Summer Soul Care

Last month I wrote about the gifts of summer, today, I’m back to the drumbeat of one of my favorite topics of the last decade or so, maybe longer. I’m thinking about Summer Soul Care. Somewhere in my life, it dawned on me that you and I were not going to last forever and certainly not with the best version of ourselves in tact if we did not figure out how to practice soul care on the run. Now that I also teach leadership classes, I find that I’ve realized Self Care is the secret sauce to successful leadership, to emotional intelligence, to healthy work and family relationships and more. 

Personally, I’ve come to understand that Soul Care is much like hydration of our bodies. We have to work on it multiple times a day. You cannot just hydrate in the morning and be good all day. You and I have to tend to that balance all day long. I believe it is the same with our Self Care/Soul Care. Our souls will give us hints that they need hydration: blaming, irritability, fatigue beyond physical rest, addictive habits and indecision for example. For more on this check out Come Thirsty by Max Lucado. It has been a textbook for me on this topic for years. 

Summer, it seems, lends itself to a different pace or at least a chance for a reallotment of time, so allow me to share my Top Ten Summer Soul Care Tips as a reminder and refresher course to what I’ve been saying for a decade or two now. Don’t do all of these, that would be crazy. Pick the one you like the best and see what God will do with it. 

1. Quiet Your Mind. I’ve been told lately to stop overthinking things. Easier said than done, right? My One Word this year is Abide. Focusing on that word quiets my mind. If we really trust in God, we have one job: to abide, to hang in there, to stop trying to control, fix, manage…just abide. Focusing on just your breath can quiet your mind. Try it. You can’t focus on your breath and think anxious thoughts simultaneously. It is a Soul Care practice to quiet your mind. 
2. Major on Rest. I now believe we cannot get too much rest. You cannot be still too long. It is ok to stop striving. It is good to sit and stare. Richard Rohr calls the stare “a prayer without words.” Perfect the pause. Soul Care is rest.
3. Find Joy. Steal some if you must. Take it in tiny microbursts or by planning a bucket list item. Joy is soul hydrating. Recently I used the term “battered joy” to describe something I was feeling. Sometimes we have to find joy even when things are really hard, less than ideal, messy and uphill. Sometimes we come to the end of a day, weary, embattled and yet joyful. Battered joy may even be more valuable than plain old clean and shiny joy because we had to work harder for it. 
4. Go to the Margins. Serving those on the margins can hydrate us. I’ve been trying to find a way to serve in our small town where we are the newer people. It’s been harder to break in than I imagined. This week I finally made a breakthrough and will start delivering food from the food bank here to local elderly who cannot get out. Once I learned I will be able to serve regularly in the margin places of this small town it flooded my soul. 
5. Play and Create. Play is good for our souls. Most of us gave up play a while back or we think we are too busy or too frugal, too sensible or too adult to create anything new. Your soul is crying out for play. Play cards, a board game, croquet or ball. Work a puzzle. Build sand castles or make a pot holder. Get a coloring book and some crayons. Your soul will thank you. 
6. Take a Media Break/A Spiritual Staycation. You do not have to travel to give your soul rest. You simply have to do things differently. Reallocate your time. A post by Turning Point Counseling Services caught my eye this week: Your soul actually was never meant to know about the news of the world. You were never built for this much information. You were never meant to wake up and immediately scroll through war zones, natural disasters, political madness, trending tragedies, and the most intimate heartbreaks of strangers across the globe. That’s not normal. That’s not human. Maybe your soul could use a Media Fast/A Spiritual Staycation. 
7. Tend to the Earth. Plant something, grow something, water something, sit with nature. Do it as an act of spiritual and ecological justice. This week we ate a meal with lettuce, radishes and green beans we grew ourselves. I truly believe that one small act fed our bodies and our souls in ways we can’t quite imagine. 
8. Play Summer Songs. What about filling your heart and mind with songs that celebrate the season, that soothe and uplift? Create a Soul Tending Summer playlist and see what happens. 
9. Pray with your Body. Maybe this summer you can walk and stretch more. Maybe your body can become a site of prayer, joy and sacred presence. Just raising your hands over your head in a V is a universal sign of celebration and has been proven to release our endorphins. Athletes do it at the end of a race. Children do it often. Try it. Raise your arms in gratitude and victory. Pray with your body.
10. Savor the Sabbath. It is a commandment that we take at least one day off a week for self care. You read that right, it is a commandment. It is just as important to God as us not killing or stealing or coveting. Are you doing it? What if you started that this summer? Set one day a week aside to rest endlessly, sit, stare, praise God, claim joy, and play. 

I imagine a world sometimes where people are rested, filled with delight, grounded and anchored in the fact that we do not need to DO everything. How different things would be. 

Summer Soul Care, maybe it can begin with you and me. 

Dr. Cindy Ryan is a pastor, wife, mother of three, Mosa to four and breast cancer survivor. She enjoys speaking and preaching and especially leading events for women. She teaches Servant Leadership in cities around Texas. She lives in Franklin, Texas with her husband and dog.