soul care – A Life Overseas |

Practical Soul Care for the Busy Christian

Not so long ago, I unintentionally exalted ministry, obedience, and motherhood above soul care. I held it together on the outside but was bone-weary on the inside.

I don’t think I’m the only Christian who tends toward pouring out more than filling up. We, as Jesus-loving kingdom workers, desperately need to take the idea of soul care to heart. In fact, let’s do more than that — let’s take it to action with practices that help us slow down, internalize His word, reflect deeply and prayerfully, and implement new habits.

That all sounds grand, but actually getting there is a stretch for most of us. So, in response to my own need for soul care and my desire to help others along the way, I’ve created My Undivided Life: A Soul Care Journal.

This twelve-week guided journal offers original content, inspiring scripture, prayer prompts, creative space, and reflection questions to both usher you into deep places with the Lord and inspire you to live outwardly in love. It’s an invitation to live an undivided life — a life that truly loves Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Bonus material includes a weekly habit tracker, additional soul care ideas, and book recommendations to further your spiritual growth.

But what is soul care? Is it simply a spiritualized form of self-care?

It does share similarities with self care: both aim toward personal health and wellness. But the center—the soul, if you will—of that wellness is vastly different. Self-care’s impetus is, simply, the self; soul care’s impetus is 100% Jesus.

When we acknowledge that we are created beings, breathing because God first breathed life into us, moving because in Him we live and move and have our being, and loving only because He first loved us, then we realize that the only care for our souls is deep connection to our Creator.

The idea of soul has many delineations, and yours may vary from mine, but here is my working definition: The soul is the deepest, truest part of you that encompasses and integrates the whole of your person. It includes your spirit that communes with God, your heart or emotions, your mind, and your body through which all the above are expressed.

I’d like to suggest that an activity (any activity!) can be soul care if:

It connects you with the source of life — God.
It integrates your body, mind, and heart.
It encourages open-handed trust and a release of what you’re not meant to carry.
It allows you to savor beauty and the Giver of all good things.

As Dallas Willard writes in Renovation of the Heart, “Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.”

Your soul is invaluable.

Pause to consider Matthew 16:24-26:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”

Remember, soul care is much more than self-care. The aim is not to “save your life,” rather it is for your life to be swallowed up in Life Himself. In a way, it could be summed up in the idea of abiding in Christ. It’s one part position—you are in Christ—and one part intention—you keep yourself in Christ.

The following are some questions and prompts from My Undivided Life journal that you may want to sit with. See what they stir in you, and let the Savior of your soul guide you into ever-deeper places of abiding in Him.

What are you already doing that can qualify as soul care? Are there certain activities you want to invest more time in this week?
What’s one soul-draining task you can eliminate today?
What needs to change for you to intentionally partner with God in caring for your soul?
Sit quietly with the Lord. Ask Him to give you a picture of the state of your soul. Describe your soul as He sees it, and ask Him to shelter and care for it.
Rest today in the goodness of God. Inhale and exhale slowly as you breathe this prayer, and carry it with you throughout the day.

This post has been adapted from the first week of My Undivided Life: A Soul Care Journal created by author, teacher, and missionary Corella Roberts. To order a copy, click here.

Hungry for the Restoration of God

A while back, my dad passed on an old steamer trunk to me. It was coated in layers of dust, the lock had been broken out, and any leather had long since crumbled away. That old trunk probably crossed the ocean with some great-great-grand relative, carrying only bare necessities plus a bundle of hope for a new life. It’s battered and worn, bearing the scars of its journeys and years, but when I look at it, I see stories and potential. I see it restored and repurposed. As much as I’d like to, I won’t get to that project on this furlough, though . . . maybe next time.

The idea of restoring a thing – a house, a car, old furniture – is fascinating. We’ll even sit and watch others do it (as long as the process is in time-lapse). We love to see old made new, broken made beautiful, original glory restored. I wonder if God’s not so different when He looks at us. He can see beneath the layers of grime, the callouses and scars, and the cracks in our souls; He sees instead our original purpose and our future glory. God is in the business of restoration, and I’m so glad He’s not restrained by time like I am.

The word “restore” comes from the same Latin root as the word “restaurant.” Apparently, the first eatery known as a restaurant was in Paris where Monsieur Boulanger sold restorative broths nearly 300 years ago. And now, millions of humans go to restaurants of all kinds around the world to sit, eat, and be restored.

If you’ll continue to indulge me in a few more moments of word-nerdery, I would also like to consider two possible ways to split up our little friend, restore. Try the obvious syllabic break of re/store, for example. Re, meaning to do an action again, and store, meaning to gather or accumulate. We store up God’s goodness, grace, and love on repeat. Over and over again we forget, yet over and over again we can notice, give thanks, remember, and restore our souls in Him.

Or, we could look at it like rest/ore. I must rest, or else my body and soul might just quit on me. Burnout, as we call it, is right behind us if we don’t learn to find regular and healing rhythms of rest.

Living in this broken world is damaging to our souls. First of all, we’ve got our own sin nature to battle, not to mention constantly rubbing shoulders with others’ sin and sharp brokenness. We face relational conflict, taxing decisions, health concerns, compassion fatigue, awkward team dynamics, and constant culture stress every day. We abide in that already-not-yet space of redemption and sanctification, and you don’t need me to tell you that the not-yet is painful. In addition to that, we’re attacked regularly by the enemy of our souls. We have an adversary who prowls about like a roaring lion, and being hunted is not fun.

While much of our pain and soul-damage is external, there are also the very real and deep cuts of costly obedience. These are the sacrifices we make for Christ, for the gospel. These are the 19,831 goodbyes. The embarrassment of fumbling around in a language not your own. The inadequate health care or educational system you choose to raise your family in. The sweat and ants or the darkness and ice. The visa runs. The foregone comforts you see your peers enjoying in your home country. The “no’s” to your children because you just can’t have that pet with your mobile lifestyle. The painfully long sermons in another language or the ones doubled due to translation. The foods you miss. The nieces and nephews you don’t meet until they’re two. The tears of your parents as you take their grandchildren to the other side of the planet. Again.

I feel the tenderness from the shards of it all. Are these self-inflicted wounds for an extreme cause? Or are they opportunities for true worship? Can we say, as David said to Araunah when buying his threshing floor to build an altar to the Lord, “I will not offer to the Lord my God that which cost me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24)? Obedience is costly. We know that full well. And so, because of our sacrifice, our battles, and our brokenness, we are ever in need of restoration.

But remember the God who quite possibly loves a good home makeover show, too? He’s in the business of restoration, and He’s got His eye on you. In fact, He’s got a whole restaurant in His word, and He’s pulling out the chair, beckoning you in. Sampling a few verses of His promise to restore Israel in Jeremiah 31:1-4,9 is a good appetizer. Have a seat, friend. You look hungry.

I want to invite you to take your time to chew on and really savor these verses:

“At that time,” declares the Lord, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be my people.”

This is what the Lord says:

“The people who survive the sword
will find favor in the wilderness;
I will come to give rest to Israel.”

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying:

“I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

I will build you up again…

They will come with weeping;
they will pray as I bring them back.

I will lead them beside streams of water
on a level path where they will not stumble,
because I am Israel’s father,
and Ephraim is my firstborn son.”

What words stood out to you? What phrases caught your attention? Is there a significant piece you want to talk to God about more or carry with you throughout the coming days? Jot it down and keep it close, because until these broken bodies and all of creation are renewed, we need all the restoration we can get.

It’s What’s Inside That Counts, Right? Here’s a Resource to Help Us Live That Way

Stephen W. Smith wrote Inside Job for leaders, leaders who find themselves trying to “climb the slippery, treacherous slope of success,” often falling with a crash and landing in a heap below.

Stephen was once among them. When he began life after graduate school, he says, “I developed an addiction to work that was applauded by every organization I worked for in my career. I was hooked—as every addiction hooks a person.” For Stephen, that work included his service on the mission field.

The solution, he writes, is to redefine success and to prioritize the care of one’s soul, what he calls “the work within the work.” Using the “Great Eight Virtues” listed in 2 Peter 1 as his foundation, in Inside Job Stephen presents the need for emotional and spiritual transformation and fleshes out what must be done to bring it about—”a process of learning, adjusting, repenting and starting anew with courageous convictions.”

The work within the work includes finding rhythm (not balance) in life, saying “no” in light of our limitations, recognizing the need for Sabbath rest, and understanding and managing transitions.

For many of us, this will require a nearly 180-degree turnaround, as we currently function as if the outside work is of ultimate importance. Get that right and the inside will naturally follow. Things in the soul not going well? Work harder for ministry success and everything else will fall into place.

Of course, Stephen knows that missionaries are among the leaders needing inner work. He and his wife, Gwen (an adult TCK for whom Ethiopia was for a time home), previously served as church planters in Europe, and Stephen has pastored a church in the Netherlands. When I asked Stephen about the dangers to the missionary soul, he said that they “are as huge as to anyone else: ego, not knowing how to do conflict—the number-one reason missionaries come home—and past unresolved issues in life that keep trapping and tripping missionaries.”

Stephen writes about a cross-cultural worker who came to him. He had been serving for many years and was suffering from compassion fatigue. “I’m here but I feel like I’m in a coma,” he said. “I’m numb. I fee indifferent to everyone and everything—including God. I don’t even want to care anymore. I don’t have care in me. It’s gone!”

In his role as cofounder (along with Gwen) and president of Potter’s Inn, a ministry dedicated to spiritual formation and soul care, Stephen ministered to this man. Under Stephen’s guidance, the cross-cultural leader allowed “time, a place apart and solitude to do what no other power on earth can do.” Stephen calls this slow process a “trickle charge.” He talks more about trickle charging when he takes up the subject of a rhythm of rest, urging leaders to create times for resting on a weekly, monthly, yearly, and sabbatical time frame.

When it comes to transitions, Stephen understands that they take time, as well. My family and I met Stephen and Gwen a few weeks after we had returned to the States following 10 years living overseas. One of the points they stressed to us in our debriefing was the need to understand that adjusting to our new lives and surroundings could not be rushed.

In his book, Stephen mentions missionaries as an example of people who must navigate a myriad of transitions—between homes, houses, cultures, languages, jobs, schools, friends, and the list goes on. All of this too often happens, he writes, without needed help:

Rare is the church or sending organization that helps a missionary family in transition. Expectations are established that the work is what counts. This has led to devastating statistics in mission organizations forced to look at their retention rates for missionaries who simply are not prepared for the long, hard and challenging transition to life in a new culture, or the transition that takes place when the missionary comes back home. Few missionaries are allowed to process what happened inside them as they did their outside work. Churches and agencies are eager to hear reports of growth, but what about the internal chaos happening in the life of the one who was sent?

Understanding the reality of this chaos was another theme that the Smith’s presented to us. This chaos in the missionary soul often happens as missionaries take great pains to look on the outside as if all is well.

Dealing with that chaos and the other inner challenges of the missionary life takes work, work by the missionary, by the church, by the sending agency, by member-care workers, by family members, and by friends. It’s the inside work that makes the outside work possible. It’s the inside work that allows us to step away from the “treacherous slope of success.” It’s the inside work that can help us after we’ve fallen, to get up and walk a better path.

(Stephen W. Smith, Inside Job: Doing the Work within the Work, IVP, 2015)