I love being outside, especially doing things like hiking. I was out visiting my sister and her fiance, David, in Colorado Springs last week, and we drove up in the mountains for a hike at Mueller Stat Park. It was a gorgeous day, and since there's been rain almost every day there for a few weeks, the pastures are really green and full of wildflowers.

When we were kids, our parents took us camping and hiking for vacations all the time. We'd go for a weekend, or for as long as over two weeks. We had a pop-up camper and a pickup truck we'd pack with food and water and sleeping bags. When I was older I had my own pup tent. We never took radios, and our camp sites were quiet, unless an unruly band of college kids or a raucous family camped near us with a boom box. We regularly primitive camped where there was no running water or electricity, and almost never other people. Dad and Mom wouldn't turn on the truck radio except to get weather reports or news once in a while. I grew up appreciating quiet and solitude in nature. It was like church, only better since there were birds and wind in the pines and running streams.

So it felt good to be out in that kind of quiet again last week. I don't get it very often living in the suburbs, and most of my time outside the suburbs is spent in Chicago, where it's even more noisy. We hiked along a mountain edge with views of distant mountain ranges. Where the trail ended was a rocky outcropping that looked down to a gorge and across to several ranges to the south, west and north.

My hackles were raised as soon as we arrived, though. There was a big group of people talking way too loudly for my taste, and a teenager was standing on the rocks with the best view talking into his cell phone. I wanted to go up to him, gently take it from him, and chuck it down the rock face into the gorge. I didn't, but I sure wanted to.

Alicia and I climbed up on the rocks and took a seat. Eventually the people packed their baby in its stroller and trooped off. I don't know how they got a stroller down the somewhat washed out and rolling path, but we weren't going to ask. When they left, I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer, asking God to be with us.

As I finished my prayer and stayed silent, a breeze kicked up and washed over us. We could hear it swishing through the pines and aspens, and feel it pushing against us as we sat in the warm sun. I opened my eyes and watched as a storm approached from the north, with rain falling from the darker clouds that floated miles away. We could see a little pond hundreds of feet below us, and the granite rocks we were sitting on shone in the mottled sunlight as white clouds passed overhead. Alicia and I sat quiet for a long time, enjoying the warmth and quiet interrupted by a bird now and then. God was surely with us.

Testing...testing...

Do you get all queasy and uneasy before a test? The bad night's sleep the day before, the upset stomach, the sweaty palms, the urge to run out of the room once it's started? I don't have these problems, and I've always counted myself lucky. Either I know what I need to do, or I don't. Either I'm going in the right direction, or I'm not. I knew there were going to be tests in the process of discernment, and I've had the same faith with the required tests as I have taking any other tests in my life.



Last week and this week have been The Weeks of Tests. It started last Tuesday with a Diana Screening. I went to a counselor's office for this one. I had to answer some multiple choice questions about my hobbies, interests, career interests, and about my interest in children. I love kids when they are well-behaved and someone else's who can take them away when they aren't well-behaved. So I said I rarely enjoy teaching kids things, and rarely want to spend my free time with them. Kids are not my calling. Then I had to look at a lot, something over 200, photos of people of all shapes, sizes and ages in bathing suits. And some occasional photos of women's underwear, and a couple of creepy ones of men's hands on women's tushes or people fully clothed but tied up and looking very uncomfortable. I had to rank the photos as being sexually unattractive or attractive. I'm not turned on by small children, men's hands on women's tushes, or people being tied up. Yeay for not being a pedophile, a creepy old man, or a sado-masochist.



After that test, I hoofed it over to my internal medicine doc for a physical. She gave me a hearing test she said she's never been required to give. She chalked it up to the Bishop wanting to know I can hear grumbling old ladies across the parish hall. My reflexes and all my stats were fine. I did the standard blood and urine tests. All normal, no worries. Passed everything with flying colors, so I can stay on my diet and exercise plan, and keep going about my business.



Then this week Monday, I went for my psychological tests at church. Fr. Charlie proctored them for me, and the company that scores them had sent him all the test materials and directions. I was told in my paperwork that the tests would take 4-6 hours, and that I would be given a quiet place to take the tests. I didn't think it would take that long, and I wasn't worried about the quiet place. In fact, I was running late from a leisurely morning spent reading, writing poetry and window shopping, so my hubby Paul dropped me off at 12:30 without my having had lunch. I found a big piece of cake leftover from coffee hour, got a glass of water, and found Fr. Charlie.



He is so sweet. He set up a "desk" for me in the upstairs choir room with a great view of the church garden and street, with a pile of scrap paper, pens and sharp pencils. He came up and asked if I had any questions, and went over the directions. I said a quick prayer before I dove in. I had ten minutes for each of the first two tests. One was a 30 question multiple choice vocabulary test, and the other asked me to complete 30 sentences like "My ideal man ____," and "Depression____." I was done with both in less than ten minutes. I know lots of words, and the sentences end with "doesn't exist," and "sucks" respectively.

Then, I had to a 650 true/false personality inventory called the Minnesota Multiphasic personality Inventory. That was fun. It's the kind of test that keeps asking the same exact questions over and over with some different ones tossed in so that it can see if you are consistent in your answers. Do I want to a be a nurse? No. Did I change my mind 50 questions later? No. Do I think about my poop often? No. Did I want to change my answer two pages later? No.

To my delight, I got to do a 400 question true/false personality test almost completely identical to the MMPI, called the California Psychological Inventory. The CPIU asks a lot of the same exact questions as the MMPI. Do I want to be a nurse? Still, no. Do I think a lot about my poop? Again, still no. At least this one was 200 questions shorter than the MMPI. Yippee!

There were a couple of other tests in there too. One was an adjective test where I just marked boxes next to adjectives I'd use to describe myself. Smart-ass wasn't on there, but sarcastic was. I checked it off. I'm honest. I can't recall the others too well except for an analogy/matching/pattern test, but about 90 minutes in, I was done, cooked. I finished all the tests in just two hours. This was supposed to take 4-6 hours, remember? No way.

So, I'm thinking that the tests will come back and say that I'm pretty good with words, not so much with numbers. I don't want to be a nurse/cop/surgeon, but I like science. I am not overly concerned with feces, sex, or children. Tah-dah!

I get a breather from tests for a bit now. I think at this point, I wait for the Bishop to call me. "Kristin, I know you're not psychotic, so could you come and meet me for a conversation this week?" "As long as there's no tests," I'll say. I feel kinda queasy.