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What is "soul care," and how can we be intentional about it? What does soul care look like in a season of stress, fatigue, and uncertainty? Joanna Meyer talks with Mindy Caliguire, founder of Soul Care and director of personal growth at Gloo, about how our work creates space for God.
On finding the need for soul care:
"My head was full of ostensibly very good theology, but I had no rhetoric or rationale for why I needed to intentionally carve out time and space to care for my own soul in the midst of everything else."
On the risk of practices:
"If you think about all of those different spiritual practices–reading your Bible, praying, having a quiet time, serving, attending church–they can either open us up to God's presence and his infusing us with his life, or they can become kind of rigid things that appeal to our pride, our achievement, all the things that are even actually against what life and God actually produces."
On identifying spiritual health:
"Where is a season in your life when your sense of connection with God was really strong? It could be right now. It could've been a couple weeks ago. It could've been a couple years ago. It doesn't really matter when, but isolate like you're looking through the scenes on a video. Like find where in your life was that sense of connection with God really strong? It could've been well supported by different practices and things like we were just talking about, or it could've been a season when all hell was breaking loose and the wheels were coming off, but somehow in the midst of it you knew that you knew that you knew that God was with you and God was for you."
On soul care in the midst of a pandemic:
"Look on every front. There's fear. There's financial instability. There's relational chaos. There's isolation. There's being stuck with people that you're in conflict with. There's difficulty of achieving organizational goals. There's whole companies and ministries that are having to pivot their business models and everything else. Every decision is only as good as the next bit of information comes in, so there's massive decision fatigue...I think the circumstances of this pandemic are affecting everyone in ways that are depleting, and I think this is an opportunity for the people of God to stay centered, and drive even more deeply into the reality of the Kingdom, receive our life from God and move into this world as healing and loving agents empowered by God."
On caring for weary souls:
"If your soul is charred, know this: the power of God's love and grace to bring new life and healing to a soul has no measure.There is no limit to God's ability to breathe new life and new healing into your soul, no matter how dirt tired you are, how angry, resentful, steeped in some terrible addiction or behavior. Whatever it is, turn toward God."
Hear more from Mindy at Resilient: Women, Work, & Calling 2020.
Learn more about Mind's work at SoulCare.com, and check out their list of resources.
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