The Freedom to Remain: Ignatian Discernment Without the Rush to Act
- Kimi Nettuno
- 12 minutes ago
- 5 min read
When My Life Becomes a Response to Relationship
I have learned something about myself over the years: I can turn learning into striving. I love to learn. Curiosity is deeply woven into who I am, but there are times when something shifts almost imperceptibly. Curiosity becomes a need to know more - another class begins calling, another certification seems important. I convince myself that perhaps I need a little more knowledge before I will be prepared enough, credible enough, worthy enough to be heard. I know this movement within myself now.
This summer, when I felt its familiar pull, something different happened. The invitation I sensed from God was not to learn more. It was to learn differently - remain here. That was it. Strangely, remaining became one of the most fruitful experiences of Ignatian discernment I have known.
When Christian Discernment Invites Me to Remain
Remaining did not mean doing nothing. It meant allowing myself to inhabit the life already in front of me without immediately searching for the next thing. I spent time with my granddaughter, Clara. I tended the animals and moved through the familiar rhythms of the farm. I read a book that had nothing to do with theology and found myself thinking about God and creation in ways I had not expected. I became curious without needing it to produce anything.
There was breath in that movement; there was also freedom. And perhaps most surprising to me, there was learning everywhere. God had not asked me to surrender my desire to learn. God seemed to be inviting me to loosen my grip on what I thought learning had to look like. The distinction matters because sometimes I think I am waiting for God to tell me what to do next when the invitation is simply to become more fully present to where I already am.
Discernment does not always ask me to move. Sometimes it gives me the freedom to remain.
Finding Freedom in Ignatian Discernment
I have become increasingly attentive to urgency within myself. When I hear, You need to decide. You need to do this now. You cannot miss this opportunity. I have learned to pause whenever I can. Not because every decision made quickly is wrong. Life sometimes requires an immediate response, but I know how urgency works within me.
Urgency can narrow my vision until the thing flashing in front of me becomes the only thing I can see. It can awaken old insecurities and convince me that doing more will finally quiet them. Freedom feels different in my body; it gives me room to question. It allows me to remain curious about an invitation without immediately accepting or rejecting it. I can bring my desire into prayer and allow the relationship itself to continue unfolding.
This is one of the gifts of knowing God more deeply. I no longer have to approach discernment as though God has hidden the correct answer somewhere and my job is to find it. I am responding to Someone I love. And Someone I am learning to trust loves me.
Ignatian Discernment as Participation in Mystery
When I look back upon some of the places where I believe I have discerned well, I cannot always explain how I arrived there. I can see where I began. I can see where I eventually found myself, but the path between the two is sometimes difficult to describe.
There were questions along the way. There were moments when I wondered whether I understood what God was doing at all. Yet beneath those questions, something within me remained free enough to participate. My soul seemed to be moving before I fully understood it. Perhaps this is part of what it means to participate in the mystery of God.
Mystery does not require certainty before relationship can continue. I can respond with the understanding I have today. I can notice what that response produces within me. I can listen again. And if I discover that I have misunderstood something, relationship gives me somewhere to return.
A response to God does not end discernment. It gives discernment somewhere new to continue.
There is tremendous freedom for me in this. I am not racing toward a finish line God has placed somewhere in the distance. I am participating in a living relationship, allowing my life to respond to the One I love and the One who loves me.
When Ignatian Discernment Begins to Feel Like Play
I did not expect play to become part of my discernment this summer, but it did. Without the pressure to turn every interest into expertise or every curiosity into another accomplishment, I began following things simply because they delighted me: I noticed more; I wondered more; I allowed myself to be surprised.
There is something wonderfully spacious about curiosity when it is not required to prove its usefulness. I am coming to think we sometimes miss God’s invitations because we are searching so intently for the important ones. What if some invitations arrive as delight?
What if God sometimes says, Come and see, and what waits on the other side is not an assignment but something that makes us more alive? I am learning not to dismiss that kind of freedom.
Letting Ignatian Discernment Bear Its Own Fruit
Eventually, something does move outward. Relationship always bears fruit. But perhaps I do not always need to decide beforehand what that fruit must become. I can see that now in the very reflections we have shared over these weeks. Remaining open opened something within me.
Being with Clara taught me about God’s loving gaze. Paying attention to our attempts to understand one another taught me something about listening to God. The ordinary life I had been tempted to leave in search of more became the very place from which something new emerged. I could not have planned that; I only had to participate.
Maybe that is why some of my deepest experiences of discernment are difficult to describe afterward. I was both conscious of the movement and somehow being carried within it. I questioned. I listened. Sometimes I remained, and somewhere along the way, my life responded.
Perhaps the fruit of discernment is not certainty about where I am going, but freedom to participate with God as I go.
An Embodied Pause for Ignatian Discernment
Find a comfortable place to sit. Let both feet rest against the ground and place your hands open upon your thighs. Before doing anything else, notice whether there is an impulse to accomplish something even here.
You do not need to make it disappear. Simply notice.
Take a slow breath in: I am here.
Exhale: I do not need to hurry.
Allow several breaths to pass without searching for an answer.
Then quietly ask: Lord, what if remaining is my response today?
Stay there for a little while.
Journaling with God
When you are ready, bring your experience into your journal:
When have I responded to God without certainty, but with enough trust to remain or move?
Where am I experiencing urgency right now, and what happens within me if I give myself permission to pause?
What might God be inviting me to discover through curiosity, delight, or play rather than striving?
A Closing Prayer
Loving God, free me from needing to know where everything is going. Teach me to trust our relationship enough to remain when remaining is the invitation. Let my life become a response to Your love, and let that love bear its fruit in Your time. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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