Where I’m at, things are ok

I wrote this to my father and then offered it to chat GPT:

It’s weird Dad, I know we all have got to take care of ourselves. I know we all have to find a relationship to take care of, for ourselves and each other. 

While away, though at first a shock to me, Steve and I took care of each other and it was really comforting.Also in the process while there and when coming back here to the monastery I started to figure that I was meant to live in caring community. With friends and family, finally feeling attached and understanding limits we all have, I thought maybe I’m not meant to couple up. That doesn’t mean I have no community or attachment. That’s what I surmised.  Finally understanding we’ve all got to deal with our individuality as well as interdependence and community and connection.

I find myself so much thinking about the group here at the monastery , I find myself with not great energy remaining to take care of myself or my health and fitness and looks, which was important to me on the trip. It’s taught me a great deal to be here and I do feel a fresh perspective for serving now that I am back. I’m just facing the nature of these very out of the ordinary relationships I find myself in now. I didn’t expect them but I’m walking through the door that is offered as i don’t know where else

to begin. I’m very lucky. I guess i shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

chat gpt wrote this back, amazing:

Mark, one thing that stands out in your reflection is that Scotland didn’t simply give you a pleasant vacation—it gave you contrast. Sometimes we don’t understand our lives until we step outside of them for a while.

In Scotland you experienced something very ordinary yet very profound: mutual care. You and Steve looked after one another. It wasn’t romantic, but it wasn’t merely practical either. It reminded you that human beings are not simply independent creatures who occasionally need help. We are built for reciprocity—for giving care and receiving it.

That seems to have shifted something you’ve wrestled with for a long time. In earlier reflections, you’ve often wondered whether not marrying meant somehow missing the form of community everyone else seemed to have. Here, your thinking feels gentler and more spacious. You’re recognizing that attachment has many forms. Marriage is one beautiful expression of belonging, but it isn’t the only one. A monastery is, in many ways, another kind of covenant—a chosen community where people bind themselves together through shared life rather than through romance.

What also strikes me is your honesty about the cost.

You came home energized for service, yet you immediately noticed something difficult: the emotional energy required to care for this community leaves less for caring for yourself. That’s not failure. It’s simply one of the tensions of a vocation. Chaplaincy asks you to carry people in your heart, and carrying people is surprisingly exhausting.

The lesson from Scotland may actually not be that you need to choose between caring for others and caring for yourself. Rather, it may be that you deserve to receive the same kind of ordinary care that you found yourself giving and receiving there. You were healthier on the trip—not only because you exercised or looked after your appearance—but because someone else was also paying attention to your well-being. We often imagine self-care as something done alone. Scotland suggested another possibility: perhaps we flourish best when self-care is supported by community.

I also notice a beautiful change in your language.

You wrote:

“I didn’t expect them but I’m walking through the door that is offered.”

A year ago, many of your reflections centered on trying to determine the right life. There was anxiety about whether you were missing something or whether another path would finally make everything fit. Here, there is much more openness. You aren’t forcing a narrative. You’re saying, “This is the door before me. I’ll walk through it faithfully.”

That is a remarkably peaceful posture.

It doesn’t mean you’ll never marry. Nor does it mean you must. It means you’ve stopped trying to live in a hypothetical future and are beginning to inhabit the actual life that has been entrusted to you.

Your final sentence especially moved me:

“I guess I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

I’d soften it just a little.

Not because you should settle, but because gratitude is different from resignation.

You’re not saying, “This is all I get.”

You’re saying, “I have been given something unexpectedly beautiful.”

There is a difference.

The monastery is not simply the place where you ended up after other possibilities faded. From everything you’ve shared over many conversations, it has become a place where your gifts—for listening, reflecting, welcoming, praying with people, and helping others make meaning of their lives—have room to breathe. It also asks much of you, including the discipline of remembering that your own body, health, and joy are not separate from your ministry but part of it.

Perhaps Scotland reminded you of something essential: you don’t serve the community instead of being a person who needs care. You serve as a person who also needs friendship, laughter, walks through beautiful cities, good meals, exercise, and moments when someone simply says, “I’ve got this.”

That realization doesn’t diminish your vocation. It makes it more human.

Reading your reflection, I don’t hear someone giving up on life. I hear someone whose understanding of belonging has become deeper, less idealized, and more rooted in reality. That’s often what real maturity feels like—not certainty, but a quieter confidence that love can take forms we hadn’t imagined, and that the life before us can be enough without closing the door on whatever God may yet have in store.