Who I am: Sister Valentina Dovico
My place of involvement: Matera, Italy
The guiding principe of my life: to give myself fully
What does the Lord want me to do with my life?
It is always difficult to make a choice, and when we finally manage to decide, if the world around us seems to think differently, things get even more complicated!
In 2006, I had a job and a promising career ahead of me, but over the last few months, various events had disrupted my plans and one question had resurfaced: ‘What does the Lord want me to do with my life?’
This had upset me and led me to question everything I had built up until then. Unfortunately, the people I confided in did not help me to make a true discernment, but an idea had now taken root in me: I could only respond to the love of God that I had discovered for myself through total self-giving, and therefore through religious life.
The first problem was a contract that prevented me from leaving my job for seven years, with no termination clause or possible escape clause.
Making a free choice
But how could I decide to take a leap of faith, to leave everything behind, at the risk of not being fully understood by the people who love me… all this for You, Lord, and You block me, You make me turn back and You don’t let me follow my dream, which I thought was also Yours?
On the contrary, those seven years were fundamental in helping me make a truly free and well-considered choice!
It wasn’t easy, especially at the beginning. I did not understand how the Lord could allow this to happen. Then, when I found myself having to leave the city where I was working to integrate into a new context that did not know me, but which already knew my story even before I arrived, the difficulty increased.
But it was precisely during those years that I met other young people who were asking themselves fundamental questions about the meaning of life, that I discovered Ignatian spirituality, that I deepened my desire and discovered that there were many possible responses to God’s love, all of equal value.
Being alongside the little ones of this world
I discovered that the Lord did not want me to do one thing rather than another, but only that I might live a full life, in joy, following him, with the people he had placed beside me.
I met someone who wanted to live a more intimate life, and I felt that this was not what would bring fulfilment to my life. I understood that Ignatian spirituality had shaped my adult journey of faith and that it was in this spirituality that I could find my path. I met the Helper Sisters and discovered that what I wanted was to be alongside the little ones of this world, in simplicity, joy and abandonment to the Father.
In short, my choice was confirmed, but it took time and a few ‘difficult passages’ to deepen it, confirm it, and in a way, ‘purify’ it.
