A way to prepare for discernment is to make a time line of your life story from birth to present day:

1. Significant Persons in my life:

• Who have been the people in my life?
• What has my relationship been to them?
• How have they influenced me positively and negatively?
• Who has had the most impact on me?
• Reflect on your experience of family.
• What have I learned?
• What do I value?
• What do I want to let go of?

2. Educational Experiences:

• What schools did I attend?
• What did I like, dislike, favourite memories, activities, friends, significant events, people? What did I learn of life that I want to keep? What gets in the way?

3. Social and Sexual Development:

• What do I enjoy doing with others?
• What do I do just because it’s in?
• What do I find relaxing and renewing?
• Who have I dated? Under what circumstances?
• What has been my relationship to men?
• What has been my relationship to women?
• Review your sexual history…..
• From whom did you first learn about sex?
• What have been your experiences as a child, teen, young adult, now….
• What impact have various relationships had on you?

4. Work history…..

• Jobs held, how long, where, colleges, preparation for positions, responsibility, initiative
• What did you learn and what skills did you acquire in each job or preparation process?

5. Faith Experience:

• What’s your earliest recollection of God?
• Who taught you about God?
• Who has had the greatest influence in your faith development?
• How was church, faith, God in your family?
• What practices do you do to care for your faith life?
• Where did you learn about these practices?
• Who is God in your life?
• Name your experiences of the Divine in your life?
• How did that feel, what impact did these have?
• How do you see God in the everyday circumstances of your life?
• How do you nurture this relationship?

6. Life choice:

• When did you first think of religious life?
• What has been the pattern in this?
• Why religious life?
• What about marriage? Or single life?

Reprinted with permission from HORIZON, journal of the National Religious Vocation Conference, 5420 S. Cornell, Chicago, Ill. 60615-5604