First let me tell you what it’s NOT.

It is not about trying harder, and it’s not about praying more, serving more, doing more. It is not which church you attend or whether you tithe or give to missions. It has nothing to do with “getting your act together,” or defining yourself by what you don’t do. I’m tired of Christians defining themselves by what they don’t do — I don’t smoke, drink, or watch certain types of movies —and I secretly think God is too.

Living from the Inside Out: What Is It?

Living from the inside out is about relationship. It is about falling in passionate, head-over-heels love with Jesus Christ. It’s about spiritual and personal transformation, recognizing you are powerless to change yourself, apart from God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s also about positioning yourself to participate in the transformation process.

It is about experiencing transformation in your whole being, including inner healing and freedom from captivity. It is about sanctification of the whole person—body, soul, and spirit. It’s about discovering the real you—your unique temperament, strengths, and gifts.

It’s about living the life you were meant to live.

Living from the Inside Out: What It Means

So what does this mean for you as the reader? What can you expect to find in the days, weeks, and months ahead?

Here, you’ll find inspiration and motivation for establishing intimacy with God and others. You will find posts and tutorials on spiritual practices, including transforming friendships and healing communities.

You’ll find information and resources to help you discover your God-design and purpose, and how to walk it out. And you’ll find tools and resources for healing, tools designed to set you free to live the life you were meant to live.

I can’t wait to get started! How about you?

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him . . . fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out . . . God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you” (Romans 12:1-2 The Message).

I sunk into the red, overstuffed sofa, cupping a mug of freshly brewed coffee in my hands. Coffee is one of life’s greatest joys, I thought as I opened my journal. Of course, I thought the same thing every morning when I poured a cup of coffee. For more years than I cared to remember, I had found the simple morning ritual of coffee, Bible reading and journaling both comforting and powerful.

In bold letters, I wrote, “My Personal Rule of Life” across the top of the page. While I had decided on the basics years ago–to love God, to love others, and to glorify God through every aspect of my life, I found myself trying to nail down the “every aspect of my life” part, specifically, what it looked like in ordinary, day-to-day existence. I penned the short, to-the-point list below it:

1. Define a healthy, sustainable rhythm of life that takes into account my unique design, my purpose and passions, and the things that give me joy for the glory of God.
2. Identify and eliminate the things in my life that drain me. Surround myself with people and activities that nourish me and give me life.
3. Nurture close, soul-healing relationships with friends who celebrate my authentic self.
4. Retreat twice a year to a country setting for reflection, rest, and receiving from God though prayer and study.

Well that took all of 15 minutes. Now what? I thought.

Looking out the window, my eyes rested on the mountains behind the cottage I was renting, and I inhaled deeply as if trying to absorb the strength and stability I saw. I would later realize that although the rural setting of The Inn at Meander Plantation in Orange, Virginia invited rest and reflection, it would take far more than a few journal entries and mountain views to create a meaningful rule of life that worked for me.

Creating a Rule of Life Takes Time

During my time away that weekend, I failed to appreciate just how complex life could be and didn’t understand that it would take time, and many false starts, to create a rule of life that flowed from my God-given design and worked with my life stage and limitations. But the discovery process is part of the fun.

Now, five years later, I have a rule of life that suits me and takes into consideration my unique temperament, strengths, gifts, and life’s purpose. Through many fits and starts, I learned what a contemporary rule of life looks like—at least what it looks like for me.

Introduced by St. Benedict of Nursia for monks living communally, the concept of a rule of life first appeared in A.D. 540. Its purpose was to provide a balance between being and doing, a life of contemplation (prayer) and community (a life of love).  In recent years, its popularity has grown as believers are choosing to live the Christian faith counter culturally, ceasing from the continual striving of a life of nonstop noise, production, and technology.

It includes both the rhythms and relationships of life, and evolves over time, as seasons change. If lived well, it offers a wealth of freedom and peace to experience life to the full. But with a scope this broad, it’s bound to take time. I’ve learned not to rush the process and short-circuit the work of God in my life.

Finding My Personal Rule of Life

My Primary Relationships

Since my initial attempt at creating a rule of life during that weekend in Orange, Virginia, then it has taken many forms and gone through many reiterations. After about the fifth revision, I concluded that it is a living document, subject to change based on the needs and preferences of a particular season.

Like the lavender plants in my spring garden, my relationships with my husband and my son and his wife require constant tending. Neglect becomes apparent almost immediately. If I don’t want relationships to wither like the plants I’ve killed over the years, I need to tend to them regularly and with love, whether it’s convenient or not. Intimate relationships do not happen by accident. So I am choosing to be deliberate, arranging my life for life-giving relationships.

See part 2 for the completion of this post.

*This is a first draft. Grace please. If you’ve not yet read part one, you can read it here.

“Your personal rule of life is a holistic description of the Spirit-empowered rhythms and relationships that create, redeem, sustain, and transform the life God invites you to humbly fulfill for Christ’s glory” ~Stephen A. Macchia, Crafting a Rule of Life

My Spiritual Gifts, Natural Talents, and Temperament

Perhaps the greatest surprise for me came through an awareness that in addition to the natural talents and spiritual gifts I had been aware of for years (writing, creativity, intuitiveness, discernment, and knowledge) I also possessed a unique temperament that was foundational in discerning my life’s mission and purpose. Unfortunately, while I had glimpses into who I actually was over the years, I was unable to reach a full awareness on my own, needing the help of a coach, who offered me an MBTI personality assessment.

Based on my assessment, I am an INFP. Both on paper and experientially, I am highly intuitive, creative, and spiritual, and tend to go through life shaping meaning out of everything. I also have a natural tendency to guard my feelings, which protects me from attack and ridicule by others unaware of my sensitivity. I only allow a few to enter my inner domain, and most of the time, it is not a conscious decision. It’s always been that way and probably always will.

While my assessment really didn’t tell me anything new, it confirmed what I already knew, making it “official” in one sense, validating my right to celebrate and embrace the woman God created me to be—even if others sometimes find it perplexing. I felt tremendous liberty.

While the freedom is glorious for me, I sometimes am somewhat of an enigma to people around me. Described as “aloof” and “guarded” since first grade, I’ve learned that others sometimes neither understand nor like this aspect of who I am. I try to be sensitive to that, but I fail far more often than I succeed. It is a fine line between walking in liberty without others misinterpreting my preference for privacy as rejection, and I repeatedly struggle to honor the way God made me and respond in love to those around me.

My Holistic and Long-Term Vision and Passion

My vision of life and spirituality is holistic. All of life is God’s domain, and while I enjoy having a church home, I equally enjoy being out in nature, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation. I choose to attend to the opportunities and people that cross my paths, finding God in the simple, ordinary tasks of daily living, finding it delightful and satisfying. Like my temperament, strengths, and talents, my love have nature goes back to my childhood.

Since childhood, my passion has always been words. Lousia May Alcott and Madeline L’Engle taught me the power of story and words. Words breathe life into me like few other things do. They seem almost sacred to me  — whether they were describing Jesus in the Bible or the beauty of a garden. I was nine years old, when I first sensed the call to write.

Over the years, my love of words has grown and blossomed, changing shape as the seasons shifted, but it has remained a constant—whether through reading or writing. What a joy it has been to write for publication and to share the thoughts and ideas that dance through my mind with others, wanting them to experience what has always been true for me— words have the power to impart life, hope, healing, comfort, understanding, and so much more.

My Life’s Purpose

Once I answered the questions about identity and giftedness, a sense of purpose naturally followed. As an INFP, I am on a continuous mission to find the truth and meaning underlying things. Every encounter, every bit of knowledge gained gets sifted through my value system and my purpose to help people live and lead from the inside out so they can experience God’s kingdom and extend it through their lives.

My writing, coaching, speaking, and teaching are all just containers for the message written on my heart. And the message is this — your life matters no matter who you are. You will find your deepest joy and greatest satisfaction only in Jesus Christ. Whether you are a surgeon at prestigious hospital, a writer who shares her story and life’s lessons in books or magazines, or an office worker whose daily encounter with others, your life is pregnant with purpose. Give birth to the dreams and visions God has planted in your heart – for your sake and for the sake of others.

Pulling it All Together

My Rule of Life is simple and flexible, but generally contains the following:

Daily: Spend time with God and others cultivating depth and intimacy in relationships, while allowing sufficient study for reflection, writing, and reading—activities that center me and give me something to contribute to relationships. Engage in regular spiritual practices, such as slowing, journaling, silence, and solitude, and of course prayer. Get outside and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. Continue to simplify my life, removing “things” that take time but fail to add value. I’ve found that I can live on far less that I realized, so I continue to prune my possessions and calendar.

Weekly: Commit to a local church; worship and serve, or contribute versus consume, weekly or more as my health allows. Teach classes, pray with people, make people feel loved and welcome.

Quarterly: Complete a quarterly inventory and assessment of my life, determining what is working and what isn’t. This includes assessing every area of my life—physical, spiritual, emotional, relational, educational, and personal growth and development. Prune, prune, and prune some more. Tend to necessary endings.

Annually: Retreat annually to the country for a silent retreat. Nourish body, soul, and spirit, and rest in God’s love. Read for formation, bask in silence and solitude, indulge in extended times of listening prayer, prayer of examen, and lectio divina. Receive from God.

Mary Oliver’s compelling poem, The Summer Day, never fails to move me and seems especially fitting for the topic of this essay. In it, she asks this provocative question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Do you know?

Now What?

If you’d like help understanding your unique design, consider coaching with me or one of my colleagues. It’s amazing the difference coaching can make.

You might also consider purchasing Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to a Well-Ordered Way by Stephen A. Macchia.

In more ways that I cared to admit, I had embraced an expression of spirituality and relationships that made me less instead of more than who God created me to be.

When had “doing” become more important than “being?” I wondered to myself. Why had I suppressed my creativity for so many years, denying myself the gift of meaningful work and creative community? When did I lose sight of who I was as an individual and as part of a community?  Why had I settled for less than God had for me?

Insight flooded my soul, and I realized that the life I had been living was not my own. Unhealthy coping mechanisms, survival tools I had developed to survive an abuse-filled childhood, had become my default mode of living. Values, expectations, and belief systems placed on me by others bound me to a life that no longer fit.

I needed to say no to people and work that diminished me. I had to care for my physical health, which had been ravaged for years by the pain and fatigue of rheumatoid arthritis. And I had to discern my physical, emotional, and spiritual limits and learn to live within them.

Body, soul, and spirit need to align toward a singleness of eye; I had to align inner and outer worlds And I required structure and intentionality to move toward the life I desired to live.

A Rule of Life

Christian tradition has a name for a structure that fits the contours of our souls—A Rule of Life. Did I need to create a Rule of Life?

A personal rule of life would invite me to both frame and form my world, to understand my primary roles and relationships. It would invite me to explore my God-given gifts, talents, and temperament, as well as my purpose and my passion.

Author Stephen A. Macchia describes a personal rule of life this way: “Your personal rule of life is a holistic description of the Spirit-empowered rhythms and relationships that create, redeem, sustain, and transform the life God invites you to humbly fulfill for God’s glory.”

As I looked around the cottage, I finally understood why it felt so much like home. Everything about it suited me—the bold yellow walls and red loveseat spoke to my love of color; the mountains and rolling hills surrounding the room reminded me of love for nature and childhood outings with my father scouting the woods of Pennsylvania for natural springs and rabbits hiding under piles of broken twigs and branches. Even the horses echoed childhood times of feeling loved and time spent with my Dad, riding through the woods on horseback in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania.

Why had I denied this part of myself for so long?

I recognized, too, why this time of retreat, this time of uninterrupted hours of silence and solitude nourished my soul. My outward expression of faith and spirituality over the past several years did not fit the inner pull of my heart.

A Holistic Spirituality

I let my mind wander back to a time I felt most spiritually at home. Although it had been more than 25 years ago, I recalled the symbol, the metaphor, and the pageantry of the liturgy, the place of the altar, and weekly Communion in the Anglican tradition. I thrived with a holistic Christian spirituality, one that integrated the body, soul, and spirit, a spirituality that made room for a theology of suffering, one that understood lament as worship. What I left behind was rife with spiritual and personal meaning for me. How could I integrate it into my current expression of faith, at this hour, in this place God had called me to serve?

The soul-nourishing relationships during that season came with spending hours, weeks, and even years together, sharing not only our faith but also our lives. The four streams of Christianity woven together in my life during that time—charismatic, contemplative, sacramental, and Evangelical—suited me well. Why had I tossed out the contemplative lifestyle when it fit me like my favorite pair of jeans? 

For me, it was a turning point, a day that would shape my life for years to come. Yes, there were external changes I needed to make to my life, but there was more—an inner shift had occurred. I knew it was real, more real than the mold I had been trying to squeeze into for so many years.

The deep sense of knowing who I am—who I have been all along—was  as comfortable as the overstuffed loveseat I spent hours on, tucked in this private cottage, poring over books and writing in my journal. My soul was crying to live as bold as the colors in the room, and as open to life as the roses on the table.

Beginnings of a Personal Rule of Life

I opened my journal and in bold letters, I wrote: My Personal Rules of Life, across the top of the page. Below it, I penned a short, to-the-point list:

• Start the day in silence and solitude, writing in my journal, lifting my requests to God in prayer, and poring over his Word. No technology.
• Define a healthy, sustainable rhythm of life that takes into account my unique design, my passions and purpose, and those things that give me joy.
• Identify and eliminate the things in my life that drain me. Surround myself with people and activities that fill me, that give me life.
• Less work at work and more time with friends. Nurture close, soul-healing relationships with friends that allow me to be my authentic self.
• Retreat twice a year to a country setting for reflection, study, and prayer.

Satisfied—at least for now—I closed my journal. It would take me years to create a Rule of Life that fit me well, to discover the essence of who God created me to be.

However, what was most important was that I had begun my journey home—home to a healthy spirituality, a holistic faith that encompassed body, soul, and spirit. Tucked away in a little cabin, I chose life–for today and for tomorrow.

The Weekend’s End

My idyllic weekend, wrapped in God’s love and the beauty of His creation had come to an end. As I closed the door behind me, I took one more look at the rolling hills and the height and depth of Blue Ridge Mountains, drinking in its essence, it’s promise of spaciousness and freedom.

My weekend away had provided a much-needed place of peace, becoming for me a hatchery of clarity, vision, and hope for the future. A promise of new life.

As I drove down the road, I glanced in my rear-view mirror. The cottage grew smaller in the distance, and the outline of the mountains faded out of view. All too soon, the landscape around me changed—traffic, blaring horns, fast-food restaurants dotting the main thoroughfare back to suburban life.

But although my outer world had shifted, my inner sense of freedom and spaciousness remained. I mulled over the words of Ruth Haley Barton, “It is time to stand for what you believe and never look back.”

It was time. And I was ready.

And just recently, I came upon this Bible verse, which so vividly captures when I was feeling at that moment.

I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this, wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way…Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively! (2 Cor. 6:11-13, The Message).

It has been almost five years since that formative weekend, and I continue to press ahead. With the wide-open spaces of God calling me forward, I walk into the future, embracing my soul-satisfying spacious life—one day at a time.

On a brisk winter morning, curled under a heavy damask bedspread, I opened my eyes and drank in the surrounding beauty. A smile tugged at the corner of my lips as my eyes fell to an overstuffed, antique love seat the color of red Christmas berries across the room, flanked by a heavy walnut side table.

On the table stood a vase of white roses, which I had ordered for myself before arriving. Granted, the decor was a bit more formal and traditional that I would have liked, but something about it gave the place a feeling of stability, which I needed. The morning sun shone through the open blinds, casting a swath of light from the bed to the loveseat, a place that had become for me just yesterday a sacred space, a place of rest, and an invitation to more.

The Inn at Meander Plantation

Although I had just arrived at the Inn at Meander Plantation, a bed and breakfast located in Orange, Virginia, late yesterday afternoon, the quaint, one-room cottage I occupied felt familiar in some strange way that I could not yet define. It felt like home.

I gazed out the window at the peaceful rolling hills and the horses grazing on the knoll, and it stirred within me a longing that ambushed me with such fierceness that I began to cry—at the beauty of my surroundings, at my state of spiritual and emotional brokenness, and at the presence God in this place.

Deadlines at the office, a toxic work environment, and strained family relationships had left me little more than an empty shell, hard on the outside but filled with grief, exhaustion, and despair on the inside. And the isolation of living with a handful of autoimmune diseases, while trying to juggle a full-time job and freelancing for magazines, left me undone. There was nothing left.

But with my tears came a sweet release, as if I had just handed over a weighted suitcase of broken dreams, crushed hopes, and a bone-deep weariness to a porter. I sank into the overstuffed cushions of the berry-red loveseat, deciding which of the three books before me I would dig into first—my Bible, my journal, or the book whose title named the state of my soul, Longing for More by Ruth Haley Barton.

Longing for More

Longing for More won out, and after just a few pages, I found myself lost in the beauty of Barton’s words, captured by an artful phrase expanding on the necessity for the inner and outer worlds to align.

She “named” what had been stirring within me for so long, a sense that my inner and outer worlds were not in harmony. Pen in hand, I scribbled furiously in the margins and underlined this quote from Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

I want first of all to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life to help me carry out these activities and obligations as well as I can. I want, in fact, to live “in grace” as much of the time as possible. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.

I needed a central core to my life, an overriding sense of purpose and vision for my life. While I had spent years doing “good” things, not all of them suited my temperament, my gift cluster, or my strengths. . .

Read Part 2 of this Essay 

I have spent the last few months pondering that question, so I was not surprised when it surfaced again during a conversation last week with my friend and spiritual director, Beth Booram. It unfolded quite simply. Beth and I had gone to prayer about several upcoming decisions. As I bowed in prayer, an unexpected image flew into my mind’s eye—a bright yellow-orange butterfly with black trim flying through a field, bursting with color. As we finished praying, I mentioned it to Beth.

The Wide Open Spaces of God

Beth then asked my permission to read a section from her book, The Wide Open Spaces of God: A Journey with God through the Landscapes of Life. She opens chapter two under the subtitle, “There’s no place like home,” with these words:

Last week I saw my first monarch butterflies, the cadence of late spring has awakened them from their cocoons, and they have begun to feed on the prolific milkweed throughout the fields of my geography.

Their recognizable black and orange wings were distinct against the milk greens of springtime. I noticed one and then another and then a dozen . . .They were feeding, strengthening themselves, and storing up for a journey they would make later in the summer. . . At some point, each of these monarchs will begin a fall migration . . . to a fifty-acre isolated region in the mountains of Mexico. Obeying some internal instinct, their wispy bodies will prepare for flight, following an encrypted map that leads them . . . home.

Scientists cannot explain this mystery. It’s like a small homing device.Some internal, God-given radar leads them home.

In her book, Beth points out that monarch butterflies aren’t the only species in the animal kingdom with their internal radar. Penguins, homing pigeons, and lost dogs all seem to have a natural instinct that will lead them home.

Do humans? I believe that we do. I believe there is something placed deep within us by God that propels us forward in His call on our lives, if we let it.

Finding a Place Called Home

So, where is home?The answer to that question is complicated for many people. But here are some thoughts to spark further discovery.

Home is where our soul thrives. “But each of us has unique needs and certain conditions that contribute to our well-being, conditions that comply with our disposition and constitution,” Beth explains.

Home is your “sweet spot,” that place where you live out your calling. Your calling flows from the essence of who you are–your unique temperament, strengths, life experiences, and spiritual gifts. It is what you were created for. I believe it is home in the truest sense of the word.

Home is when we are comfortable in our skin, living from a deep, abiding sense of self–the self given to us at birth by God. It’s when we feel in the “zone,” in the “flow,” or when we find ourselves in a “really good place.”

For me, finding home has been a process of incremental discovery and intentional deployment.

What about you?

Questions for Reflective Journaling

• What conditions comply with my disposition and constitution?
• What contributes to my well-being?
• Where does my soul thrive?
• Where is my God-given inner compass directing me?
• What is my next step?

Take a few minutes to answer these questions and then walk in the freedom they bring.

• Biblical Foundations of Coaching
• Transformational Coaching: Coaching the Whole Leader
• Coaching for Life and Leadership
• Coaching Next-Generation Ministry Leaders
• Why Great Ministry Leaders Need a Coach

Enjoy!

Life’s pain is rife with invitations. Paradoxes of life and death, joy and mourning, hope and despair, invite us to spiritual and emotional growth, if we will only stop to listen and respond.

The sun peeks over the horizon as I drive into the empty parking lot at work. I squeeze my silver Camry between the white lines, shut off the engine, and pause to catch my breath. A few minutes later, I open the driver’s door, put one foot on the pavement, and then the other. I take a deep breath and hoist myself up to a standing position, an involuntarily gasp escaping from my lips.

I cannot deny that the pain has been worse lately–although that is precisely what I have tried to do for the last few months.

After living with rheumatoid arthritis for more than 15 years, you would think I would be used to it. The weight of uncertainty about my future is hard to bear; but in its midst, I hear God’s invitations—to feel and acknowledge my pain, to choose wisely, to live intentionally, and to share my story.

Desperate Realities

Pain in life is as certain as the rising and the setting of the sun. Why then are we surprised when it strikes?

“Authentic worshipers seek God in desperate realities: body racking pain, exile, earthquakes, oppression, disease, poverty, heartbreak, betrayal, and warfare,” Adele Ahlberg Calhoun writes. In her book, Invitations from God, Calhoun points out, “Jesus related to God through tears, and he invites us to do the same. Even a cursory look at Jesus and his teachings reveals a God who is at home in the watery world of tears.”

Invitations Hidden in Pain

As I am learning to live in the paradoxes of life and death, joy and mourning, hope and despair, I accept several invitations hidden in the shadow of distress.

1. An invitation to feel and acknowledge my pain. I recognize it is unhealthy and unbiblical to deny my pain. I choose to acknowledge my pain and grieve my losses, knowing that death always precedes life and that dormancy and death are not the same. If I feel “stuck” in my pain, I will choose to seek help, whether it comes from a friend or professional therapist. Complicated grief* does not resolve by itself. Life is too short to stay stuck for long.
2. An invitation to choose wisely. So much is outside of my ability to control. I cannot change the fact that I live with chronic pain and fatigue. I cannot ensure that I will be able to continue working for the long haul, other than to follow my doctor’s orders. However, I can choose to cultivate my strengths and gifts, to read widely, and to explore the God-dreams that have been in my heart since childhood.  Who knows what lies ahead? 
3. An invitation to intentional living. Suffering reveals the chaff of our lives. Things that are worthless and irrelevant quickly become clear. Limited energy and emotional resources invite me to intentional living and purposeful action. What does not align with my life’s purpose, I release. 
4. An invitation to share my story. People everywhere are hurting. No one understands pain like someone who has walked through it. Lessons learned in the fire of affliction become tools of healing as I share my story with others. Someone needs the hope that my story offers.

Life is rife with invitations. Yet, in our frantic busyness, we miss most of them. Pain is an invitation to slow down and respond to God’s invitations for something more, to experience resurrection life in parts of our lives that have been dead for far too long.

Questions for Reflective Journaling

• What invitations have you been missing in life’s pain? How can you respond to those invitations?
• How can you live more intentionally, more in line with your purpose?
• Who needs to hear your story today? What are some ways you can share your story?

*Complicated grief occurs not only with the death of a loved one but can also occur with any major loss–illness, loss of dreams, the death of a friendship, and more.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”~ Maryanne Williamson

How is it with your soul? It’s possible to gain the whole world yet lose sight for what really matters. Discover the unhurried rhythms of grace with soul care.

While having coffee with my friend Kathryn this morning, our conversation drifted to the cultural differences that exist between South Dakota and Northern Virginia. Although she lived in the Washington suburbs for years, she recently sold her home and moved to South Dakota.

What’s in South Dakota? You ask.

Not much of anything really, and that is precisely the point.

Life moves at a slower pace in South Dakota. People have time in their lives and schedules to forge meaningful relationships. Here on the East Coast, we can barely squeeze in time for our spouses much less time with friends and family. Our debt is deep, and our relationships are shallow. Our homes are large, but our families fractured.

Souls are living, and like all living things they thrive or wither, based on the care we give it. In Renovation of the Heart, Dallas Willard writes, “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 profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.”

Kathryn’s soul is thriving. I see it in her eyes and the lilt in her step. Like the daffodils in spring, Kathryn is coming into full bloom. And it is beautiful to see. She has just returned from a writers’ conference in Tucson, and the writing she shared with me left me breathless. Waves of creativity washed over her; one idea flowed into the next, as her words and heart became a tool for transformation, chipping away at my fear and discouragement.

The wide-open spaces of the Great Plains have been good for Kathryn.

While we all can’t move to South Dakota, we can carve out more space in our schedules to discover the unhurried rhythms of grace, to cultivate compassion, and to give ourselves time for reflection and rest.

Kathryn is tending to her inner life, and it shows.

How is it with your soul?