How can Soul Care, also known as Spiritual Direction, benefit you?

• As a Christian spiritual director I am a trained listener who walks with you as you share your spiritual journey.

• My job is to help you notice God’s presence and activity in your life and to help you grow in prayer.

• I am your travel companion on the journey of your soul, someone with an outside perspective who will stay awake with you when you are feeling spiritually weary.

• I continue to remind you of the basics of God’s love and care through all of life’s circumstances.

• I lift you up before God in prayer with struggles that aren’t quickly or easily solved.

• I encourage and celebrate God’s transforming work in and around you.

• Most of all, I am someone who values and loves you in Christ and am committed to your growth.

What a spiritual director does:

• Provides a sacred space

• Purpose: To help you find God’s activity within life circumstances of all kinds.

• Prays

• Listens

• Asks questions

• End Goal: To encourage you in growing to be more like Christ.

What is a spiritual director is not:

• A licensed counselor or psychologist

• Crisis manager

• Problem solver

“The whole purpose of [soul care] is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.”

—Thomas Merton

“[Soul Care] is not psychotherapy nor is it an inexpensive substitute, although the disciplines are compatible and frequently share raw material. [Soul Care] is not pastoral counseling, nor is it to be confused with the mutuality of deep friendships, for it is unashamedly hierarchical. Not because the spiritual director is somehow ‘better’ or ‘holier’ than the directee, but because, in this covenanted relationship the director has agreed to put himself aside so that his total attention can be focused on the person sitting in the other chair. What a gift to bring to another, the gift of disinterested, loving attention!” (Guenther, Holy Listening, p. 3)

We can’t always believe everything we think. We can’t always believe everything we feel. Thoughts and feelings are important but when they go unexamined, we suffer and become like ships tossed about at sea, victim to thoughts and feelings that pass like storm clouds hovering above us. Instead, we learn to observe them like clouds passing overheard until they start to break up, letting the sun shine through.

Using The Work of Byron Katie, we question our thoughts and the stories we’ve created in order to break free from the prison of limiting beliefs.

• We start by noticing what upsets, angers or saddens us by recalling a specific situation. Painful emotions are the alarms that wake us up to tell us, “It’s time to do The Work.”

• Then we capture these stressful thoughts on a worksheet using short, simple sentences. Once the mind is stopped on paper, thoughts remain stable and inquiry can easily be applied.

• Now we can isolate one thought and allow authentic answers to arise. A question is an invitation to the mind, an opportunity to be shown what is true, beyond what we think we know.

• And finally, we turn the thought around and find opposites of the thought. Are they as true as or truer than the original thought? The Turnarounds help us to challenge our preconceived notions that often leave us trapped with thoughts or feelings not based in truth.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

― Author Unknown

Much of today’s secular psychology and even religious counseling focuses on dysfunction and pathology and pits the supposed ‘expert’ doctor against the so-called ‘disabled’, disempowered patient.

But there’s a better, more effective way!

Using a combination of Strategic People Group’s PathMaker assessments and Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapeutic Principles we will focus not on dysfunction, but instead on functional design - what you were created to do and why! The client is co-equal with the coach as we walk together to discover what can only be self-discovered - your unique, God-given design and purpose for being.

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".”

― Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning