If anyone was asked the question: “What is spiritual direction,” most people would not know the answer. To be honest, if you asked me that question five years ago, I would not have known the answer. But now, here I am in my last semester at Loyola University, finishing up my certification to become a spiritual director. It has been a wonderful journey. It has also been hard.
Spiritual direction is basically someone who holds space as the “directee” does a deep dive into their faith relationship with God or the Divine or however you define your higher power. It is for people who are deeply religious, people who are just exploring, and it is even for those who do not believe. It is not just for Christians but for all faith practices. My journey, since I am Christian, has been and will continue to be uniquely Christian.
To say this journey has been wonderful does not do it justice. There are no words to describe the depth of feelings and experiences I have gained. To say this journey has been difficult would be an understatement. It is a journey of shedding all that holds a person back from having a deep relationship with God. Letting go is never easy. Sometimes you are asked to let go of things you love but may no longer be good for you. Sometimes you are asked to let go of something you are afraid to let go of. It could be something you have held onto for decades and it feels like an old security blanket. Letting go of it means letting go of something that has become a part of you. Because we are too close to it, we can’t see that it is more barnacle than beneficial. It needs to be scraped off and jettisoned from our life as it is holding us back from something far better.
I believe one of the greatest gifts of spiritual direction is that it enhances our discipleship process. As we learn and grow in our faith, we may discover that our relationship with God may not be what it could be. We want to be friends with God…something BTW that God wants as well. But we can feel that something is in the way. Something is holding us back. Spiritual direction gives us the safe, sacred space to discern what that might be as we learn to identify how the Holy Spirit moves in our lives.
The other thing spiritual direction does, is it helps us connect with our feelings. We are good at thinking about our faith and relationship to God. We are not so good at connecting our feelings to what God is doing. There are times when we can’t even put words to what we are feeling because we are so disconnected from them. To feel, means we may also hurt. Grief is a great example of this. Unfortunately, we struggle with all the feelings that overload us and all we want is to just be done with them, so we stuff them away. The problem is that they will at some point vomit out all over your life at the least opportune moment. Spiritual direction helps us stay in tune with our feelings about the events in our lives and where we see God moving within them.
So, I have been doing a lot of scraping and letting go and growing. There have been many tears shed, and angry words yelled at God. (I have learned God has broad shoulders) I have been exhausted and I have felt deeply loved and held by God. As I have peeled back the layers of my own onion, (I love Shrek’s analogy that ogres are like onions. I think humans are too,) I have found those hurts that are only harming me and I have let them go or in some cases I am still working to let them go. Like I said, sometimes those old hurts have become like a part of who we are, and it is hard to remove them.
And while “scrapping” hurts, it is so worth it as it gets rid of the chaos in our lives that is in the way of peace. It shows us where we are trying to take ownership of what isn’t ours to take ownership of. It highlights the ways we do not love ourselves as Jesus mandated when he said we are to love God with everything we have (my paraphrase) and love our neighbor as ourselves. Did you see that? We need to love ourselves in order to love our neighbor. They go hand in hand.
Bottom line: Spiritual direction helps us live more fully into who God created us to be by helping us recognize God’s presence in our lives and those things that we hold onto that are in our way of a deep relationship with God. It helps us both see and let go of what isn’t important so we can hold onto what is important.
Just a quick shout out to my own Spiritual Director who has guided me faithfully through my own letting go…Thank you!
Peace,
Beth
Beth's Blog 