Spiritual Guidance Saved My Life

I can’t even tell you exactly what year it was that I began to feel the fatigue. Was it 2012?

On one day we had a 5-year-old. It had taken us 10 years to see that miracle come to be. I had endured 3 miscarriages – one at 6 weeks, one ectopic, and one at 16 weeks. But eventually, that “little” (she was 8 lbs. 15 oz) miracle was born. Eight weeks later, I went back to work with said miracle in tow. At times, I answered phones, typed in spreadsheets, and nursed all at the same time. Also in that season of life, we were helping to start a church a few miles south of where I worked, which meant that work was on my mind (and in my lap) around the clock.

Fast forward 5 years, that miracle baby had just gone to kindergarten. For 6 lovely weeks I was free to do nothing but my work from 8:30am to 3:00pm.

…But we were in the process of adopting. One day, we went from having just one 5-year-old to having a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 13-month-old. And along with these new babies came social workers, therapists of every kind, and lawyers. Our house became a revolving door of professionals, and I didn’t miss a beat – or at least not many. We were now running a church that was ramping up to also include a short film production arm and a small community center.

What's more, the kids’ immune systems weren’t what they would be in the future. And many needs still had yet to be identified. I found myself regularly running to doctor appointments all over the city. New medications, ankle-foot orthotics, epi-pens, glasses, eye patches…so many new things.

Saturday mornings at our house looked like pancakes followed by brainstorming sessions between myself and my husband. What was needed? What was next?

More, more, more, more.

In those days, self-care looked like locking myself in a room for 3 hours for time in Divine Presence. And I used that time...to receive inspiration for the future, for the church, and for the “situation” that was everyday life.

In the midst of all of that, a friend of mine had introduced me to another woman, someone who might be viewed not just as a friend, but a mentor of sorts. The match was a good one. She had been working as a pastor for a couple of years already. Her and her husband had also adopted, and our children were close in age. But what was more, she was forging a path as a Life Coach and Spiritual Director. We became quick friends, meeting by phone as a means of supporting one another. To this day, the relationship continues to be a blend of friendship, mentoring, and professional support. It almost seems impossible that one relationship could be that much. Sometimes we’ve leaned more heavily on one of those ways of being than another. But all of them have been there all the same.

Somewhere around 2014, she began to offer me training by immersion. First it was getting to experience life coaching and spiritual direction from her. Then I traveled to her for a weekend to participate in a more formal training. It didn’t take long before things began to change for me.

It started with how I preached. I had been trained in a style that offered “tips” at the end of sermons – ways of applying what we were talking about in everyday life. And to be honest with you, there had been a time when I loved that approach. But over the course of numerous years, the practice had begun to get stale on me. Every single tip was almost guaranteed to somehow creatively say something to the effect of: Be loving, try connecting in prayer, practice gratitude, and the like.

So instead of just simply suggesting these things, I started to weave in a “contemplative practice” to the end of sermons – a practice that I’ve continued to offer to this day when I guest preach somewhere.

I also started to add more embodiment into the services. Now quite honestly, I don’t even think I knew what embodiment was yet. In fact, several years later, I would report that I wasn’t very good at embodiment. But in fact, it was innate in me. And so we painted rocks, we moved about the room, posting gratitudes on walls, doing tree poses with a buddy as a sign of needing one another, and so much more.

I also started offering a different sort of evening opportunity for gathering. Whereas I had been leading weeknight groups about how to lean into your calling, I started offering groups that introduced contemplative practices – chances to slow down and connect with Divine Presence.

And I’ll tell you right now, my turn towards the contemplative was an unpopular choice in the church. The people loved the doing. Theres’s just something about being a “Doer.” Doing seems to make people feel proud. But to walk into a space and choose to simply be – oh that was uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts, Kristina!”

But in spite of the protests, I couldn’t let it go. I continued to long for more spaciousness than I was yet achieving in my life, more chances to thrive and not just coast on fumes.

Fast forward another 7 years or so, we were visiting “home,” as we did every summer. Whereas I had left the Midwest in a huff, eager to get away from all those farms and fields in favor of the energy of the city lights, I now began to see the landscape differently. The vast greenness of the fields called to me, the puffy clouds that formed in the sky, the beautiful flowers along the road that I used to think of as weeds…they began to beckon me back. And so we moved. In the summer of 2020, right in the middle of the Covid pandemic, we moved.

About a year later, I entered training to become certified as a Spiritual Director at the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, and I began seeing a Spiritual Director regularly.

That means I was 42 when I started seeing my Spiritual Director. And here’s what I can tell you about that: By 42, I was all but fully spent. I had tried to “win” by American standards so that I’d be able to boast by the numbers. But I had never really succeeded at that. In fact, when I had gone into pastoring, our sending pastor had predicted we would fail because we cared too much for the one.

Those words had a profound effect on me. For years, I chose to see my propensity for caring for the one as a weakness. But as I removed myself from the environment that was helping me to feel that way, my eyes were suddenly opened to a new reality: This wasn’t my weakness; it was my strength. It wasn’t why I would fail, even if it was a plausible reason for why I couldn’t pastor a megachurch. To my surprise, I began to realize that something I had said for years was even more profoundly true than I had yet discovered: It really is all about connection. My understanding about this was broadening. Connection involved being attentive to the here and now.

And in the midst of all of this, my Spiritual Director had everything to do with why this expansion was happening. She began encouraging me regularly – not puffing me up – but just seeing me and naming what she saw. She asked me questions that opened my eyes to realities I hadn’t thought to say out loud before. For instance, one day she asked me:

“Where do you experience God?”

This is a simple question, really, not any too fancy. But I can remember the moment so clearly even now. I looked out the window at a tree in our front yard that has since fallen down and been replaced by a baby apple tree. The breezes moved softly through the branches of this tree – this miraculous tree that I would soon discover budded dazzling pink flowers in the spring and fed the neighborhood birds with berries all winter. And as I watched the tree gently responding to the breeze, I found myself saying, “I know this is going to sound strange, but I experience God everywhere – in everything.”

As much as I think that is the right answer for me now, I very much thought it was the wrong answer then. I can’t even remember what I thought I “should” be saying. Did I think I should say that I experience God in prayer? In Scripture reading? In worship services? I don’t know. But the truth was, I just believed, as the Muslim faith says, that God is as close as my jugular vein. And that being the case, everything I experienced was animated with God. The breeze, the tree, the birds, the grass, the kids, the people I served, all of it. From that moment on, I began my journey to live into the experience of the Divine within the context of the Ordinary. Nothing was truly ordinary.

Everything was Extraordinary.

At the same time, my pastor-spiritual-director friend was asking me questions as well: What do you really want to talk about? For me, that answer in that moment involved creating something of a Hero’s Journey for Joy. This, too, became a major path of exploration that changed my life.

But, in the end, Spiritual Direction started me down the path of learning to pause often. It helped me stop believing my inner critic so much so that I could remember that the very things I do are the actual gifts I have to offer. It helped me enjoy the simple pleasures, to relish them, savor them, mmmm and ahhhh about them, live into them. And it helped me to process and transform my grief.

Now I’ll be real with you. If I look at my life today, it’s certainly not perfect. Suffering, as the Buddhists say, is inevitable, and I feel that profoundly. Suffering happens, and it happens almost daily. But now, when I breathe, instead of the breath invoking a panic attack, it invokes life…Life.

For years, I didn’t understand how much it would take to fill my own tank. I was always “going to the pump” with $10 instead of letting the gas flow until I was full. For years, I would easily forget the totality of who I am because it’s easy for me to hyperfocus – to fixate on one aspect of my many identities and labels. My Spiritual Direction sessions, to this day, help me incorporate more of myself and more of how I am connected in the wider world.

Spiritual Direction – Guidance – Accompaniment – Friendship is all of this and even more. And so I turn the invitation over to you. If you would like to explore more about this practice that saved me from drowning in my own life, check out the Spiritual Guidance page here at Tending Me. Your story is yours and uniquely so. The questions you face and the needs you have are different from mine. But I feel pretty confident when I say that Spiritual Guidance will change your life.

The Spiritual Guidance space, as I define it, is meant to be a safe and brave space to reflect on the whole of life, share your story, listen to Inner Wisdom, and experience connection and support. A space where the whole of you can be present and where you can come alive to Presence as you are heard and received with compassion.

Spiritual Guidance saved my life. I know that sounds dramatic. (To be fair, I was also an opera singer. Of course I love drama.) But truly, it did. I do this work because I love it, and I believe in it. So, whatever your reason for clicking that link above, I hope you do. And if I’m not the right Spiritual Guide for you, I’m happy to help you find someone that is.

Apple Buds from the Apple Tree in the backyard