. And sometimes, quite simply, to get out of the way.
I try to live by this invitation, although I certainly don’t always succeed! But I’ve been wondering whether this same wisdom might help us understand our own discernment and decision-making: What if, rather than trying to control every movement of our spiritual lives, we became more attentive to the relationship already unfolding within us?
What if we allowed ourselves to listen before deciding what the outcome must be?
What if we trusted that God desires to meet us in the very circumstances of our lives? And no circumstance stands outside this desire?
Answering these questions doesn’t mean becoming passive; nor does it mean abandoning responsibility or waiting for God to make our decisions for us. It means becoming willing participants in a relationship that continually invites us toward truth, freedom, and love.
Discernment isn't always about figuring out what God wants me to do. Sometimes it's about becoming receptive enough to recognize what love is inviting me into.
Discernment and Decision Making: An Open and Receptive Heart
This morning, as I prayed Psalm 33 through Nan Merrill’s Psalms for Praying, I lingered on its invitation to openness and receptivity. I began thinking about everything we’ve explored together this year:
The fears we’ve learned to recognize.
The wounds we’ve brought into conversation with Jesus.
The protective voices within us that sometimes become so loud we struggle to hear anything else.
The gentle invitation to recognize that God is also present in our Garden Within.
We’ve been learning how to become more open and receptive to that presence. Openness doesn’t mean that our protective responses suddenly disappear. Fear will still close us off at times because it is trying to keep us safe. Anger will rise because we are confronted by a reminder that something within us has been hurt. Our desire to please others will rise from the tender place that fears rejection.
These experiences aren’t reasons to condemn ourselves. Rather, they are invitations to become curious about what is happening within us. The question becomes: can we approach those protective places with the tenderness we would offer a frightened child?
What are you afraid of?
What are you trying to protect?
What do you need right now?
Then, just as we’ve been practicing, we can invite Jesus into that conversation. How might You meet me here, Lord? What would it mean to respond from Your love rather than my fear?
The voice of woundedness may still be present, but it doesn’t have to be the voice that guides our response.
I can care tenderly for the part of me that is afraid without allowing fear to decide how I will love.
This is where the work of discernment begins bearing fruit. Not because we’ve become perfectly healed or because we always recognize God’s invitation immediately. Rather, because we’re learning to return to the relationship that sustains us. Again and again.
Discernment and Decision Making: When Love Flows Outward
Let’s return to the dinner table.
When I prepare a meal for Anthony, the love I desire to share with him becomes something tangible: a meal, a place at the table, an invitation to conversation. I wonder whether this is a beautiful way to understand our discipleship. We draw from the well of our relationship with Jesus, and that love begins taking shape in the world around us.
Sometimes this flow takes shape through a significant decision, such as entering a new season of life, or through a difficult conversation with someone we love. Other times, it shows up in the willingness to listen compassionately to someone whose experience is very different from our own. Still, other times, it flows through the simplest gesture toward the person standing directly in front of us. This could be a family member, a friend, a coworker, or a stranger.
We don’t need to travel somewhere extraordinary to become disciples. We are invited to minister in the very places where we’ve been planted. We don’t need to wait until our interior lives are perfectly ordered before we begin. Some days we draw deeply from the well; other days we struggle even to recognize that the well is there. That’s part of our continuing journey.
God doesn’t stop inviting us toward greater freedom and love because we have a difficult day, make a mistake, or respond from an old wound. The relationship continues, and so does the invitation in the midst of all our days. Therefore, the most important question isn’t whether I’ve discerned every decision perfectly. Could it be whether I’m becoming increasingly willing to let the love I’ve received shape the love I offer?
The well within us is not simply a place to receive God’s love. It is a place from which that love can flow outward.
After all these months of tending our Garden Within, we’re beginning to recognize the fruit of what has been cultivated there. The garden bed of your heart is not filled with perfection or certainty, but with a growing willingness to join the Gardener in tilling its rich soil.
An Embodied Pause: Drawing from the Well Within
Find a comfortable place to sit, allowing your feet to rest gently on the ground. Take a few unhurried breaths.
Imagine yourself beside the well with Jesus.
You don’t need to bring Him a perfectly formed question or a decision you must make today. Simply be present and consider one relationship in your life. This could be someone you love deeply, or someone you’ve been struggling with. Or someone you’re being invited to accompany in a new way.
Notice what happens within you as you bring this person to mind. What emotions arise?
Is there affection, gratitude, tenderness, fear, or resistance? Whatever is present, acknowledge it without judgment.
Now gently turn your attention toward Jesus. Lord, what have You been cultivating within me through our relationship? What love might I draw from this well and offer to the person before me?
An invitation could surface in a conversation you want to have, a kindness you might offer, or a boundary that would allow you to love with greater freedom. Or nothing could become clear today, and that’s okay. Remain beside the well for a few moments, allowing yourself to receive rather than forcing a response.
When you’re ready, take a gentle breath and return your attention to the room around you. Carry with you the possibility that love may already be inviting you into your next response. And know that response, like many I have experienced, could come later, in a gaze back that shows you the mystery you participated in.
Journaling: Discernment and Decision Making
Where have I recognized God’s companionship in a decision when looking back? What uncertainties, difficulties, unexpected possibilities, or moments of freedom can I recognize now that I couldn’t see clearly then?
What relationship in my life is inviting me to participate more intentionally in love? What might I draw from the well of my relationship with Jesus as I consider my response?
Where do I notice myself becoming closed or protective? How might I approach that part of myself with compassion while inviting Jesus to help me respond with greater openness and freedom?
A Closing Prayer
Jesus, Beloved of my Garden Within, thank You for the relationship You continue to cultivate within me. For the moments when I recognize Your presence, and for the moments when I struggle to hear Your voice. Teach me to draw from the well of Your love, not simply to find answers, but to become more available to those You place before me.
When the road ahead is uncertain, help me remain willing to participate. When the work becomes difficult, remind me that You are accompanying me. When sorrow and joy dwell together, give me the freedom to receive them both. When fear or woundedness closes my heart, meet me there with tenderness, inviting me once again toward openness and love.
May the relationship we share become visible in the way I live, the decisions I make, and the love I offer. And may I continue to discover that the well within me is never meant to remain only for myself. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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