Voices - Elizabeth Ann Seton

1774–1821

Advice can pour in from many places. Family. Friends. The people in your social networks. Books. Songs. A self-help program on the radio. A sermon. It can be overwhelming.

Some advice comes with an agenda. Some comes out of a genuine concern for you. Either way, in the end you need to weed through all the advice to make your own choices.

Elizabeth Seton was getting advice from many directions. In the early 1800s, she and her husband, William, went to Italy with their five children, hoping for rest for an ailing William. Unfortunately, he didn’t recover. Elizabeth found herself a widow with five kids in a foreign country. Fortunately, a Catholic family befriended her and shared their compassion and their faith.

Elizabeth grew up Protestant, but not until she came among the Catholics in Italy did she find her own faith. When she and her children returned to New York and she chose to join the Catholic church, the advice (and the judgment) from friends and family began.

Like all of us, in the end she had to make the right choice for herself. In a memoir, she wrote about how she came to her choice to break her Protestant family tradition and embrace Catholicism. She turned to God for advice. When the advice and opinions of others made her doubt her choice, she wrote, “And here now I am in God’s hands, praying day and night for His heavenly direction, which alone can guide me straight.”

Once she was able to get everyone else’s voices out of her head, she believed that she was to “go peaceably and firmly to the Catholic church. For if faith is so important to our salvation, I will seek it where true faith first began.”

This is about more than denominations or church attendance. It’s about the voices of others you allow in your head. Friends and family offer advice that is sometimes wise and loving—and sometimes not. God can sometimes use them to guide you . . . and sometimes he’ll lead you to go against their wishes. The important thing is to listen for God’s voice and follow that.

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.

James 1:5