Heart on Fire
How I became a spiritual director
First, a poem.
Finale (in the beginning)
My first thought:
this destroys.
No, it’s more than that.
It gulps and guzzles
swallows and devours.
At least
that is how I saw it’s tongue
(too many to count)
leaving nothing but
blackened ash in the wake of it’s belly.
Good for nothing except for
soil.
A strong wind blew in
from the east
whispering
old stories,
forgotten stories.
Myths? Fantasies?
Memories?
A burning bush,
pillar of fire,
fourth man in the fire,
these tongues are lush
and ravage not.
These tongues awaken
and rest upon heads
lulled to sleep
by sirens of the deep.
Oh,
you thought they didn’t exist?
Do not our hearts burn while we walk with Him?
Embers sear
as Your tree stood ablaze
in a final death.
My heart hurts.
What is that feeling?
El Roi.
You cauterize my heart
with Your gaze.
You mend and suture
as I let myself be found
naked and afraid in the garden.
El Roi.
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
Where are you?
Ah!
Finally, You are here.
Dear friends,
If you’ve followed along since my first post here in February of 2023, you’ll know that I’ve been on a journey to become certified as a Spiritual Director. I’ve written about many things along the way as I’ve wrestled with myself and God and this…calling? Vocation? Charism? Honestly, the journey began because I was bored. I had no idea what a Spiritual Director was when I signed up. I just knew I needed to keep saying yes. And I needed to keep writing to help metabolize and embody what I was becoming. Or at the very least, to help me pay attention.
I was bored with myself, my faith and ultimately God. Little did I know at the time, the boredom had taken root within me for longer than I was aware. But there was enough of a spark in my soul to check out this program.
As this chapter of my life has come to a close, I’ve found myself feeling a whole gamut of feelings. Trepidation. Loss. Joy. Excitement. Gratitude. Anxiety. Sadness. Overwhelm. Hope. How do I talk about a period of time that encapsulates something so sacred, holy, intimate, vulnerable, and safe? How do I write about a world where I grew to love a God who is closer than my own breath?
wrote about what she means when she says she's praying for you and encapsulated so poignantly what prayer can be, and the truth of what metaphor actually is - to carry across. So when I’ve written about what it’s like to live intimately with Jesus in the land of the living, sometimes the metaphors carry and sometime they don’t.Here’s one that carried me across. It came from my dear husband, late at night, when I was overwhelmed by sadness and anxiety at almost being done with this chapter. It comes from the last chapter of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia book: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Its time for Lucy and Edmund to leave Narnia and go back home. They plead with Aslan, can't we stay? Can't we tarry a little while longer?
“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?”
“I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.”
“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do , do , do make it soon.”
“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”
“Oh, Aslan!!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.
“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.”
“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
My heart was carried across. It went on a grand voyage where I got to taste and see and feel and hear a tiny glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is like. Mustard seeds. Pearls. Fire that does not consume. It started with embers that blew in with the Spirit and was fanned into flame by me saying yes, alongside those that have gone before and those beside me.
As the flame grew, the Great Physician would use His instruments of peace and cauterize wounds opened during each retreat. There were seven retreats in total. And after each one, except for the seventh, upon returning home I’ve felt like I’m still in the middle of open heart surgery. Still tender. Vulnerable. Exposed. Often dysregulated. Call it deconstruction. Call it unraveling. Call it whatever you like. Sure, theology is always around to deconstruct if you really want to. But when it comes to matters of the heart, a person that fully glorifies God is a person fully alive. Much like Augustine, my heart was numb and now burns for Him. It burns to find any part of the Divine Trinity alive and working in the world. I’ve realized I’ve always had this gift, but sloth told me it didn’t matter much, and who would really want to hear about light and beauty all the time anyway?
Instead, I accept that this burning ache will never really go away. Not here. Not now. Not in between the Country calling me home and the country that never was. I’ll learn to live it, and I’ll invite you into it too. The sweetness and ache of walking with Jesus here. Those who meet with me in spiritual direction will have a friend of the soul - one who sees them in the in between just as Jesus does. One of my favorite definitions of spiritual direction is by my instructor, Bill Zuelke:
“I am watching the One I love, love another.”
When I returned home after my last retreat, I noticed I felt different. I returned and felt fully attended to, sutured, and sealed. A heart no longer numb, but on fire. Pink Floyd’s song, Comfortably Numb, plays dreamlike in my head as my skin has been pricked, healed by that same Spirit of fire that came down so long ago.
In the spirit of celebration
Here’s how I became a spiritual director:
attended an independent fundamental baptist college fresh out of private highschool
looked for God’s will at fundamental college
sadly, couldn’t find the Person In Question’s will for my life other than an alarming amount of talk about Him wanting me to get married and have babies.
Got weirded out and left
attended a community college in my hometown
discovered a love for writing, literature, running, and geology
still tried to find God’s will for my life for the next four years in college
discovered a love for traveling and weary saints abroad
read my first life-changing novel: East of Eden
experienced church collapse
survived
told myself I could save other people
found out I couldn’t
lost a couple friends
kept seeing God everywhere
learned (still learning!) better boundaries
gave birth to two astoundingly beautiful sons alongside my husband
world changed
tried to find God in new world
lost myself for a few years
discovered I’ve been hiding for most of my life
grief
discovered I want to be seen and known fully
encountered a God who sees me in love
spend the next three years learning how to be seen and loved
spend the next three years learning how to see and love others
walk in the Light and see others in the Light
repeat previous three steps for the rest of my life
Moving forward: My maxims - pearls of wisdom from the fire
Beloved
Center down
Start with gratitude
What do you want?
Lie of perfectionism: No matter how good I am, I’m not good enough. Ever.
Antidote of grace: “I am always my sinful self - and good enough for Christ to come redeem, and good enough for God the Father to love as His own child. So I rise today, humbly and hopefully, and turn to the next good thing to do.” (Joseph Tetlow, Handing on the Fire).
Sort out the goods
Where did I get hooked?
Grace is always sufficient to the struggles of the day. (Ignatius rules discernment, first set, rule 6).
“When I know who I am with nothing to prove, it frees me to do the work of love.” - Drew Jackson
Wallow in consolation. Savor and soak in it.
Do the opposite of what I’m tempted to do with strength and courage, and the evil spirit will get bored in tempting me and flee.
Who’s voice is that?
Does that sound like the voice of the One who loves you, or the enemy of your soul?
Intentionally ponder and look at beauty everyday.
I'm not fine, I'm blessed.
Grace has won.
Christ's death and resurrection is salvific grace. This is my land now
Moving forward in this writing space
This will still be a space where we will look for God and all that entails in our everyday lives. Whether it be through movies and music, the news, our friendships, our pain, our joys, or of course, the stories we read, To Care and Not to Care will continue to be a place where we look for the light in plain sight - sitting still among the rocks.
If there is anything you read in my maxims that sparked your curiosity, I’d love to hear it! Truly. Is there anything you want to know more about? I’ll do my best to write about it.
Let us join hands with Raymond Carver, someone else who wrote about beauty and grace in everyday life, and stand still in that Late Fragment. Let us be able to say:
“And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
That quote from Narnia had me in tears. Thank you for sharing your journey out loud💖
Janell! As always challenging to read … in a good, essential way.
So here are my two: center down and the soak in it
Let’s chat