Learning to Notice
FROM SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR GRADUATE, ASTRID RIOS
Some of the deepest things God has spoken to me have come without words.
One of my earliest memories of Him happened beneath a sky full of stars.
I was eight years old, standing at the window of my parents' bedroom during a Guatemalan summer. The night sky stretched endlessly above me, crowded with more stars than I knew how to count. I remember looking up, completely struck by wonder. Tears quietly filled my eyes as I stood there, held by the strange certainty of two things at once:
God was unimaginably great.
And He was astonishingly near.
That moment became an anchor in my soul. Through seasons of joy and disappointment, certainty and questioning, faithfulness and wandering—even through my complaints, my doubts, and the many tantrums I have offered heaven—I have never truly been able to doubt that God exists. His reality was somehow tattooed into my soul beneath that Guatemalan sky.
What I did doubt was whether He wanted to be close to me.
Growing up, I was shaped by different Christian traditions, each offering a beautiful window into the life of God. I learned to seek Him in dramatic encounters with the Spirit, in the faithful study of Scripture, in prophetic listening, and in serving those in need. Each tradition carried a gift, and each revealed something true about God.
And yet, somewhere along the way, I quietly concluded that everyone else seemed to know how to experience God in ways that somehow eluded me.
I longed to know Him—not merely to know about Him, but to know Him intimately. I prayed. I waited. I compared. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Eventually, I grew tired of striving.
I never stopped believing in God. I simply stopped believing He wished to draw near to me.
So I built a life of my own. Architecture became my focus. I poured myself into work that was beautiful, demanding, and deeply satisfying—for a while. Until achievement could no longer quiet the deeper ache beneath it all.
In what I can now only describe as a grace-filled existential crisis, I found myself praying again. Not eloquently. Not confidently. Just honestly.
"Lord, I've lived according to my own will for years. Have Yours now."
Looking back, I see that prayer as the beginning of a lifelong discovery. I spent years searching for the God who had already found me.
Then came cancer.
Twice.
If I had imagined that intimacy with God would arrive through strength or certainty, suffering gently dismantled those expectations. During one of the most fragile seasons of my life, I encountered a fullness I still struggle to describe.
Suffering did not introduce me to God's presence. It uncovered it. God had never withdrawn His presence. He had never stopped speaking. The God I thought I had been searching for had been faithfully accompanying me all along. After recovering, I no longer wanted my life to revolve around my own ambitions. I simply wanted it to belong to Him.
That longing eventually led me to seminary, to chaplaincy, to college ministry and then church ministry, and, in time, to spiritual direction. Yet beneath all those different roles, I began to notice the same quiet desire emerging again and again.
I found myself less interested in having answers for people and more interested in helping them notice where God was already meeting them. To sit beside them as they made sense of their own stories. To cheer them on as they ran after Christ. To kindle their hearts toward Jesus, trusting that if they came to see Him more clearly, they would discover what I had slowly come to know: He is irresistible!
This longing eventually led me to PAX.
What I found there was not another method for experiencing God, nor another prescribed way of drawing near to Him. Instead, I was gently invited into something much quieter.
Attention.
Spiritual direction slowly taught me to become attentive to my Father, who has never ceased holding me. Like adjusting one's eyes to the darkness until the stars begin to appear—not because they have suddenly arrived, but because they were there all along.
It also gave me the gift of companions.
There is something profoundly healing about being surrounded by people who are willing to bring not only their convictions, but also their questions. Their grief. Their longing. Their hope. No one needed to appear spiritually impressive. Together, we practiced paying attention.
Attentive to God.
Attentive to ourselves.
Attentive to one another.
Vulnerability became holy ground.
Listening became an act of love.
And somewhere in that shared attentiveness, Christ quietly met us.
That is perhaps the greatest gift PAX has given me.
Simply deeper eyes to behold Him.
When I now accompany others as a spiritual director, I do not hope to manufacture or prescribe an experience of God for them. I cannot.
Instead, I hope to linger beside them with enough patience, expectancy, and compassion that together we begin to notice the traces of God's faithful presence already woven throughout their lives. Because more often than not, the God we seek is already closer than we imagine.
Sometimes I still think about that little girl standing beneath the Guatemalan sky, tears in her eyes as she looked toward the heavens.
For years I thought that was where my story with God began.
Now I think it was simply the first moment I noticed the story He had been writing all along.
Perhaps the journey of faith has never been about finding God but about awakening to the One who has been pursuing us all along.
And perhaps that is what Jesus meant when He invited us to become like little children.
To recover that uncluttered trust that wonders before it explains, that receives before it strives, that looks up with tear-filled eyes and simply knows: my Father is here and He loves me.
If the longing in Astrid’s heart that she describes, matches the longing in your own, then we encourage you to seek some companionship on this journey of attentiveness with God. Explore our training programs below and find the one that fits where you are and where you are longing to be.