Alicia Pousson said she had her whole life mapped out.
She would finish high school, go on to college, get her Master's, get married, and start a big family. But when it came to the last part, Alicia said there was something missing.
"When I graduated college at 25 and I realized that I never dated anyone," Pousson said. "There was no one in that vein that I would have considered for that possibility."
That realization lead her to the only life she thought she could have.
"I started to be open to the possibility of religious life," Pousson said. "Of a more conventional religious life of being a nun."
That also proved to be a difficult task.
"I emailed a couple convents and they said that because of the time that their Mother Houses were built they weren't ADA accessible."
Pousson said she felt defeated.
She said she would pray everyday to make sense of what God wanted for her and what was next on her journey.
It was not until she cam across a Blog that it all started to come together.
"Consecrated virginity," Pousson explained. "Which is a lay vocation in the church that predates religious life. This is the life that women would adopt before there were convents for people. Women would gather in community, women would vow their virginity to Jesus, the church, and serve the church. That was their chrism."
Pousson said, while she lives her life similar to a nun, there are some differences.
For one, Pousson does not get any monetary compensation from the church and works 40 hours a week at a normal job. She also pays for her own home and lives her life in the world.
"My life doesn't look any different from anyone else's life from the outside," Pousson said.
"The only difference you would see from the outside is that we spend a lot of our time in prayer. For each woman that look different, each woman's life is different, each woman's job is different."
Pousson's journey, while not one that she ever expected to take, has been rewarding.
She said in the short time sense her consecration her path in life has become much clearer.
Even the one thing she never associated herself with has become part of her mission.
Pousson was born with Cerebral Palsy.
She said her parents never treated her as a child with a disability and to her she could do anything if she put her mind to it.
"I really don't....I"m not one to identify with my disability," Pousson said. "I was not raised to use it as a crutch or conceptualize it in a way that defines me. Once I was consecrated and people started knowing who I was--people would say things like you're so inspiring. You have this disability and you're still doing what God wants you to do. It took me time to get used to that and realize that it wasn't the way I was most comfortable but the way he wanted me seen."
And that dream of one day having a large family, Pousson said it is not going to happen "one day" because that day is already here.
She now has a flock of children who call on her whenever they need a little boost and that is the biggest blessing of all.
