Abi shares the process that led to discovering her vocation: “Deciding to give your life to any vocation needs a lot of prayer, but at the end of the day, it’s not about what people are telling you, it’s not about what you think you ought to do, it’s basically between you and God,” she says. And she adds: “When you realise your vocation and you throw yourself into it completely; when you commit to it, that’s the happiest you will be because that’s what you were made for. That doesn’t mean it’s easy and it doesn’t mean it’s not going to be scary, but that’s where you’re going to find your joy.”
She has always been very athletic and has cultivated many hobbies. These filled her time but not her life: “I had no reason to do things. Life just felt like, what’s the next thing I want to do? So , I would spend my money and go to shows and musicals and plays, and go traveling, and I was just trying to fill up my life with stuff so it felt full, but it just felt a bit meaningless, a little bit empty. I think less than searching I was wondering if there was more to it.”
At that point, she decided to move to Sydney and take a six-month hospitality course: “During that six month to two year stay, I just fell in love with the Work and it was amazing because I had never met assistant numeraries before. But with assistant numeraries it was amazing, they were the ones who were so warm. Well everyone was but there was something special about the assistant numeraries. They didn’t know me, you know, why would they care about me, but they wanted to know me and wanted me to feel cared for and welcome.”
Deciding to give your life to any vocation needs a lot of prayer, but at the end of the day, it’s not about what people are telling you, it’s not about what you think you ought to do, it’s basically between you and God.
Abi then wondered whether God might be calling her to that path. She began a journey of discernment with the help of spiritual guidance. She was encouraged to pray about it for two years: “In those two years it really helped me to understand what the assistant numerary vocation actually was. It wasn’t just the fun that I thought it was when I first moved in, like ‘These guys have the most fun because they're the happiest, they’re the ones that seem most joyful.’ But it’s amazing because you realise that that joy comes from sacrifice, which is not what you expect to make you happy, is it? But it really does because, you know, love is sacrifice, and you are happiest when you love the most.”
This journey was not without doubts: “One of my biggest fears, because in the past, basically all my life I’d been chasing things, you know. If I do surf I’ll be happy. And I was happy until I wasn’t happy. I’m going to do horse riding, and I was happy until I wasn’t happy. So maybe this is just another one, maybe I’m going to do this and I’ll be happy until I’m not happy. So, I had a lot of maturing that had to happen in those two years, getting over that fear of committing. It was my life, I was giving my life.”
Now, after several years in Opus Dei, she reflects: “It’s amazing, because the more I’ve lived this life the more I realise I’m not giving my life, but my life is being given to me 100 times more than I could have made it myself filling it up with all those other things that I was trying to fill it up with.”