Self-care has become a strange phrase. For some people they imagine bubble baths, canceling plans, and ignoring responsibilities. For others it sounds selfish, something people do when they don't want to deal with real life.

Neither of those images or definitions are very helpful. In fact self-care isn't an indulgence or avoidance.  Self-care is about stewardship and the relationship we hold with ourselves.

It's practicing care for the life God has entrusted to us, our minds, our bodies, our emotions, and our spirit so that we can live faithfully, love others well, and remain grounded in the midst of a demanding and often times traumatic world.

Whenever we encounter something demanding in life—a pressure placed on us individually or socially—stress is our natural bodily response. This stress includes both “good” stress and “bad” stress. Yes, even positive experiences like moving to a new place, making a new change, receiving a job promotion, going on vacations, etc… can cause stress in our lives.

Stress is a by-product of our physiological response for self-preservation. Something perceived as a threat causes a change in our bodies to be able to “deal with” that threat the best way our bodies know how to (fight, flight, or freeze). We see a bear, stress causes us to react in a way to survive said bear.

Many of us don't normally encounter bears in our every day lives. But we often find ourselves in other stressful situations: giving a speech, running a marathon, joining a new social group, having to have a difficult conversation, taking a test... Our stress response to these triggers can be useful to push through fear, pain, or tiredness. And when this happens, our bodies quickly bounce back to normal once the stressful event is over, and there’s never any lasting effects.

Unfortunately, we were not built for prolonged exposures to stress. While some stress is helpful, many of us are constantly bombarded with moderate to highly stressful circumstances in a hyper connected, fast paced, expectation driven world. So rather than having a test followed by space where we can "come down" from the experience, another stressful triggers quickly follows.

We react to “bears” hiding in all parts of our lives. But they don’t go away. Plus many of us have had “normal” stressors exasperated with any number of recent events. So we cling to stressors and create environments where we cause extra stress. 

The result is long term negative effects to our physical and mental health.

It’s important you don’t ignore the physical and emotional warning signs of stress in your life. The Practice of Self-Care begins and ends with how comfortable (and yes, how often) you are honest with yourself about how you are addressing everything that
goes on in your life.

It’s easier to write off the symptoms you experience and the impact that “stuff” is having in your life than it is to deal with it and to make the hard decisions to change things up towards something more life-giving.

What is Self-Care?

It is the intentional act of attending to and caring for our own physical, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional health.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 reminds us that our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, and it calls us to glorify God in our own bodies. Romans 12 begins with an appeal for us to present our bodies as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God…” and in Psalm 139:13-14 we hear the truth that we have been formed by God with purpose—we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

When we care for ourselves, we are honoring the gift of life God gives to us, and we nurture our ability to love more richly. We consent to God’s action that happens within each of us by making
decisions, taking steps, and leaning into healthier rhythms and a way of “being.”

In fact, most people ask what it means to “be”—well, you can learn to “be” more through Self-Care. This practice also recognizes that you can’t “be” without having healthy “doing.”

Why is Self-Care important?

Sure we can avoid Self-Care by labeling it a selfish act, but then again Jesus made it a regular point in his life and ministry to care for his needs in the midst of healing and loving others.

The truth is that it's impossible to be fully present, openly compassionate, and deeply vulnerable with others if we are empty, depleted, barely hanging on with very little to give ourselves for others.

And we cannot hope to bring healing to others if we aren't grounded to God in the first place.

Self-Care is an essential practice to our wellbeing, and our ability to live out the Gospel. When we believe it’s more important to sacrifice ourselves to please others, or when we mistake
service and God’s mission as sacrificing our own self to make others happy, we work against the abundant life God promises and Jesus makes possible for us.

We disconnect from our true self as we strive for faith that has been boiled down into simple people pleasing. When we care for
ourselves, we will have so much more to give, and it will be with greater quality. We show just how much life giving our faith in Christ really is—yes, God loves me, and so I love me.

If you are like me, there are times where you are constantly mulling over work details outside of work time. It’s hard to relax, and sometimes you dread going back to work the next day.

Unfortunately, excessively bringing work home has been shown to lead to burnout. Follow these tips to effectively reduce taking work stress home with you.

Unwind on the commute home. 

Use this time to mentally transition between your work life and your home life. Allow yourself time to adjust by gradually shifting your thoughts from work stuff to other activities.

Consider using music, silence, or a book on audio to help in this process. Sing out loud. Dance in the car. Take deep breaths. Offer up your work day as a prayer to God.

Practice mindfulness | Centering Prayer. 

On your way home, or whenever you find yourself worrying about work, use your imagination to visualize the stress and worries of your work being lifted up by God. One by one, hand these worries to God.

You can also use a sacred word that has meaning for you, to quiet and center your mind. Use meditation or Centering Prayer to orient yourself to the present moment, leaving anxieties and stress behind you, and focusing on God’s presence before.

Plan the next day before leaving. 

Write down your rough plan for the next work day, including a schedule of when to work on each project so that you aren’t worrying about what you will do the next day.

Leave this schedule at work. Once you finish it, do not revisit it until the next working day (resist the temptation to keep tweaking it).

Do something fun.

Watch your favorite TV show, listen to a fun podcast,
read internet memes, play a quick game, share a joke or listen to one. It’s important to take break in the midst of work to allow your brain a chance for recharging and to refocus. Spending too much time stuck in an activity is not helpful.

It is also helpful to keep smiling. Just the act of smiling and laughing can trick your mind into thinking more positively.

Research suggests you give yourself at least an hour’s worth of rest for every 8 hours of work (you don’t have to do this all at one time).

Popular culture often conflates soothing and Self-Care. While there is a relationship between the two (and they are both important), there are differences. And these differences can be significant.

Self-Soothing are activities we do to help us cope and get through a certain moment in life, whereas self-care is a longer-term strategy that’s focused on helping you meet your needs. For example, taking a bath, eating chocolate, shopping, binge watching your favorite show—these are all soothing activities.

However, they don’t deal with the actual problem that’s causing you to sooth in the first place.

Self-Care often means “standing up” to deal with and make hard decisions to change things—rather than trying to alleviate the pressure in the moment. It seeks to build up resilience within you and to thrive and move forward in life.

This might even mean changing certain habits which may not feel pleasant in the moment. This might even mean changing long held relationships for the purpose of health, and can be speaking truth in love.

Self-soothing is essential for our growth and success as healthy adults. We learn through childhood how to sooth, and we may not be fully aware of how often we sooth in our daily rhythm. These activities help us get through daily stressors and crises that would otherwise help us become overwhelmed and gripped with feelings (imagine a child throwing a tantrum). Allowing ourselves to sooth can create healthy space for us to revisit those difficult
feelings and impulses later.

Soothing skills are tools in your toolbox to use in immediate situations. Self care is using those tools intentionally for the purpose of health and wholeness.

EMERGENCY SOOTHING KIT

When we are going through something significantly difficult in our lives and we approach the line of feeling lonely, depressed, overwhelmed, unmotivated, rejected, exhausted, or burned
out, it’s way too easy to turn to unhealthy coping strategies that only make us feel worse.

For example, we “hit the bottle” to drink ourselves numb, or we spends hours and hours of binge watching shows to escape what is happening around us.

To help keep us from falling into those unhealthy strategies, consider creating a 24 hour emergency self-care kit that is
easily accessible. This will help keep healthy coping strategies accessible, and can serve as an emotional first aid in times of stress and burnout.

This kit should be tailored to you and what helps you feel better. And while even thinking about all the good things you will put in your kit can bring relief and lift your mood you want to make sure you put this kit together when things are going well. Don’t wait until you are in the midst of a difficult time to be scrambling to put something together.

The kit should include enough options that it would help lift your mood for at least 24 hours. You will also want to periodically revisit your kit to update and change out the things within the kit to reflect your current needs and interests.

If we aren’t intentional in how we plan on engaging with the practice of Self-Care, it will eventually fall into the background
before disappearing completely. Life does happen, and stressors
will continue to “pop up.” Not to mention—not everyone values
Self-Care.

To begin, consider simply blocking 5, 10 or 30 minutes per day
in your calendar for you to practice Self-Care and expand from
there. The purpose is to make it more manageable for you to lean
into the practice—especially if you have a schedule packed with
“stuff.”

However, the more you start shifting your rhythm, the easier it will be for you to increase the time allotted for daily Self-Care. The goal for future self would be to have at least two hours every day dedicated to some form of Self-Care (this includes
devotional time).

Tip: set the alarm on your phone or watch so it will remind you. You can use placeholders for activities you know you want to do, but may not have fully fleshed out. It’s simple and works like magic.

Most of us imagine faith as a system or set of beliefs. Beliefs are important, but faith is so much more than just holding belief. Faith is letting go. Or as the contemplative tradition teaches us: faith consists of a series of consents.

We don't make loud declarations. They aren't dramatic moments. But small interior yeses that slowly shape who we become over the course of our lives. Ongoing consents we make as we return to the sacred presence of the Divine at work in and around us. The more we habituate consent in our daily lives, the more these yeses become automatic.  

The contemplative teacher Thomas Keating described spiritual growth through what we called four consents, or four ways we say yes to God as our lives unfold. Through my work with young adults and personal study of the contemplative tradition, I add a fifth consent, building on the work of Fr. Keating.

Before anything else, there is the simple consent to be alive. This might sound obvious, but many people spend years quietly resisting their own lives. For example:

• We wish we were someone else.
• We resent our past.
• We feel embarrassed or shame for our personalities, our families, or our struggles. 
• We work hard crafting a personality that's not true to who we are, but allows us to fit in with a specific group of people. 

Our unique life is a gift, and it is utterly lovable before we do anything. Genesis shares a story (well, two) of how creation was formed by God. In each thing created God claimed as good. However, when God created humans, God claimed them as very good. We are very good. God takes delight in us. Before we accomplish anything, before we prove anything, our existence already carries dignity.

I know many of us struggle with this first consent. College years are full of comparisons, anxiety, and pressure to perform. It can feel like you must justify your existence through success. And it only gets harder when we graduate and enter into the "real world" where now our very existence depends on money.

Contemplative spirituality invites a quieter truth: You don't have to earn he right to be here. In fact, Journey House strongly believes everyone has a seat at the table. It doesn't matter what kind of stories make up the fabric of your past. It doesn't matter if you fit in with a specific group of people. You belong here, as long as you are open to sharing the table with others.

The first consent is accepting the gift of you with humility and gratitude.

Once we accept the goodness of our very being, the next invitation is to accept that we are creative and invited to grow.

This consent often begins to awaken during our teenage years. Children mostly receive life. They experience the world as something given to them. But adolescence introduces something new: agency. Energy rises. Questions multiply. Teenagers start discovering something powerful: My life can affect the world around me. 

Our existence is a gift. Our participation is the response to that gift.

We have the courage to step into life with curiosity. To try things. To make things. To explore who we are becoming. 

However, we can also go through life half-asleep. We survive our schedules, manage responsibilities, scroll through our phones, and get through the week. Before we know it, life becomes something that happens to us rather than something we embody.

This second consent shifts that posture. And it sounds something like this: "Yes, I will fully participate in my life. Yes, I will show up fully."

Ideas turn into action.
Curiosity turns into exploration.
Energy turns into creativity.

We awaken our creativity and our quirky energy we bring to our social groups. Beneath our experiementation that often marks this age group is a deeper spiritual movement: the discover that life invites our participation.

Contemplative living is sometimes misunderstood as this passive or withdrawn posture from the world. But true contemplative living doesn't remove us from the world. It takes this energy we experience and helps ground it in healthy ways. We create space where we begin to notice where life feels most alive. We recognize what draws us, what inspires us, what stirs compassion or imagination within us.

The second consent is not about having everything figured out. It is about staying open to the creative moment of life. In time, this openness matures, and what starts as exploration eventually leads to deeper questions about purpose and responsibility. And those questions lead us toward the third consent when we become young adults. 

The first two consents are personal consents we make as God created us and then fashions our lives to be creative, energetic beings. In this third consent, there is a fundamental shift that happens as we mature through the second consent. We are confronted with the reality that we are an individual that's deeply connected to other individuals, that we are part of a larger group.

In this consent we say yes to find and create spaces where we and others can belong.

Part of this consent is asking questions, like:

• Where do I belong?
• What kind of world am I helping to create?
• What should I do with my life?
• How am I going to make a difference?

This consent doesn't necessarily answer these questions directly, but they reshape the way we ask them. It reminds us that spiritual life is not about perfect certainty or constant emotional heights, but realizing that we both receive and build belonging in this world. We realize that we are called to a communal responsibility.

Contemplative living teaches us that we belong to God. When that truth begins to sink into our bones, something changes in how we see others. The boundaries that once separated people begin to soften. We start noticing who feels left out. We become more aware of relationships we surround ourselves with as we search for a partner to share intimacy and life with. 

If we fully make this consent, we start to notice who is invisible. We notice who has been pushed to the margins. We notice who walks into a room wondering if they are allowed to stay. And slowly a new desire emerges:

What if we helped build spaces where people could be?

The thing about belonging: it's not just an emotional warmth, a mantra we say to make ourselves feel better. It is the intentional shaping of communities where dignity, safety, and voice are protected.

And so with this consent we see our friend groups becoming chosen family. Communities are formed around shared values. We become architects of belonging where we craft tables that welcomes people, we build communities where honesty is safe, and we advocate for systems that reflect our deeply held values.

As we continue to grow and mature we come to the fourth consent of releasing our grip on life. We start to really confront with the fact of life: everything around us is temporary (except God of course).

The energy of youth pushes us outward. We build careers, friendships, communities, and dreams. We invest ourselves in people, places, and projects that give our lives meaning. But eventually something happens that no amount of ambition or planning can prevent. Life begins to take things away.

Illness interrupts our plans.
Relationships change or end.
Communities shift.
Bodies age.
People we love die.

The invitation of this stage in our lives is not to fight that reality endlessly, but to slowly learn a deeper kind of surrender. This is not indifference. It's not a lack of love. In fact, it often grows out of loving deeply. The more we love people, places, and experiences, the more we eventually encounter the pain of letting them go.

Contemplative living teaches us that this process is not simply loss. It is also learning. Over time, life dismantles the illusion that we control everything, that we will somehow be that one person that will live forever. the identities we once relied on begin to soften. The roles we played shift (as does our responsibilities and even our values). The things that once defined us lose their grip.

This diminishment can feel frighting at first. That's why we have this thing called a mid-life crisis. But contemplatives have long noticed that something surprising happens in the midst of it. As the self we constructed begins to loosen, a deeper self begins to appear.

We become less concerned with proving ourselves.
Less anxious about status or success (assuming we make this consent).
More attentive to what truly matters.

In this sense, the third consent is a quiet spiritual session on holding our lives with open hands.

Open hands toward our possessions. Toward our achievements. Toward the people we love most. This doesn't make love weaker, it actually makes love truer. Because love that clings tries to keep things from change. Love that releases trusts that nothing real can ultimately be lost in God. Illness, aging, and death are not failures of our journey. They are part of the path itself. They slowly teach us what every contemplative learns: we cannot carry everything with us. 

And so we practice letting go. 

Are we willing to let go of who we thought we were?

Consent five is the consent to transformation. Not the kind of change we manage ourselves, but the kind that only unfolds when God slowly dismantles the structures we have built throughout life to protect our identity. It's often called the process of death of the false self.

The false self is not evil. We need to be clear about this. It is the identity we construct over time in order to survive the world. Life is trauma (if you ever witnessed birth you know that it starts off traumatic, and it doesn't end). Over time we construct masks we wear in order to survive the world. It is built from our need for approval, security, control, and belonging.

And so we learn how to perform certain roles. We learn how to succeed. We learn how to protect ourselves from rejection or pain. Eventually this constructed identity becomes the person we believe we are.

However, deep within us there is another self, the self that exists in God. And the spiritual journey inevitably moves us toward a difficult question:

"Am I willing to release the version of myself I have spent my life building?"

This consent rarely happens all at once. it unfolds slowly through the same forces that shape the fourth consent: loss, suffering, failure, aging, and all of our humbling experiences that strip away our illusions of control and security.

But here something new occurs. Instead of simply letting go of all these external things, we begin releasing the inner narratives that have grown to define us. This need to prove ourselves. This need to always be right. This need for validation that we are enough. These identities cannot (and should not) survive the deeper work of God.

And that can feel like death. Actually for many of us, it feels much worse than death.

We want transformation. We often talk about transformation, even if we don't use the word. But transformation is hard because it requires a kind of surrender that feels like losing ourselves. But the purpose of this surrender is not destruction. It's liberation.

The more our false self loosens its grip, something more spacious begins to emerge. We are less reactive, less defensive, less driven by fear. Compassion grows more naturally. Humility depends. We discover a quiet freedom we might never know was possible. And this is the beginning of the true self appearing. The self that exists in communion with God. 

When we talk about these five consents, it can sound as if they unfold in a neat sequence. Granted each growth stage we experience as we grow older offers these consent naturally as a process of becoming mature humans. However, we all know that real life rarely works that way. Nothing is messier than reality.

The spiritual journey is far more circular than linear. At different moments in life we find ourselves returning to the same consents again and again. We can spend years participating creatively in life and then suddenly discover the need to accept ourselves after a season of grief or failure. We can spend so much time preparing for the loss of a loved one or a change in our work, but struggle to process grief when it does happen.

The consents are less like steps on a staircase and more like movements in a lifelong rhythm. Sometimes we learn to receive our lives again. Sometimes we rediscover the courage to participate. Sometimes we are called outward again to build spaces of belonging. Sometimes we practice the difficult work of letting go. And sometimes we are being quietly transformed.

These movements overlap, repeat, and deepen over time. And the other part of this: if we don't make a consent as the naturally happen, it becomes harder to consent to the others as they come.

The further we travel on the spiritual path, the more childlike the journey becomes again. We return to simple trust. We return to receiving life as gift.

This is why the language of consent is helpful. Again and again we are invited to say yes. 

If someone asked you, “How is it with your soul?”, what would you say?

Would you give the honest answer? Or the efficient one?  Or perhaps the one that sounds spiritually acceptable?

This question isn't asking whether you are busy, productive, or even successful--although I would imagine many of us interpret our own health of our souls through the lens of busyness and production of spiritual fruit.

It instead asks if your inner life is alive.

The truth is most of us don't pause long enough to know, or are even comfortable taking a peek inwardly.

STAYING ALIVE....

Think about the most basic things that you need in order to stay alive:

• Water
• Food
• Sleep
• Air

These things are ordinary. Unremarkable (although are they really?). Easy to overlook. There is nothing flashy about a glass of water, yet you need it to stay alive.

Well, our souls work the same way.

There are small, ordinary practices that nourish us emotionally, spiritually, and relationally. They rarely feel dramatic. They don't trend on social media. But over time, they determine the quality of your inner life. These are things like:

• A five-minute pause before work, class, or an appointment to ground yourself spiritually and emotionally. 
• A walk without headphones. 
• Naming your anxiety instead of ignoring or stuffing it away. 
• Laughing with a friend, or even laughing in general. 
• Sharing something vulnerable with another person. 
• Expressing gratitude. 
• Sitting in silence. 
• Spending time drawing, coloring, doodling, day-dreaming. 

These ordinary practices aren't electives. They aren't little appetizers. They are nourishment for our souls, and the backbone of a healthy spirituality.

YOU WERE CREATED TO BE FILLED AND TO OVERFLOW, TO ENJOY AND BE ENJOYED

The fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nyssa described humans as vessels created to hold goodness, love, and life. Paul in the book of Ephesians call us God's masterpieces.

Imagine yourself as a jar. Not a fragile decorative jar, but one designed to be filled.

Here's the beautiful part: the more you are filled with love, peace, hope, and grace, the greater your capacity to hold even more. Your interior expands. And what fills you will eventually spill over.

Now imagine yourself as an art piece in a gallery. Not as an art piece tucked away in the corner, or hidden in a warehouse somewhere. But as art fully displayed. Enjoyed.

We aren't an accident. We aren't a project barely holding together (although it can feel that way some times). We aren't just a one time picture either. God is constantly working within us, expressing love, hope, joy, peace... each as a beautiful fabric to the overall work. Each as a beautiful color beaming through on the tapestry of life. We are crafted intentionally and with care.

You weren't created to run on empty. You were created to overflow. You weren't created to be meh. You were created as a masterpiece.

The reality is nourishment matters because overflow is inevitable. The question is what we want to overflow from us. Love or fear? Peace or anxiety? Hope or cynicism and doomerism? Another way to ask this question: What kind of person do I wish to be?

The reality is nourishment matters because you were created to enjoy the fullness of life, and God desires an intimate relationship with you. If we aren't caring for ourselves we limit the kind of life and relationship God desires for us. When we aren't pausing to just be in the constant noise of doing, we aren't allowing space to be present with the Artist.

The good news is that God never stops creating in us. Through us. With us.

So when we feel like we aren't fully nourished, God is there holding us. When we feel like we are drowning and our colors aren't as bright or vibrant anymore, God is there doing something new in our midst.

HEALTHY SPIRITUALITY IS RHYTHMIC NOURISHMENT

So when we talk about what healthy spirituality looks like, we talk about rhythm. It's not spiritual performance or trying to live up to someone else's standards or expectations. It's not how emotional we feel in any given moment. It's not even trying to become a flawless person who doesn't make any mistakes.

It's rhythm.

It's rhythm of sustainable nourishment that fuels your mind, body (because we are in fact embodied people), emotions, relationships, and yes, your very soul.  

To connect this with my Methodist tradition, we call this the "Means of Grace" or ordinary practices God uses to shape us, to build us up to perfect (meaning more whole or complete) love.

Ordinary does not mean insignificant. Ordinary means consistent. And with consistency, you become formed. Researchers have demonstrated that you need consistent practice in something before it becomes a habit (a truth bomb for why our New Years resolutions usually don't stick, because we don't stay with it long enough for it to become a habit.)

HEALTHY SPIRITUALITY IS NOURISHED PASSION

When we know we are created purposefully and intentionally, we don't have to hustle for our worth. When we stop hustling for worth, our energy shifts. Passion grows when our identity is secure. We don't shame away this passion. We don't need outside validation to tell us our passion is ok. 

We often try to fix spiritual hunger with noise. We scroll more. We try to produce more. We seek more external validation. But stimulation is not the same as nourishment. We can consume forever, but continue to spiritual starve.

If you read this far, perhaps you are asking yourself why this even matters. Well it matters because when you nourish yourself intentionally:

• You rely less on external validation and become more comfortable validating yourself.
• You react less impulsively and rely more on responding smartly.
• You become steadier in conflict.
• You recover from stress faster because you are more resilient.
• You notice God more clearly in the ordinary moments of your life.

Over time, your thinking and the primary way you operate shifts from scarcity to abundance. You see others not as competition, but as companion vessels. And you become someone who pours out hope instead of stress.

So let's return to our question: How is it with your soul?

Don't rush the answer. Let your honest response become your starting point. Nourishment is not about becoming someone else. It's honoring the image of God already within you, because it is YOU!

Your soul needs rhythm and today is a good place to begin.

Let's begin by asking the uncomfortable question: Do we actually trust God?

Most of us would say yes, but if we looked at our calendars it might share a different answer.

When we refuse to rest, we do more than exhaust ourselves. We quietly declare that everything depends on us. We fill every margin. We answer every notification. We chase every opportunity. And without meaning to, we turn accumulation and accomplishment into functional saviors.

But when we talk about Sabbath, it exposes what we really believe.

THE IDOL OF PRODUCTION

We don't have to look very far to see how much our culture is addicted to and dependent on busyness. Our self-worth usually gets boiled down to:

• Promotions or job titles
• Academic performance
• Networking or the number of "friends" we collect on Socials
• Being booked and busy

We suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out). We fear falling behind. We fear being irrelevant. Fueling a lot of this fear of course is how much we've become dependent on our jobs for survival--I get that.

For many of us, rest is not a lifestyle choice. It feels like a luxury. When you’re living paycheck to paycheck… When you’re juggling two jobs… When you’re in school and working nights… When one unexpected expense can destabilize everything… “Just rest more” can sound disconnected from reality.

And our constant connection makes it worse. We are reachable at all times. There is always another email. Another update. Another task. Another comparison. Another reminder that bills and rent don't pause.

Without noticing, we become constant need-fillers — available to everyone and everything except God, ourselves, and the people physically in front of us.

Rest begins to feel irresponsible. Rest feels like a luxury. 

But here’s the deeper truth:
When we refuse to rest, we are not demonstrating strength. We are revealing anxiety.

WHAT SABBATH REVEALS

Sabbath is not just about slowing down. It is about surrender. It asks:

• Can you stop without everything collapsing?
• Can you trust that God is at work when you are not?
• Can you release the illusion of control?
• Can you stop striving for 10 minutes?
• Can you tell your body that you are more than your bank account or your survival strategy, that your value is not measured in dollars?

Sabbath isn't about leisure. It's about refusing to let your worth be defined by output. It's about reclaiming one small space where anxiety and fear doesn't rule you.

From the beginning of creation, rest was woven into the rhythm of life. Work is part of our design. So is delight. So is play. So is sleep. So is intimacy.

We were never meant to have identities built solely on output. When work consumes identity, it slowly forms a shell around who we truly are — beloved children of God. And the result is chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, disconnection, irritability, and burnout. Eventually we sacrifice nourishment for performance.

Sabbath is often misunderstood as a rigid religious command. But at its core, it is an invitation to become who we were created to be.

We are people of rest.

We cannot understand Sabbath intellectually. You can only understand it by practicing it, imperfectly.

Sabbath reminds us:

• We can only love others to the extent that we receive love.
• We can only care for people to the extent that we allow ourselves to be cared for.
• We can only meet needs if we admit we have needs.
• There is dignity in work, but it doesn't become the sole source of our identity.
• We are not machines, nor are we disposable.

Refusing rest is often refusing dependence. But dependence is not weakness in the kin-dom of God. It is design. When you sleep, the world continues without you. When you say no, life unfolds without your management.
When you rest, God remains God.

That realization is either terrifying, or freeing.

A REALISTIC SABBATH PLAN

If a full day feels impossible to take a sabbath, begin here.

1. Create More Pauses.
Take a few minutes before and after work to pause, to breathe slowly, to name one thing you're carrying, and then releasing it to God.

2. Protect Sleep
Sleep is sacred. Even by practicing good sleep hygiene is an act of sabbath. Take mini-naps if needed throughout the day. Stick with a consistent bedtime.

3. Give yourself space for delight
Choose a low-cost activity that brings you joy such as walking outside, calling a friend, cooking something yummy, sitting somewhere quiet, or jamming out to a good song. Protect this space. And remember that delight is not consumption, it's attention.

Sabbath does not erase hardship. It prevents hardship from erasing you. 

AN HONEST INVITATION

If you cannot stop for a full day, stop for five minutes. If you cannot reduce work hours, reduce self-condemnation. If you cannot eliminate stress, create a small ritual of release.

Trust is not proven by quitting your job.
It is practiced when you loosen your grip, even briefly.

So let’s return to the question:
Do we trust God?

Maybe a better question is:
Where can I practice trust today, even in this economy, even in this season?

Sabbath is not about pretending life is easy. It is about refusing to let survival become your identity. And that refusal can begin in the smallest pause.

You do not need to be spiritually advanced to begin a spiritual life. You don't need certainty. You don't need to hold the perfect belief. You don't even need to have a dramatic conversion story.

You only need willingness.

Intensity does not produce transformation. Repetition does. Event-driven spirituality often leads to greater disconnect and eventually burnout. We rely upon expectations. They shape our reality, our desires.

Sustainable faith is built through small, consistent rhythms (and living into the intention of practicing daily).

Why does intensity fail?

Our high emotional response to something can inspire change. Very rarely can it sustain change. Without having a structure in place, any good intention we create for ourselves dissolves over time.

If we meet those expectations we celebrate, but when the mark is missed we are left wondering why. After a while all expectations lead to failure. And if our whole spirituality and wholeness rely on "success" through achievement, we set ourselves up for greater pain and more brokenness. This is the beauty in the focus of the Second (New) Testament with Grace being our source, and not by our own works.

Any spiritual practice is not a performance for God. It's a way of placing ourselves where grace can reach us.

Wesley called these practices "means of grace", and they are ordinary channels through which God forms us over time. We don't earn God's love; we already are loved deeply and profoundly by God. Rather, spiritual practices train our attention. Develop our capacity. Deepen our intimacy.

Again, transformation happens not through intensity, but through consistency.

What happens through our ongoing practice?

We shift: 

• Scarcity towards Abundance
• Control towards Trust
• Judgment towards Compassion
• Powerlessness towards Courage
• Comparisons towards Curiosity

The church is finally realizing that discipleship is not information. It's formation. The goal of discipleship is to be formed through Christ Jesus, through these practices. It is encounter.

WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN PRACTICING

You will not feel different immediately. There will be days that any practice will feel dry. You'll be distracted. And you'll have days where your practice will be meaningful.

Spiritual formation is agricultural, not mechanical. You plant. You water and feed. God grows. It's a gradual growth and process and rhythm. Consistent openness and consent to grace reshapes desires themselves.

You aren't manufacturing God's attention. You are responding to it. You may not notice daily change, but over months and years, you'll notice your growth. 

To love well is to love fully, and that means being vulnerable.

We are created to share life with others. Not superficially, or transactionally. But deeply, through trust, honesty, presence, and mutual care. As C.S. Lewis once observed, if you open your treat, it will be broken. There is no alternative. 

Love requires exposure. // Exposure requires risk.

Showing up requires courage. // Courage requires willingness for mistakes.

For many of us, that risk is not theoretical.

We carry our scars. Some are deep. Some are old. Scars formed by moments when we trusted fully and were not met with care. Formed by toxic love. Formed by unspoken expectations. Formed by close ones speaking unfairly.

Some scars are so deep they become fundamentally part of our being.

When we show up authentically we open ourselves to the possibility of being dismissed, misunderstood, or betrayed.

So we learned and we adapted. We've become guarded, more careful, less expressive, less open. And we've learn that self-protection feels safer than vulnerability. But self-protection also limits capacity.

Vulnerability is frightening because it opens ourselves to the possibility of being hurt, experiencing loss, or being made a fool.

It touches on three of our most deepest fears:
1) Rejection -- "If they see this, they'll leave."
2) Loss of Status -- "If I admit this, I'll look incompetent."
3) Loss of Control -- "If I open up, I can't manage the narrative."

And yet, without vulnerability, nothing meaningful grows.  We can be admired and still unknown. We can be surrounded and still lonely. 

That's the paradox.

Vulnerability feels like weakness. But it is the ground for strength. 

Vulnerability is our doorway to peace, joy, deeper intimacy, shared meaning, and authentic belonging. It is our willingness to be seen accurately. It is strength that refuses disguises.

Without vulnerability, relationships remain shallow. They may function, but they do not flourish. The kind of abundant life many of us long for, the kind of life marked by connection and wholeness, requires courage. It requires us to bravely show up, time and time again.

Our faith makes an audacious claim: God is not repelled by vulnerability. The incarnation itself, God taking on flesh, is a form of divine vulnerability. God does not remain distant and invulnerable. God enters in. God shows up.

When we talk about emotional and spiritual wholeness, this isn't simply about "being completely open." It is about learning how to be open in a way that this wise and life-giving (for everyone).

This involves developing:

• Self-awareness and relational-awareness
• Emotional regulation
• Clarity around personal values
• Healthy boundaries

We learn how to create and maintain healthy margins, the space between your inner world (your thoughts, emotions, convictions) and the inner world of others.

This space determines things like who has access, when we share our stories and truths, how much we share, and what is appropriate for the relationship. The reality is that not everyone deserves access to your story.

Without that space, we:

• overextend ourselves to gain approval or keep from experiencing the discomfort of conflict.
• Absorb other people's emotions as our own, or expect others to be responsible for our own emotions.
• Collapse our convictions or violate our boundaries to avoid conflict or the feeling like we are letting someone down.
• Provide opportunity for our story to be eroded or erased by another's story rather than shared or joined together. 
• Withdraw completely.

None of these are true vulnerability. They are survival strategies.

It does appear at first glance that space seems like the opposite of vulnerability. People struggle with boundaries (especially Christians) because it doesn't feel loving and seems contrary to being a martyr.

The truth though: healthy margins are actually a sign of mature vulnerability and love. They mean we know what we feel. We know what we believe. We can articulate our needs and say no when necessary. This isn't defensiveness. It's integration.

Holding or keeping margins means shame can lose its power. Shame does not thrive in the light. By holding space for sharing our secrets, we shrink the space shame has to feed and fester. And by being mindful of how and when we share those secrets means we prevent opportunity for shame to feed.

We will have fewer, but deeper and more meaningful relationships. Of course not everyone we meet will have the same level of intimacy, nor should they. However, we hold space for certain relationships to deepen and grow more intimate rather than strangling them quantity of relationships.

Our leadership strengthens in part because people trust leaders who are human and are capable of making hard decisions like saying now. It's also because we aren't allowing ourselves to constantly teeter on the edge of burnout by always being available. If we hold space, people will learn how to honor that space, or they'll move on (that's ok too). However, if we don't, people will always take advantage of this lack of space. We cannot expect people to honor un-held space.

When you maintain healthy space, you aren't hiding. You are showing up, fully and intentionally, rather than reacting out of fear or obligation. Real vulnerability is not doing whatever someone asks in order to preserve connection. It is being present in the relationship without abandoning yourself.

SHOWING UP FULLY

Just imagine how awesome relationships would be if were weren't pretending, performing, holding silent resentment, or suppressing what really matters to you.

By being authentically present we can engage from a place of roundedness. By being clear about who you are through your boundaries, you become freer to love, because your love is no longer fueled by fear of rejection but by of choice. And choosing love is always stronger than compelled love.

Ask yourself:

Where am I performing instead of being honest?

Where am I withholding because I fear rejection?

Who in my life has earned deeper access, and how much space am I providing for those relationships?

What would one step of courageous honesty look like this week?

If we listen to Christian's we've probably heard at some point someone saying that a parking space opening up next to the building was a sign of God's presence. Or we might hear of someone celebrating how God healed someone sick, a miracle performed before them (or maybe even for them).

But the truth is for every miracle we see, there is another person who wasn't healed. Where was God in that story?That's the question we wrestle with.

If God is opening up parking spaces, why doesn't God stop violence? Why not terminal diagnoses?

Life can feel like a stage play (or perhaps a game of The Sims).

We pray.
We perform.
God enters from the wings when the crisis reaches its peak, and saves the day. Or maybe God doesn't and we feel left on our own.

WHO IS GOD TO YOU?

Jesus asks Peter at one point the Gospels, "Who do you say that I am?" How would you answer that question? How would you define God?

For many people, the default image of God we are left with is something like this: an old white dude with a giant white beard, somewhere "out there," playing us like a game of The Sims. Healing one person. Skipping another. Opening parking spaces. Closing doors.

It boils down to a God who is essentially elsewhere, outside the system, occasionally stepping in to meddle with human lives.

The problem with this image is not just that is incredibly simplistic, but it also creates a deeper theological issue: how do we prove this distant supreme Being exists at all.

We start from the places we see, the world, history, suffering, beauty... and then debate whether there is a divine player, playing this simulation we call life.

However, the writers of the Bible are far less interested in proving God's existence and far more interested in revealing who God is.

In the book of Exodus, Moses asks God for a name. The answer God gives is a declaration: "I AM."

Not "I was" or "I will be" or "I occasionally intervene."

I AM.

I AM being itself.

I AM presence itself.

I AM the ground and source for life itself.

And when Moses encounters this I AM, he sees no form. No manageable image. No controllable shape.

God is the one in whom we live and move.

Other stories in the First (Old) Testament are shared stories of a group of people trying to answer who God is... in the midst of harm, human evil, tragedy, catastrophe.

Their collective truth is: God creates partners, not puppets. God indwells with us. 

NOT INTERVENTION BUT REVELATION

If God is not playing us like The Sims, then the question shifts. Our question no longer is "Why doesn't God intervene more often?" The question becomes "What is God really like?"

Jesus never explains or answers why some people get healed and others don't. He comes to reveal God in flesh and blood. He is God with us! And in the Gospel of John, we learn that Jesus is light. The thing about light: it doesn't eliminate darkness instantly. It shines within it. 

Through his compassion we see that this is what God is like.

Through his generosity we see that this is what God is like.

In his truth-telling, in his forgiveness, in his self-giving love, we see that this is what God is like.

So when I think of God, I don't picture an old white dude who loves to play games. Instead, I hear music. A melody that is woven into reality itself. A rhythm beneath and around existence. A song that has been heard across centuries, cultures, and continents. An invitation for us to join together in harmony. 

Some deny the music. Some don't notice. But it continues. And this song sounds like:

• Love that sacrifices like a deeply intimate friend would.
• Justice that restores and mercy that forgives. 
• Truth that liberates and hope that we can become whole peoples. 
• Generosity in abundance without calculation or something demanded in return. 

Love requires choice. Choice requires risk. Risk allows both beauty and devastation. God makes this choice, to enter into our suffering.

When you see someone give themselves for another, something inside you says, "That's right." When you witness courage for the sake of justice, something resonates. It feels in tune.

That resonances is not accidental. In one of John's letters in the Bible we read the simplest theological claim imaginable: God is love. Not occasionally loving. Not selectively compassionate. But Love. Unrestrained, self-giving, faithful love.

When we live selfishly, we are out of tune When we withhold mercy or justice, we are out of tune. However, when we live generously and truthfully, we align with the music. To live in tune with love, truth, and compassion, in the way Jesus embodied them, is already participation in relationship with the living God, the great I AM.

You do not begin by mastering metaphysics. You begin by aligning your life with the melody.

SO WHAT ABOUT THE PARKING SPACE?

Was God present when the parking space opened? Yes. And was God present when it didn't? Yes.

Was God present with he one who was healed? Yes. And was God present with the one who was not? Yes.

God is not the occasional interrupter of natural processes. God is the sustaining presence within all of it: grieving, restoring, strengthening, and drawing creation toward renewal.

The goodness of God is not measured by convenience, it is revealed in love that endures suffering and transforms it form the inside.

Are you in tune?

You can know theology and still live out of key. You can know very little and yet resonate deeply with love, hope, justice, and mercy.

The song is already written on your heart. As you align your life with the love revealed in Jesus, you are not manufacturing a relationship with God.
You are awakening to the One who has always been present.

Not far removed in the sky.
Not hiding behind a monitor playing us like The Sims.

But sustaining every breath.

I don't believe for a moment that God is an occasional visitor to our lives. God is the sustaining reality within which your life unfolds.

God doesn't reside far off in the sky, but present with us in the dirt.

Sometimes the music crescendos in unmistakable ways. Sometimes it hums so quietly you wonder if it's still here.

But Christian hope rests on this claim: nothing exists outside the reach of Divine presence. Not your doubt. Not your anger. Not your grief. Not even your unanswered prayers.

You are not waiting for God to enter the room. You are already inside the song. 

We are all created with the capacity to receive the love of God, and to share that love with others. In fact, Jesus makes this plainly clear to his disciples. All of the Bible boils down to the two greatest commandments:


The thing about this: Jesus doesn't just preach this, he lives this out in its fullest. This makes it rather important for those of us who want to become MORE like Jesus.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH COOKIES AND COOKIE JARS?

The early church father (and one of my personal favorites) Gregory of Nyssa imagined humanity as vessels: souls fashioned intentionally (because we are no accidents) as containers meant to receive good. These vessels are jars created purposefully with the freedom to expand as they are filled. Therefore, the more good that is poured in, the greater our capacity becomes to hold and to give goodness.

We are not static containers. we grow. We are also not created to remain empty.

My Methodist roots (because I am a Methodist Pastor and Deacon) has this beautiful concept called sanctifying grace. God's grace shapes us. By God's grace we mature and grow in our ability to love and be loved. We are becoming all that God intended for us to be.

But there is a caution embedded in the image of a jar.

If we repeatedly fill our jar with resentment, unhealed wounds, chronic stress, or destructive patterns, cracks form. Capacity diminishes. Space that could hold goodness becomes occupied by pain. Just imagine if our cookie jar was filled with rocks instead.

And over time, what leaks out of us is not love, but exhaustion, defensiveness, or withdrawal.

If, however, we work hard to remain as an empty jar, we will never be fully whole/complete. We were created for community. We were created for relationships. 

So we can ask ourselves frequently:

• How full is my jar?
• What am I allowing to fill it?
• How am I unintentionally keeping it empty?
• Do I know when to open myself to receive?
• Do I recognize when I need space to heal?

At the deepest level, your jar is filled by God. Other people can contribute to your jar, but they cannot sustain it. When we make another person responsible for our core sense of worth, we place an unfair/unholy burden on them they were never meant to carry. That responsibility belongs to you and your relationship with the Divine. 

Every relationship is build on love, and love requires vulnerability, trust, and patience. Now imagine that every interaction we have places a cookie in someone else's jar, or removes a cookie from theirs.

When you:

• Keep a promise
• Listen without interrupting
• Speaking truth with kindness
• Show up consistently
• Apologize sincerely

You are placing cookies (and yummy ones) into their jar. Over time, those cookies build trust. They increase relational capacity. They make deeper intimacy possible.

But when you:

• Break trust
• Dismiss feelings
• Weaponize vulnerability
• Avoid having hard conversations
• Carry unspoken expectations

You are removing cookies. And when expectations are unclear or never voiced, cookies quietly disappear without anyone understanding why.

Relationships don't fracture in a moment. They erode over time when jars are repeatedly emptied without being replenished.

Now, you can also produce not-so-good cookies when you are only half-hearted invested in a relationship. When you offer insincere apologies. When you have no clear boundaries in place. When you treat a relationship as a transaction.

These not-so-good cookies offer the illusion of filling another jar, but they do not carry the same weight. Over time the relationship deteriorates similarly as if you were taking cookies. Often-times these become toxic relationships.

WHOLENESS MEANS AWARENESS

Emotional and spiritual wholeness means recognizing that your interactions (intentionally or not) either expand someone's capacity or depletes it. It also means recognizing your own limits.

If your jar is nearly empty, you cannot sustainably give cookies to others. You will begin to grow resentment rather than generosity. From obligation rather than love. Margins matter.

Margins are what ensures you have enough cookies to offer them freely. And here's the hard truth...

Only you are responsible for providing margins to keep your jar full. No one else is responsible for filling your jar. Others may add or remove cookies through their behaviors, but the filling of your soul (your identity, worth, belatedness) is not their job. That responsibility exists between you and God.

When we demand that another person makes us whole, we are, in effect, taking cookies from their jar to patch our own emptiness. That is unsustainable. It places weight that they were never designed to carry. Healthy love is shared from fullness, not extracted from need.

There will be seasons when protecting your jar is necessary. When you put a lid on your jar, this doesn't mean you stop loving. It means you are intentionally creating space for repair.

This might involve:

• Clarifying expectations or asking them to be clarified.
• Naming harmful patterns that exist in a relationship (or within your own self).
• Setting firmer boundaries when needed.
• Creating temporary distance in order to gain clarity, to discern, or to heal the relationship.

Remember this: boundaries are not rejection. They are healthy stewardship. They preserve your capacity to love well over time.

Healthy relationships are rarely going to be perfectly balanced in every moment. There'll be seasons where you will lean heavily on others. There'll be seasons where you become the steady support.

Resilience grows when both people are aware of the season they are in, and when both are committed to replenishing what has been given. Highly intimate relationships are formed over years of exchanged cookies.

As you receive the love of God, your capacity increases. As you care for your margins, you preserve what has been given. As you love intentionally, you help others grow their capacity as well.

Over time, the kind of cookies you give, and the care you take with your own jar, will determine the depth and durability of your relationships.

We want to find wholeness. We want to live full lives. So we work on ourselves to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. Yet most of us were never taught how to be whole.

We were taught how to perform, achieve, behave, believe in the right things. But rarely were we taught how to integrate our emotions, our bodies, our histories, our faith into a coherent, grounded self. We look at each aspect of ourselves as separate parts, yet they are all intimately tied together.

In the same breath, we've grown accustomed to presenting a curated versions of ourselves online. We've been encouraged to suppress our doubts, preserving our sense of belonging. We get comfortable numbing stress instead of processing it.

We learn how to present what is acceptable, and conceal what feels inconvenient. And over time, our fragmented lives become normal, becoming a single, defining narrative we mistake for integration.

This always comes with a cost.

To be spiritually whole, or to fully spiritually alive, means we care to live deeply and fully. We love enthusiastically and completely. And our source of validation comes from within; we are both comfortable with who we are and love who we are becoming.

Without integration, our sense of self becomes externally determined (and not by God either). We shape-shift to maintain belonging, usually at the expense of finding true belonging. This, of course, makes criticism devastating and approval addictive. We create superficial harmony at the expense of authentic connection. And those emotions we've worked so hard to suppress... they don't go away. They leak.

Unprocessed anger can become sarcasm. Unacknowledged sadness becomes numbness. Unexamined insecurity becomes control. Unexplored fears become chains.

Emotions don't disappear, they come out sideways. Like ignoring a dashboard light in a car, eventually an integral part of the car breaks and causes a much more expensive problem in the future.

THE MYTH OF HYPER SPIRITUALITY

One of the most subtle dangers of fragmentation is our use of spirituality to avoid emotional reality. When encountering something difficult, many (including myself) were taught:

• Just pray more.
• You aren't praying (or believing) hard enough. 
• Don't feel that, it's a bad emotion. 
• Feelings aren't important, faith in Jesus is. 
• God is enough. You don't need to process, you need to trust.
• Emotions are part of our "fallen" nature. 
• Grow up. 
• You aren't trusting God enough if you feel....

This language often masks avoidance and repression. It can look spiritual. It, however, is not transformational or rooted in the Gospel (although people will claim it is).

It weaponizes Spiritual language, and it becomes a shield against vulnerability. We use God as a way to avoid having to wrestle with our doubts or parts of ourselves we don't like. We use the bible to compartmentalize our faith from other aspects of our journey. We ignore the warning signs that exist before compassion fatigue and burnout. I could go on and on with examples.

You don't have to look very far in history to see spiritually active but emotionally immature leaders. In fact a lot of the struggles Christianity is wrestling with today is rooted in this very problem.

OUR EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH MATTERS SPIRITUALLY

Wholeness demands that we turn toward the parts of ourselves that we would rather avoid. Wholeness is knowing what to do in both the light and in the dark.

So when we talk about emotional and spiritual wholeness, it's not about perfection (flawlessness). It's about integration that leads us towards perfection (completeness). It's the slow work of becoming the same person on the inside and outside.

Emotional and spiritual health are not competing priorities. They are inseparable dimensions of us as the image of the Divine.

Our emotions aren't rooted in something bad. In fact, there is no such thing as a "bad" emotion (I am not including shame here because that is a whole different conversation). .

Emotions are windows, little flags that wave to us when something happens.

Anger, for example, signals violated boundaries or a value we hold.
Sadness signals loss.
Anxiety signals perceived threat.
Jealously signals an unhealthy relationship that needs some attention.

To ignore an emotion is to ignore important insights into our being. And they often provide an opportunity for us to do something, to choose something different to connect or love more fully God, ourselves, or others.

Emotional and spiritual wholeness develops through intentional practices. 

Without awareness, we live unconsciously and allow unchecked space for sin to fester.

Without acknowledgement, we live dishonestly and allow space for co-dependency to form.

Without acceptance, we live and operate in shame and allow space for abuse/injustice to happen.

Without surrender, we live in chronic tension and allow space for sin to completely consume us.

Together, these movements narrow the gap between our inner and outer life. We can enter into healthy conflict without losing ourselves. We can experience and process emotions without being ruled by it. We can be deeply connected to God without pretending we are.

Integration and our faith is not about becoming emotionless, impassioned robots who feel obligated to believe and stick to God out of fear or because it's something we've always done.

It is about becoming internally aligned with God and the Spirit, to become the fullness of Christ.

Notifications are constantly interrupting our thoughts.

Productivity defines how much we understand and define our self-worth (and the worth of others).

Even how many of us approach and understand spirituality is measured by emotional intensity and production. We want to feel:There's nothing wrong with feeling these things, but we believe we ought to always feel these things. And when we don't we assume something is wrong with our faith. We measure our faith often to the expectations we grew up with or from others.

Beneath all the noise we are constantly surrounded by is a quieter hunger: a desire and need to be present, grounded, and whole. Embedded in the busyness of our spiritual striving is the gentle nudging of the Spirit to breathe, compassionate openness, and creative being.

Contemplative living (and I would argue spirituality as a whole) is not an escape from responsibility or hiding from reality. It is the on-going practice of becoming more deeply attentive to God, who doesn't reside far removed in the sky (our beloved sky-daddy) but here with us, in the every day, in the dirt and grime of our everydayness.

Contemplative living is learning to live and respond from a centered space rather than a scattered (and constantly reacting). We become more aware of the Divine, more present with others, and more attuned to what's happening internally. We grow our capacity to surrender, releasing control of the things we never really have control over. And we trust, believing that God is already at work and that all things are not wasted in this life.

THE CRISIS OF DISTRACTION AND PRODUCTION

Anxious culture fragments us. // Productive fixation traps us.

These two things are constantly pulling us outward, and the results are our interior lives atrophies. We operate from a place of frantic reaction. And over time, this produces:

• Spiritual dryness or emptiness,
• Decision fatigue or disengagement from the things that are actually important for us,
• Loss sense of self and an unhealthy ego. 
• Emotional reactivity or numbness as we disengage emotionally or even mentally. 

The beauty of a contemplative faith: it begins by reclaiming attention for presence, not for productivity, not for self-optimization or "perfection", and not for validation from others.

It's easy to dismiss Contemplation as a form of emotional detachment, anti-intellectualism, or something specifically for monks or mystics. But here is the truth:  I believe we are all created for contemplation (even if you don't profess Christianity, there is still that drive to connect with something much deeper than the self).

Contemplation is simply consenting to God's (or the Divine) presence in the present moment. And, it's a stream within our tradition that's constantly woven throughout our stories and shared practices.

Being a young adult is not simply a transitional phase. It is a season of identity formation. It is marked by significant change and transitions, expected to curate a life vocationally, relationally, spiritually. We can find this empowering, but it can also serve to be destabilizing.

Without interior grounding, identity becomes reactive, constantly comparing ourselves through social media, striving to find peer approval, wrestling with cultural narratives about success as it constantly shifts.

When identity is externally sourced, resilience weakens. Every success inflates us. Every setback destabilizes us. Every opinion threatens us. And in that instability, pace accelerates.

We push harder.
Say yes more often.
Sleep less.
Prove more.

Without having spiritual anchors, we shift in unhealthy ways that makes it harder to be resilient. We default to rhythms that promise security but produce exhaustion instead.

Through contemplative living we learn how to detached from thoughts, expectations, and emotional triggers that often leave us in a flight/fight/fawn posture during stressful situations. When these postures become habitual, they shape our identity. We begin to believe we are the anxious one, the achiever, the avoider, the fixer. And we live from that place.

Contemplative living interrupts this cycle.

We create space, a pause, that makes room for God's grace and presence to flow within us. We discover that we are not beholden to our anxious thoughts. We are not defined by our emotional surges. We are not obligated to react immediately. That space is where grace becomes experiential rather than conceptual.

When we slow down enough to notice, we become aware of God’s presence, not as an abstract doctrine, but as sustaining reality.

Jesus consistently modeled interior anchoring.
He withdrew to pray.
He resisted urgency.
He refused to be controlled by public demand.
He did not collapse under criticism.

Contemplative living invites us to re-attune ourselves — again and again — to that same presence within and around us. This is not about achieving spiritual perfection. It is about returning.
When comparison rises, we return.
When anxiety spikes, we return.
When pressure intensifies, we return.

Over time, that returning forms us. And we live through a more God-centered part of us, leading us to see more creative approaches to the constant pull towards binary thinking and the dangers of single-stories. Contemplative grounding widens perspective.
We begin to see nuance. Possibility. Third ways.

From that center, resilience grows — not as hardness, but as rootedness.
And rootedness allows you to navigate change without being consumed by it.

Take this beginning practice as a way to explore Contemplative living.

Note: if you haven't done something like this before, it will be difficult to do at first, but if you stay with it, it does become easier to practice. If you find this practice easy, consider increasing the time.

Sit quietly for five minutes. This means no music or background noise (unless you are in a public place).

Draw your attention to your breath. Fill each breath in and out as it comes (you don't have to try and change the rhythm, just let it be).

As you breathe in, silently say or think "Here."

As you breathe out, silently say or think "I am."

When your mind wanders, gently return to your breath and these three words.

You aren't trying to feel anything. You are practicing consent.