An article by Angela Svec on Huffington Post
When I tell people I'm going to be a nun, they are shocked. Their eyebrows shoot up, their jaws drop, their beers spill onto the bar.
"You're too normal to be a nun," they say.
"You're too smart."
"You're too pretty!"
This last one took me by the greatest surprise -- as if acne or a big nose is a prerequisite to being a nun.
My looks have even been addressed by the religious communities I've visited as I seek my spiritual home. Three different orders seized on my name, Angela, and took to calling me Angelina Jolie!
People are baffled that my exterior -- a 27-year-old who used to work at Clinique and peruses Pinterest for fashion inspiration -- could reflect an interior longing for consecrated life and its seemingly antiquated vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience.
Their questions have forced me to confront my self-image. Who do I see in the mirror? How do I appear in God's eyes? How does one affect the other?
When I lived with the Poor Clare nuns in Belleville, Ill., I discovered that their monastery has no mirrors.
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