Discernment via Disillusionments

One of the tools that God uses to lead us to "the pearl of great price," a treasure for which we are willing to sell all is the disappointments or disillusionment of our life.  It is true, I believe, in looking for the right person to marry--that person with whom one is called to form a lifetime commitment/partnership. Before finding that "treasure," that finest of pearls, an individual may date more than one person, suffer the heartbreak of broken relationships or even broken engagements.  The same process may occur in searching for the right major or minor in college, in finding the career or job that is a good fit. No less arduous, time-consuming and sometimes difficult, is finding the right religious community to which one belongs.  The Foundress of my religious community entered an active, apostolic community at age 21. Sixteen years later, at age 37,  she enter a cloistered community and eight months later God called to her to leave that community to establish one that combined action and contemplation. The road was difficult, filled with disappointments and disillusionments. Those disappointments and disillusionments were not unilateral but mutual. All of them led to seeking the will of God (discernment) and committing oneself to the Lord alone: our ultimate call.