March 3, 2025 • 62 mins
Are you feeling drained, overwhelmed, or spiritually disconnected? In this powerful episode, host Jodie Chiricosta sits down with Mindy Caliguire to discuss her transformative journey of soul care—learning to move from exhaustion to a life of deep spiritual renewal. As the founder of SoulCare, Mindy is dedicated to helping others cultivate inner health while pursuing their calling. She opens up about her struggles with burnout, the importance of abiding in Christ, and the practical tools that can help you reconnect with God in a meaningful way.
Jodie and Mindy dive into what it truly means to flourish—moment by moment, day by day—while navigating the demands of life and leadership. They also explore how soul care goes beyond self-care, offering a deeper, lasting restoration that comes from aligning with God rather than just managing stress. Whether you’re a leader, a caregiver, or simply someone longing for rest, this conversation will inspire you to nurture your soul and embrace a life of abundance. Don’t miss this uplifting and insightful episode!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey friends, welcome to the Herb God Story podcast where you will always hear a good
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story to encourage and inspire you in your walk with the Lord.
You'll be so glad you tuned in.
I'm your host, Jodie Chiricosta, ministry leader at Somebody Cares America, an international
author and traveler on this journey with Jesus.
God cares deeply about the overlooked and hurting among us, and He has a very special
place in His heart for widows and orphans.
(00:27):
Over and over again in Scripture, He directs us to care for widows and orphans, which is
why Somebody Cares created the Widow and Orphan Fund.
As a company together, we can do so much to take care of the special needs of those He's
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Recently, we funded the delivery of essential care packages to five destitute women in Africa
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And while this is only temporary help, efforts are underway to provide monthly assistance
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has heard their cries and is answering with tangible help.
(01:12):
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In John 15, God shares some startling truth.
Verses 1-5 in the New King James Version reads,
I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser.
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Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.
And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.
You are already clean because of the word which I've spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you.
Because the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you
unless you abide in me.
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I am the vine, you are the branches.
He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit.
For without me, you can do nothing.
Modern translations use the word remain in place of abide, but I like the powerful description
of abide.
(02:16):
It's the life that Christ calls us to.
Christ's New World Dictionary defines it as to stand fast, remain, go on being, to
await, stay, reside.
The American Heritage Bible, a dictionary says, to wait patiently for.
But how can any of us have time to do that?
Paul Schappell, in his book, Abiding in Christ, articulates our dilemma, saying, we live in
(02:40):
a fast-paced society.
We're used to quick results.
It seems that much of our time and money is spent trying to save time, to do things faster,
more efficient, and with less effort.
We hurry through our daily tasks so we could move on to something more important.
Our to-do lists are longer than the amount of time we have to get them done, and there's
(03:00):
seemingly no end in sight.
Abide is not part of our modern vocabulary.
New people abide anywhere with anyone in today's culture who has time to abide.
But if we read on in John 15, we realize our very life depends on it.
My guest, Mindy Caliguire, has learned this truth.
(03:24):
Mindy is the co-founder and president of Soul Care, having served in executive leadership
at GLU and the Willow Creek Association.
She speaks and advises into organizations like Compassion International, the National
Christian Foundation, and many churches and ministries around the world.
And she's written books, including Discovering Soul Care, Spiritual Friendship, Stir, and
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Ignite Your Soul.
Mindy lives in Colorado with her loving husband.
They have three married adult children, one grandchild, and three dogs.
Welcome, Mindy.
Oh, thank you so much.
I'm delighted to be with you and to be with those who are listening today.
It's awesome.
Thank you.
Mindy being introduced to us, having three dogs now, because we just got two more.
(04:10):
And it's a little bit crazy around here right now.
Well, we're both dog lovers, so I just had to mention it.
I love it.
I'm glad you did.
So Mindy, what were your early years like, and how did they shape your relationship with
Christ?
My early years were actually kind of a lot of that kind of chaos with puppies and extra
people around all the time.
(04:31):
I actually grew up in a large family.
I'm the oldest of seven children, and my parents were from Western New York area.
My dad had gone to graduate school.
We joked that I was a honeymoon baby.
Was the first of this tribe that was significant in my own sort of development, what shaped
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me in terms of my love for community, my love for a little bit of chaos, and a sense of
home that matters.
And then spiritually, the sort of tenor of our family was heavily marked by my parents
being very devoted in their Catholic faith.
And so they were early front runners in the folk mass movement in the mid-60s.
(05:21):
My dad was one of the first people playing a guitar at the front of a Catholic church.
And then they got very involved in the marriage encounter movement, which has helped people
all over the world.
But I would say there was a time in the mid-70s when they encountered Jesus in a more dramatic
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way.
My mom had been invited to a neighborhood Bible study, a bunch of women, some of whom
I think were in a Baptist church or who knows where, but she had never read firsthand, even
though she'd gone to all these Catholic schools and been faithfully attending mass and all
these other things, had never really been encouraged to read the Bible for herself.
She just was so captivated with the person of Jesus and began her own faith journey.
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And my dad was a developmental biologist.
And so his approach to the Bible was absorb it, understand everything, and he was as likely
to quote something from Amos as Ephesians.
He just absorbed it and saw it all as a whole.
And so for me growing up, it was a very integrated faith.
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If we had to sell the house and the market wasn't good, my parents would invite the kids
too fast and pray with them.
And so their journey just was very significant in my formation and in my family's formation.
(06:49):
There were times even when after we had sort of left the Catholic church and then when
we moved to a small town, that was really the main church in town.
And so we went back and I ended up going through confirmation and several of the younger siblings
ended up getting baptized.
But my dad took very seriously the role of his being sort of a priest of our family and
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he would come home on Sundays and we would all be bickering about who's going to get
what kind of donuts because we had stopped at the donut place.
But dad and mom would sit us down and go back over the scriptures that had been read in
the mass and help us understand what they were all about.
So it was a very, very vibrant experience of faith, high expectation that if we prayed,
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God would do things.
And if the Bible said it, that's how we would live our lives.
Yeah, I love that because my parents came to Christ around the same time in the early
70s and also really had that integrative faith and let our family together and growing in
the Lord together, reading the Bible together, talking about it, praying together, sharing
(08:02):
what we were praying about and praising God for the answers when they came.
And it marked me because I knew God was alive.
God is alive.
I do have friends who grew up in a very, like a very devoted or committed, I'll say, family
to a Christian expression of some kind.
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But it was completely, utterly divorced from actual life.
It was, you know, we go, we do the thing, it matters that we go.
And there was a high priority, but it just didn't relate to the rest of life.
Didn't inform their life.
Correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, as you moved into adulthood, your faith really did inform your life and your decisions.
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So where did that lead you?
I went to a very secular university and, and sort of, I think, wandered a little bit, not
knowing how to integrate my faith.
I tried a couple of different campus ministries and where I went to school, they thought they
were cults.
So I was in the library at the man library at the Cornell College of Agriculture and
(09:10):
Life Sciences.
And I was studying for microbiology and I love the sciences.
I love all that stuff.
But I, I was sort of meandering.
I hadn't really anchored in any faith experience and I, I almost knew better.
Like I knew too much of the Bible, but I just, I couldn't find anything that felt relevant.
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And I probably wasn't trying all that hard, but I just hadn't.
And I was reading this microbiology and I remember this textbook and I remember sitting
at a big table in this public, you know, in the library and just putting my head down
in the middle of the crease of this book.
And of course, I don't remember what I was studying besides the broad topic, but I had,
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I remember feeling like, what difference does it make?
What difference does it make?
If I'm learning this, what difference does it make if I'm even alive?
I mean, it wasn't anything like suicidal.
I wasn't depressed or anything.
It just was like, why does any of this matter?
Why does it matter?
And so I just felt like at my head was in it and I was like, why, why does any of this
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matter?
I just sort of prayed like God, if you want to find me in this space, if this stuff does
matter, my life matters, I need help.
And then as one does, I just sort of picked up my head and started reading again.
In minutes, a tap comes on my shoulder and a friend who I had known through the sort of
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fraternity scene and he knew I had a faith.
I knew he had a faith, but it wasn't like the driving force of our life at that point.
But in both of our families of origin, it had been.
And he said, I just want you to know, I've started going to this Bible study at the Sigma
Chi house and these people are kind of like normal.
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And I think you would enjoy it.
And so if you ever want to go, let me know, I'd be happy to bring you.
And that Sigma Chi house was a rival to his fraternity.
And so I thought, must be God.
Yeah, if you going there.
And I went and sure enough, the man who was co-leading it in his fraternity room, the Bible
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study is now my husband.
And we began dating and it was a season of the lights all starting to come back on for
me.
Like, I knew so much truth from my childhood, but I hadn't been with peers.
And it's a whole different thing when you're with your parents, friends and your own siblings
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versus you're sitting around with a bunch of other college students who are reading a
verse on prayer and talking about midterms and talking about fraternity and sorority
rush and talking about their wrestling team or whatever.
And it was a very compelling environment.
And all of the like sort of backstory of my life just came rushing to the fore.
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And this is such an encouragement to people who are raising their kids and going like,
I don't know if they're ever going to follow Jesus.
And then the light bulb comes on at some point that's outside of their control.
And all of that building into just came forward.
So anyway, that's what we did.
My husband or that boyfriend at that time.
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And I really, we got involved with Campus Crusade, which is what it was at the time.
And it's like, what else do you want to do but give your life to the Great Commission,
to the purposes of God in our world.
And I didn't think that only meant vocational ministry.
It could mean any number of assignments that God brings.
But our orientation is what is God inviting me into and how am I following him.
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And so, the conclusion of undergrad, my husband really wanted to go into seminary.
So he went to Dallas Theological Seminary and I got, we got married a year later.
Again, my sort of propensity to pull a lot of things together.
I graduated one week and walked down the aisle the next week in June of 1987.
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So a long time ago now.
And then when it was at Dallas, so I just was in the marketplace.
I just found work in the area and you know, so that was it.
They say that I got my Ph.T. for putting hubby through.
So he graduated from seminary and then became a pastor.
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He became a pastor's wife.
What happened was he took a couple years to do internships.
So he did one internship up in Connecticut for a year.
So I got a different job up in Connecticut and then we moved down to Dallas for him to
complete.
And then we learned about a church doing evangelism and discipleship, which of course that was
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our now our big heart drive.
And there was a church that was doing that.
We also, he had professors at seminary, Aubrey Malfers and others who were talking about
church planting as being the primary way in a vocational traditional church kind of setting
where some of the aspirational goals of a paratroop organization were actually being realized
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where evangelism was a priority and discipleship was a priority, which praise be to God, many
churches that is a higher and more explicit priority now.
But at that time, it was not common to hear churches talking about what their strategy
for evangelism or discipleship was.
And so we were, we both ended up applying for an internship, a church planting internship.
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So that had great alignment to what we were concerned with that was being offered at Willow
Creek Community Church up in the suburbs of Chicago.
So we did a church planting internship for a year.
And it was after that that he became a pastor.
We both had been on the staff of that church, but we, yeah, that's what we did.
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So just tell one or two things.
I knew you had been working in business and then you go to a church planting internship.
What did God do or teach you during that year?
It had to be a total shift of mind.
There were a lot of things, a couple of things.
Willow Creek was, was even at that point large enough compared to many other churches that
the, the more business environments that I had been involved, they brought that level
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of professionalism to ministry.
And so in some ways it was like, Oh, these people are serious about this stuff.
They're serious about their faith.
They're serious about all this stuff.
And so it was, it was almost reassuring to find a cultural familiarity with the level
of intensity to the gospel, but professionalism brought to the systems of, of a ministry.
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But I think another really big transformational thing for me while we were interns there,
my husband has more natural gifts in evangelism.
I would say my gifts lie more in discipleships, spiritual formation, teaching, edification,
that kind of stuff.
Compared to being an intern at Willow, I kind of held this little dark secret view in my
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head, which was like, if somebody doesn't want to follow Jesus, like that's, that's
up to them.
Like it's not our job to like, I don't know.
I, you would think after being with Campus Crusade, I would have been very, very highly
always evangelistically motivated, but that's my confession.
I'm not proud of this.
What shifted for me that year, this was in 19, what year were we there?
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1990.
Okay.
So Willow was only 15 years old at the time.
It was not what it became over time.
And with their mission to help lost people become fully devoted followers of Christ, they
were very focused on how are we reaching out to people.
And on any given Sunday, you would be sitting in their weekend services, which was basically
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their church as it were services happened midweek, but there every weekend they were
putting on evangelism sessions that were the time an invited guest might come to church,
thinking it was church.
So they, it was really focused evangelistically on the weekends.
On any given Sunday, you'd sit in the service and, you know, person to the right, person
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to the left, statistically, one of those two people did not follow Jesus at all.
And I had never been in an environment like that, that was so fruitful with people coming
to faith and then for the very first time, then these, these was, I mean, the statistics
they used to throw around years and years ago was like it was 85% conversion growth.
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And like that's exciting.
They weren't just pulling from other believers at churches that, you know, as often can happen
when a new more contemporary church comes along.
Like this was, this was conversion growth.
And I was humbled by that.
I learned that the professionalism that could be brought to ministry was good.
I felt God's heart for why we leave the 99 to go after the one.
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I was mentored by many people, other women who were in leadership, ministry leadership,
and men as well who were very articulate about the interior life and how the interior life
really matters for all the things that we care about and matters to God.
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And back at that time, I think we were so focused on making sure people believe the
right things that we weren't necessarily paying attention to the inner journey, to the inner
story.
I didn't myself do as much journeying as I eventually did while there, but I will say
that it was the beginning of, of me having a growing awareness.
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For example, one of my mentors required a required reading that I had that year was,
I think it was Henry Cloud's first book that he and John Townsend wrote.
And it was, I remember thinking this is like stuff I've never heard before, never read
before, but it was terribly edited.
And so it just, it was a thick, like you had to work really hard to understand what they
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were saying.
And at the same time, it was like, this is life changing.
It did eventually get republished and edited more holistically under a title that people
may be familiar with, which was called changes that heal.
Changes that heal became one of their first and even boundaries, their sort of landmark
book came out of the framework that was introduced in this changes that heal.
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But my goodness, I had never, never encountered somebody who was really plumbing the depths
both biblically and psychologically and helping us connect those dots.
So it was a powerful year for me, very transformational.
Well, that's a new concept for I think many, many people because we spend so much time
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on learning the scripture that it is difficult to integrate it all into our life as a human.
But we'll talk more about that later.
So after you were an intern, you and your husband felt called to Boston where you planted
a church and cheer about your time in Boston.
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And really how that led to a crisis that really did change your life and even transformed
your relationship with God.
This is one of those stories that you're happy to share if it ever helped somebody else,
right?
We went to Boston, which is a hard ministry context and church planting is not an easy
ride.
So we were doing a hard thing in a very difficult place and we did it in the hardest possible
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way.
We had no sending organization.
We had no sending funding.
We had no oversight to speak of other than friends.
And so we started our own 501c3, handled all the taxes, banking, everything.
And by God's grace, he very clearly led us.
And there was a little core group of people that started to come around it.
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I had no, well, it was back to that boundaries idea.
I had no real boundaries.
And if something needed to be done, then I was stepping up as hard as I could to try
to make sure that happened.
And again, part of my family of origin, right?
It's like you're a hyper responsible person and you're taking care of people and that's
what we do.
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And so when you add God layers onto it, it makes it even more difficult to ever say,
no.
And that's too much or I'm already doing this and I need space and I couldn't say any of
that stuff.
And so, you know, about five years midway, what became a 10 year beautiful season in
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Boston, but five years in, I woke up one day with some pretty severe neurological symptoms,
stuff in my optic nerve and brain and all this stuff and had me extremely ill, couldn't
hold down food, couldn't see straight, couldn't walk, couldn't drive, couldn't read, couldn't
(22:37):
write, couldn't watch television, couldn't do anything.
And it pushed me into a very unwelcome season of forced rest.
I was at that time kind of running the whole back end of the ministry.
So all the finances, I was handling all that, all the communications, a lot of the administration
(23:01):
of a church and also trying to encourage my husband.
He at that point, like we both responded to the stress of Boston in different ways.
He started to kind of spiral into a bit of a depression that probably by the time this
happened to me, he was probably in a full on chemical depression where your brain is
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like actually reinforcing what might have started as a circumstantial kind of situation,
but now is turning biological, which we had no language for.
I can say these words right now, but I didn't have any words for that.
We had no idea what was going on and my reaction was to overwork.
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Like, I got to keep him together, I got to take care of this two-year-old, I'm pregnant,
oh, and I was like leaving three different small groups.
So it's like all of these things were happening all at once and I just kept responding to
it with more and more productivity because I didn't have any other way.
I had to get hospitalized several times because I kept dehydrating so badly I went into premature
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labor and the baby was too small, we couldn't do that.
Oh man, it was a very hard season.
Yeah, and those physical symptoms, they were just the outward sign of what you referred
to as the implosion of your soul.
And I mean, that's kind of like what?
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What does that mean?
Explain, explain what you mean by that.
And the very real and spiritual and emotional turmoil you were undergoing.
Yeah, there was a lot.
On the mental side, I couldn't handle knowing that all these balls that I was working so
hard to keep in the air, they were dropping right and left.
So that was like heavy on my heart.
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And finally, I couldn't meet what Jeff needed.
So what's going to happen if he's not well and I'm not well and what if I never get better?
And so emotionally I was spiraling.
I may have told you that one of the neurologists, because I was spiraling so badly, one of the
times I was hospitalized, the neurologist, he pulled my husband aside and said, look,
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this baby is coming, whether or not she's better and you got to start getting ready
for that.
And which of course, he was so incapacitated, like that he wasn't really able to respond
to that.
But anyway, I hear that this is what the guy is saying and I am wailing in despair.
Like I can't, don't tell me I can't take care of my newborn, don't tell me, like I just was
(25:48):
irrational and miserable.
And this neurologist stood by my bed and I mean, and I'm like, you know, puking my guts
out in one of those little kidney bowls.
I mean, it was such a mess.
And he says to me in the loveliest bedside manners, Ms. Caliguire, basically you have
(26:11):
two choices right now.
You can either accept this and make the best of it or you can make yourself and everyone
around you miserable.
And he walked out of the room.
So anyway, I'm just telling you, there was physical, mental, emotional, and he told
my husband, you better get her with some sort of a counselor or something to try to give
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her emotional support because if she keeps spiraling, it's going to compromise her ability
to get better because your physical health is so tied, which I didn't know at the time,
so tied to emotional, spiritual, mental well-being.
I didn't know that.
I thought those were totally different categories.
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So I traipse myself down to Dr. Lombardi's office.
God bless Dr. Lombardi.
I think there were only three Christian psychologists in all of New England and one of them was
down the street from where we lived.
And so even though I couldn't drive or walk, Dr. Lombardi had space in his calendar for
me.
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And the first time we met, I told him a little bit about the last five years and what we've
been going through and some of my family of origin and things like that.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, Mindy, I can't speak to what's going on biologically,
you know, all this stuff.
It was a cerebellum and optic nerve and all this.
But from a psychological standpoint, you have forced out of your body what could never
(27:37):
come out of your mouth, just the word no, which leaves us to the spiritual side.
So you know, you asked about these very specific things and I will say the spiritual side was
probably the most confusing of all, because I kind of started out this journey of being
in forced rest a little like, hey, God, you know, what gives?
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I'm on your team.
This is not strategic.
There's all this stuff that needs to happen.
And silence.
Just try telling God that something he's doing is not strategic.
Oh, really?
Oh, the arrogance.
So hard to admit.
And then God's tenderness is so kind.
So in the middle of the night, often I couldn't sleep.
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And if there are listeners who have been in that space, when you are really ill, sometimes
you just can't sleep at night because you're not getting normal amounts of movement during
the day.
There's probably a ton of reasons, but you can't sleep.
And during one of those episodes when I was up at night, and kind of just arguing with
God about the whole thing, I really sensed him saying to me, you know, you remember that
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verse you were having all three of your small groups memorize?
And you read it at the beginning of our time, John 15.5.
If you remain in me, you'll bear much fruit.
We love that part.
But the second half is also scripture.
And Jesus said to his followers then and now, apart from me, you can do nothing.
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I just sensed God saying with maybe a bit of a snarky voice as only a divine snark could.
You know, Mindy, what part of nothing didn't you understand?
Maybe that was part of the reason why I really didn't ever blame God for what was happening.
It wasn't God's fault.
I knew if something had gone awry in the spiritual realm, it was most likely on my end, not his.
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So I kind of resisted that at first because like, what part of nothing don't you understand?
I mean, we're Bible believing people.
We know that Psalm 139 says there's nowhere I can go that's away from his present.
You know, Roman says that there's nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God,
not like death, angels, demons, nothing.
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So what did Jesus mean?
What did he mean when he was saying that?
And so it really put me in more disequilibrium spiritually than almost any of them.
But I think all of us have to get to that point of disequilibrium and honest, honest
wrestling, not just like slapping on, oh, I can do all things through Christ this time
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and then we just keep moving.
Like if you don't let the disequilibrium in, God can't kind of like shake it up and show
you a new way.
But by God's grace, I was shaken up enough that I've, he really did invite me into a
new way.
It did save my life.
Tell us about that journey of recovery and some of the principles God showed you and
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how they practically played out.
I'm a very practical person.
You know, how did they practically play out in your daily life?
And it's really fun.
I'll say that you mentioned some of the books.
The newest book that just came out a few months ago is the one that goes into this story in
greater detail than I've ever really done before in writing.
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I say it.
I share my story all the time and gladly in contexts like this.
And so there's lots of practical steps in there as well for folks if they're interested.
But yeah, to give you the highlights, it's sort of like in the big three categories,
it's like God led me, first of all, to realize I had never been taking care of my soul.
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My soul was saved, but I had no way of life that was allowing me to arrange for this real
time in the moment connection with God, this abiding, this remaining, whatever word you
want to put on it, where we are invited by Jesus to receive our life from Him moment by
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moment, day by day, not just a one time decision that I pray to prayer or whatever.
Those are important, but how are we finding a way of life to receive our life from God
moment by moment?
So that was sort of the punchline of where this journey took me, but it didn't start there.
I was, I was all over the map, Jody.
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I needed to learn ways, new ways of being in my own skin, knowing my limits, knowing,
like accepting who God had made me to be, right?
Being in my own skin, different ways of being with others, like a lot of my leadership training
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and stuff, everything was about like who was leading, who was following, friendship was
like in the fluffy zone, like who's got time for that.
And it's now I was starting to learn that, oh my goodness, there are some very powerful
ways of relating that God has designed us for that aren't about where someone is positioned
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next to someone else, but are about a way of being together.
And I think that's one of the most transformational things that God has made available to us is
these highly connected, open relationships.
So I had to learn how to be in my own skin differently.
I had to learn how to be with others more authentically, more vulnerably.
(33:32):
And then I did have to learn a different way of being with God.
I think I knew how to know things about God, but I didn't really know how to just be with
like the way you would with a friend.
Again, so much of my malformation was in performing, right?
It's like I knew how to produce, I knew how to get stuff done, I knew I was really good
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at that stuff.
I wasn't good at just being, being in my own skin, being with other people and being with
God.
And you've heard that before that, you know, we end up being human doings rather than human
beings.
And being is a different way.
(34:17):
That was a lot of my journey.
It was mentors, it was authors, it was friends, it was so many different, again, ways of being
that opened up everything that has happened to me since.
Because when you're living out of the overflow of a healthy soul, not a perfect soul, we're
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talking about health, which is a different dimension.
And when souls are healthy, they're vibrant.
They feel good to be in and they feel good to be around.
So you'd always had a strong faith and you knew that, you know, God wasn't at fault here,
(34:59):
but as you were going through this, how did that, how did your faith and your belief system
change?
How was it impacted by all of this?
Because, you know, you still knew Jesus was the way to salvation.
I think I was broadening what that meant, honestly.
Like the way to salvation, you know, the Romans wrote, you know, we know all those things.
I think, I mean, the root word in the Greek for salvation is the same as the word for
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healing.
And the idea that we are being healed over time, that we are being shaped and formed into
the image of Christ.
Like I think I thought that that formation process was like a bonus optional decision,
right?
Like you can make a decision to have Jesus be Savior, but it's a different decision to
(35:45):
have him be Lord.
Well, I think that's a false dichotomy.
And I think it's, I think we're reaping some of what we've sown with perhaps inadvertent
messages like that, where we want to compel people toward discipleship, but we end up
minimizing salvation and making discipleship optional.
(36:06):
And so reintegrating what a life of salvation, a life with God, a life lived in grace, what
that looks like in real time, instead of some intellectual decisions I've made about the
Bible or about who God is.
It was a complete reorientation of, yes, it was that same foundational faith.
(36:31):
But now it was like, I'm like struggling with words or a metaphor.
It's like it went from like this two dimensional thing that you thought you were looking at
a line.
And all of a sudden it turns and you realize, oh no, this is an entire canvas.
It opened up a whole different dimension for me of like what is happening right now?
(36:55):
How am I connecting to God right now?
Not what do I believe?
What is true in the Bible?
Those are important things, but where's the Lord and His presence and His goodness and
His grace to me right now?
And how am I creating paths to practically connect with that?
One of the things we talk about in Soul Care all the time, because I know you want some
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practical ideas, is we talk about the importance of a page, a person, and a plan.
And these are just about as basic as you can get.
And sometimes if people say to me, like, all right, you've convinced me, I probably should
or God has convinced me, I should probably take care of my soul.
What's the one thing I should do?
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And I don't think the whole of our life with God necessarily gets reduced to one thing,
but it helps to have an easy way to think about where to start.
And the page is a really important invitation into like journaling and reflection and taking
time to honor your own journey enough to pay attention to what is going on inside you.
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And the people that keep journals are explorers, and we are moving into uncharted territory
as well.
And ours is the future.
Who are we becoming?
What is God doing?
And how am I responding?
So journal is a big place to start being very real about what's true.
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And so that's a key part.
A page in the person is those connections.
Could be a person you pay, it could be a therapist, a coach, a spiritual director, those are all
really important ways.
Could also be a friend, somebody like my mom happened to meet who was a neighborhood friend
that was leading a Bible study.
Who is that person that's helping you on your journey of becoming?
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And then there's usually a plan.
I think we suffer if we think that we're just going to float downstream into greater intimacy
with God.
It's like you got to have a plan.
What is not rigid and mechanical, but intentionality.
And even within that plan, I have found that it's possible like forever.
(39:13):
I was having a quiet time every day, right?
Like you had to check it off your list.
You had a quiet time, you said your prayers, you did the laundry.
Again, this way of being in my own skin, being with others and being with God, I began to
realize that many times I might have burned through a 45 minute quiet time, but I had
never actually connected.
(39:35):
I'd never actually been open to God.
It was all, what am I learning?
Very mental.
What am I learning?
What should I do?
But more me thinking about it all, not me relating to God.
Yeah.
There are times.
I'm not really sure about our devotions, very task oriented.
I am a little bit more on the task oriented side and I've really had to learn how to focus
(40:00):
on the relationship side.
And yeah, you read, you pray, you, and then you do the next thing on your list.
And you can even write down a few thoughts in a journal.
I mean, you can, you know?
And still it's not the same thing as what you're talking about, which is getting real
with your struggles and putting them before God.
Yeah.
And letting your soul rest in God's care.
(40:22):
I didn't have categories for that.
And it, it was all sort of very mental, very analytical.
You know, as you learn to abide and remain in Christ, what changed in your life?
I felt like I was coming more and more to be who God had made me to be.
Like I felt, and I felt like I was being invited into this wild adventure that I didn't
(40:49):
plan on or expect.
So like everything that has happened through soul care over these many now decades, honestly
was never part of like a five year plan or like me figuring out where did I want to go
work and submitting resumes.
Like it just wasn't, it wasn't pushed.
Like I wasn't ever pushing.
(41:10):
You get to live this life of freedom and invitation and yet what spills out over the edges of
your life is things that somehow help other people.
And it's the funnest thing in the world to, to be invited by God into what he's doing
(41:33):
in our day.
And so like all these ideas about soul care and resources that we could create and journals
and like I just, they just would unfold.
They would just happen and doors that I didn't even know existed.
It's just like me taking care of my three kids, spending time with God, working out at
(41:55):
the health club, like just living my life.
And then doors would open for me to do other things that had God's fingerprints all over
them.
It wasn't striving.
It wasn't, I didn't have a plan.
It just was a unfolding and unfolding that was such a blessing.
I think that would be one of the markers of the difference is that, that, that sense
(42:20):
of living out of overflow versus the hustle and grind that even in many Christian contexts,
we think is how we're supposed to approach ministry or our spirit to life.
And it's like, that doesn't sound a lot like, I don't know, through the spirit.
The unforced rhythms of grace to use Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Matthew 11.
(42:47):
And the contrast, I think to those who encounter your life is massive, but the contrast even
internally, you're just so much more free.
And you know, that, that wasn't the end of your life's challenges.
Clearly, the one, the one soul implosion, but now you really started approaching them
differently.
(43:08):
So just share a couple of examples.
And I got to tell you, it changes everything because once you know how to receive your
life from God, wherever God takes you, whatever circumstances befall, you are able to be
well.
You can be fundamentally well no matter what.
And you're right.
Again, that book we've talked about that we had these terrible wildfires in Boulder three
(43:34):
years ago, the ones that just happened a couple of weeks ago in LA have been very poignant
reminders of what that was like.
And that was what impacted our community and some land we have out here in Boulder.
Just devastating and, and very disruptive.
But if it hadn't been for these, these ways I know how to anchor my soul in God, which
(43:58):
takes time or none of your time, it's how you are with God.
And it's, it's helped me and I, you know, I've had challenges with my work assignments
and I mean, I've served in some pretty high intensity leadership contexts and that always
comes with challenge and that's not bad.
(44:20):
That's not wrong.
There's things that God wants us to, to contend for and to show up in our world, but out of
overflow, not out of grindy or proving or just all kinds of things that can malfunction
if we're not living in that overflow.
I was just reading the end of the book of Acts this morning and it's like, you cannot
(44:43):
tell me that Paul and Peter and all these other guys thought they were getting a life
of bliss in following Jesus.
Like that isn't what anybody of us signs up for.
Our life is a living sacrifice and it's possible to live that life with circumstances that
(45:07):
are pleasant as Paul talks about or circumstances that are devastating, but we're held, we're
held and we're receiving our life from God moment by moment in it through many dangers,
toils and snares, I have already come and if it's grace, not a one time forgiveness
(45:29):
grace, if it's grace as Dallas will define it as the active presence of God doing for
us what we cannot do on our own behalf.
If it's grace that's brought me safe this far, it will be grace that leads us home,
that brings me home.
So what does God have you doing now?
You've mentioned soul care.
Yeah.
(45:49):
Yeah.
So you're into that organization and it's really birthed.
Well, I did.
Yeah, well God did, but yeah, it's an ancient term, soul care, the care of souls.
And really the URL was available when I was first creating those soul care journals back
in 1997 and 98.
(46:09):
So this is a long time ago.
So I was able to grab the URL and over these past decades it's had different expressions,
but when I finally left my last corporate job, which I loved, I loved the team, I loved
the mission of the organization, but in the wake of the pandemic, I felt like this is
the time in my life where I want to see if I can't give as much lift to this topic globally
(46:33):
as possible.
And so what are the teams, what are the tech platforms, what are the digital environments,
what are the in person environments?
How can we pull together what now soul care is becoming?
So there's a whole team of us now that are creatives and spiritual directors and coaches
and all kinds of amazing people, other communicators like myself.
(46:58):
And it's like, all right, what are the resources?
What are the emails that could show up on a regular basis that invite people to take
a breath and do a soul care check in?
How could we embed monthly retreat into our year round engagement with people?
And what does that monthly retreat and digital spaces look like?
(47:18):
So anyway, it's been a fun challenge and had many amazing partners along the way with
the ECFA and National Christian Foundation get to serve great organizations like Compassion
and some of the amazing churches in our country and around the world.
And so I, it's a sweet season.
So we're trying to figure out how to get that ranch up and off the ground.
(47:40):
There's a couple of little small bungalow type sheds.
I mean, they're nicer than a shed that you keep a lawn mower in.
They're like got nice leather couches and stuff in them, but, but people can overnight
and have these beautiful views and, and rest in God.
And so that we call it whisper ranch.
So yeah, my time right now is soul care whisper ranch and now a grandson or boys are my daughters
(48:10):
in law who are amazing.
It's a sweet season.
I just have so much gratitude to the Lord.
Like you could never, you could never from that first night I was hospitalized in March
of 1995.
You could never, no one could have imagined the journey.
(48:33):
You know, the Lord says, no, I have seen no ear has heard what God is going to do.
And oh, for everyone listening for you yourself, Tony, like it's like, I would not want you
to miss one thing of what God has for you that's coming out of overflow.
He wants to reach his people.
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You know, I've been in Christian ministry, my, you know, almost my whole career as well.
And there's a tendency among people, particularly in vocational ministry, but not, not solely
in vocational ministry to struggle with the idea of self care.
When we're also trying to live out the scriptures of let's take up our cross daily, let's die
(49:16):
to self.
And how do, how do you balance that?
What balance have you found?
What advice do you give that comes up a lot, especially when we're talking with like mission
organizations and things like that.
Um, first, let's go back to that, you know, taking up our cross daily.
(49:38):
That is not an optional.
That is what Jesus invites us into, right?
Again, living is a living sacrifice.
These are these are important thing.
I've been crucified in crisis no longer I live and Christ that lives in me.
The life I now live in this body, I live by faith, you know, there's all these, and those,
some of those were quite formative to me in my recovery.
(50:00):
Cause it's like, if I ever get my life in the body back, like this is the path.
This living by faith is something I need to learn.
I mentor mine, one of the women who influenced me most used to give a really kind of wrenching,
gut wrenching talk to leaders.
And it was called, I died to myself and myself almost died.
(50:25):
And she in it raises the idea that there are ways that were to die to self.
This is how I talk about it.
We die to our self will.
We die to our self orientation.
We die to our agendas.
We die to our control.
(50:46):
There are things we need to die to early and often.
And a lot of times Christian leaders haven't died to any of those things in the name of
what they think they're dying to.
Those are the things that we die to getting sufficient rest, honoring a Sabbath, going
(51:06):
for years without a vacation.
Those are not, in my view, what Jesus was asking us to give up.
And do we give up our self orientation, selfishness, self, pretty much anything self-hyphenated?
I've shared this before on my podcast.
So some of my listeners may have heard this, but when I was in my early 30s, I was in a
(51:29):
ministry, a humanitarian ministry, and I was traveling all over the world.
And I was saying yes to every project that came.
I would raise my hand.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
And one day I remember waking up.
I didn't even know where I was.
I was not in the United States.
I woke up in this hotel room and I thought, I love everything I'm doing, but I hate my
life.
(51:50):
And it was a wake-up call to me.
I was like, I've said yes to everything without asking God if I was supposed to say yes to
that.
And I was burned out.
I had traveled on weekends to save ministry money.
I had done all of these things.
I've missed family events.
I've missed church a lot.
I disconnected from friends.
(52:11):
And it took me about a year.
I went home and I went home to my boss and I'm like, I can't do it anymore.
Fortunately, he was a pastor.
He had a pastoral heart and said, okay, let's put some boundaries in your life and didn't
shame me for it.
It took me about a year to kind of feel healthy again in my spirit, in my soul.
(52:32):
They used to say in the 80s, I'd rather burn out than rest out.
Well, the level of burnout among those leaders that you're talking about who might be like,
oh, it's selfish to do this.
I couldn't disagree more, first of all.
And they're all burning out.
And no one wants their jobs because no one wants their lives.
So 20 years from now, those missions organizations, if they don't find a different way of doing
(52:57):
this, they're just going to be gone.
These things are crumbling right now for having lived such unhealthy patterns of leadership
and life.
People are not flourishing and they are killing themselves in order to give other people a
message of life, which has all levels of irony that I can't even handle.
(53:19):
Yeah.
I mean, I'm glad I had that experience when I was young and I was fairly resilient.
I didn't have a family at that time.
And I mean, you know, a family, I had a family origin, of course, but not, I wasn't caring
for anyone else but just me.
But you know, it enabled me to really be on the lookout for others around me that I was
(53:40):
working with that were doing that.
So I could say, hey, you know, back off, take a vacation.
You don't need to work until nine o'clock at night.
I mean, what are you supposed to love one another?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as what?
As yourself.
And so not self obsessed, not self whatever, but caring for yourself is just wise.
(54:04):
Are there times of sacrifice?
Absolutely.
Are there times of great discomfort and pain and endurance?
Yes.
Is there suffering?
Is there persecution?
Yes.
Are you living a life that is beyond what God has assigned to you in terms of self generated
suffering?
Well, that's on you.
Self care usually gets defined in our culture as, you know, a good nourishing meal, making
(54:28):
sure you're working out, having a bubble bath, you know, these kinds of things, which I think
in general are innocuous and lovely.
And I would think, I think God would be honored if more of us ate healthy food and worked out
a little bit more.
I think that's not a bad thing.
And it is.
I mean, there's all kinds of data around how that drives our mental health, drives everything
(54:51):
else.
So that self care is important.
The reason I distinguish it a little bit from soul care is a little bit like how you
can have a 45 minute quiet time and not really connect with God.
I think it's possible to have a bubble bath, a good workout and eat a very nutritious meal
and whatever other things you might put in that category of self care and not ever open
(55:14):
your soul to God.
And it's not to say that every workout you should figure out how to cram like my awareness
of God into that, like maybe that comes, that's great.
But like let a workout be a workout.
Do your self care.
But don't assume that because you're doing self care, your soul is finding a way of life
(55:35):
of being open to the living God.
That is a, it may be a separate category and it is one that we must as a first order priority
make sure we're pursuing.
Yeah, I remember one, one day I was in Columbia and I was walking through a barrio massive,
(55:56):
massive, went on as far as the eye could see and I was walking through saying, God, how
can I help all these people?
How can I do it Lord?
I mean, I'm just little old me.
I mean, I had an organization behind, I was representing an organization, but you know,
we didn't have the capacity to do this.
And I heard him say, if Jesus were here, what would Jesus do?
(56:20):
And it was just take care of the one in front of them.
I mean, Jesus did heal thousands of course, but it was, he also walked away from thousands.
He didn't heal everybody.
They were still people that were being healed by the disciples after Jesus went to heaven
that had been there on the earth when Jesus was there.
(56:41):
And it just freed me a little bit from the responsibility to be the savior of everyone.
Yes, yes.
Well, and that's even a word for single women.
I've got several friends who they look at their coworkers and they're like, oh, you
need time with your spouse.
You should probably get home be with the kids and they take on more and more and more.
And it's just not healthy.
(57:02):
It's not that comes from a pure and sweet and servant heart, but it also comes from
a profound lack of awareness or regard for the value of their own soul.
Like, and they'll say like, well, how can my well being matter when all these other,
(57:22):
all this other suffering is, is going on?
And I'm not saying those are easy things to navigate, but we have got to recover a way
of navigating those things from a place of biblical and personal integrity in order to
have the ability to say no so that like what you experienced doesn't become the norm.
(57:46):
Yes, we close.
Mindy, would you share briefly about a woman in the Bible whose story has inspired, encouraged
or taught you something?
Of course I love Deborah.
I'm like, who was that woman?
The bumblebee who's the mother of Israel.
Like what kind of leader was she?
Okay, so I'm curious about her.
I want to meet her someday.
(58:06):
But the woman who really probably inspires me more often than that is actually Mary,
Jesus' mother.
And I think, you know, there is a woman who literally got entrusted one of the most assigned,
most important assignments that was ever given other than the one given to Jesus himself,
right?
(58:27):
That was not a carefree and easy task.
She's having to respond to angels at many different points, has to watch her son go
through unbelievable suffering.
She didn't sign up for the easy trip, right?
But she did sign up for life and God was able to entrust something to her because of her
(58:49):
ability to say, may it be done according to your holy will.
You know, whatever it is, whatever it is, God, my answer is yes.
I love that about her.
Andrew Murray in his book, Abiding Christ, I love this quote.
He says, our abiding in Jesus is even more than a relationship, a fellowship of love.
It's a fellowship of life.
(59:11):
I love that.
And you know, John 15.5 tells us that when we strive in our own strength, like we've
said a couple of times in this podcast, we can do nothing.
But as we've heard, Mindy, as you've shared when we remain in Christ, his life flows through
us.
(59:31):
Mindy, would you just take a moment and pray for our listeners?
I would love to.
I would love to.
Hey, everyone, wherever you are, if you can, join us with you.
Maybe your hands open.
Thank God each person who's listening right now, wherever they are, we ask for you to
bless them.
We ask for you to restore things that have felt lost along the way, maybe the health
(59:56):
of their soul, maybe relationships, maybe friendships, maybe even just a sincere or
intimacy with you.
Whatever is lost along the way, God, we pray that you would restore it.
If it's even physical healing that you would bring healing.
(01:00:18):
And God, whatever you've equipped them uniquely to do, each one, God, as they open their hands
to you, would you fill those hands?
Not with more than they can handle, but with exactly what is theirs to do, not more.
And God, I pray that through their attending to the things you put in their hands, that
(01:00:40):
you would do those things that only you could do, that you would redeem and restore those
barrios, those neighborhoods, those brothels, those corporate entities, whatever it is,
God, that where you've placed your people, God, I pray that the redeeming and restoring
(01:01:01):
of all things to yourself would be happening through us.
You said your burden would be easy.
Your yoke would be easy and the burden would be light.
So God, that's the last thing I ask.
Is it each one listening would encounter you in a new and fresh way that allows whatever
(01:01:21):
it is that you've asked them to shoulder to be easy and the burden to be light?
You're praying in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, thank you for tuning in.
Check out our show notes at hergodstory.org for scriptures and other information we talked
about.
There you can also download a free six-week devotional on Women of the Bible and consider
(01:01:42):
joining our company of women by supporting our Wittow and Orphan Fund.
We'd also love to pray with you on our 24-7 prayer and text line.
So give us a call or text anytime at 855-459-CARE or email us at prayer at somebodycares.org.
And now dear friends, I bless you from an adaptation of John 15, verses 9 through 12.
(01:02:04):
May you remain in God's love, keeping His commands so that His joy may be in you and
that your joy may be complete.
Her God Story is a ministry of Somebody Cares America and International.
To find out more about or support the ministry, go to somebodycares.org.
Hey friends, welcome to the Herb God Story podcast where you will always hear a good
(00:04):
story to encourage and inspire you in your walk with the Lord.
You'll be so glad you tuned in.
I'm your host, Jodie Chiricosta, ministry leader at Somebody Cares America, an international
author and traveler on this journey with Jesus.
God cares deeply about the overlooked and hurting among us, and He has a very special
place in His heart for widows and orphans.
(00:27):
Over and over again in Scripture, He directs us to care for widows and orphans, which is
why Somebody Cares created the Widow and Orphan Fund.
As a company together, we can do so much to take care of the special needs of those He's
put in the care of our ministry partners around the world.
Recently, we funded the delivery of essential care packages to five destitute women in Africa
(00:51):
who are struggling to put food on their table for their children.
And while this is only temporary help, efforts are underway to provide monthly assistance
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Because of the gifts of so many of you dear friends, these precious women know that God
has heard their cries and is answering with tangible help.
(01:12):
Please pray about joining our number with a gift at hergodstory.org and click on Help
Now.
We even accept many forms of cryptocurrency.
In John 15, God shares some startling truth.
Verses 1-5 in the New King James Version reads,
I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser.
(01:34):
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.
And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.
You are already clean because of the word which I've spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you.
Because the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you
unless you abide in me.
(01:56):
I am the vine, you are the branches.
He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit.
For without me, you can do nothing.
Modern translations use the word remain in place of abide, but I like the powerful description
of abide.
(02:16):
It's the life that Christ calls us to.
Christ's New World Dictionary defines it as to stand fast, remain, go on being, to
await, stay, reside.
The American Heritage Bible, a dictionary says, to wait patiently for.
But how can any of us have time to do that?
Paul Schappell, in his book, Abiding in Christ, articulates our dilemma, saying, we live in
(02:40):
a fast-paced society.
We're used to quick results.
It seems that much of our time and money is spent trying to save time, to do things faster,
more efficient, and with less effort.
We hurry through our daily tasks so we could move on to something more important.
Our to-do lists are longer than the amount of time we have to get them done, and there's
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seemingly no end in sight.
Abide is not part of our modern vocabulary.
New people abide anywhere with anyone in today's culture who has time to abide.
But if we read on in John 15, we realize our very life depends on it.
My guest, Mindy Caliguire, has learned this truth.
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Mindy is the co-founder and president of Soul Care, having served in executive leadership
at GLU and the Willow Creek Association.
She speaks and advises into organizations like Compassion International, the National
Christian Foundation, and many churches and ministries around the world.
And she's written books, including Discovering Soul Care, Spiritual Friendship, Stir, and
(03:47):
Ignite Your Soul.
Mindy lives in Colorado with her loving husband.
They have three married adult children, one grandchild, and three dogs.
Welcome, Mindy.
Oh, thank you so much.
I'm delighted to be with you and to be with those who are listening today.
It's awesome.
Thank you.
Mindy being introduced to us, having three dogs now, because we just got two more.
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And it's a little bit crazy around here right now.
Well, we're both dog lovers, so I just had to mention it.
I love it.
I'm glad you did.
So Mindy, what were your early years like, and how did they shape your relationship with
Christ?
My early years were actually kind of a lot of that kind of chaos with puppies and extra
people around all the time.
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I actually grew up in a large family.
I'm the oldest of seven children, and my parents were from Western New York area.
My dad had gone to graduate school.
We joked that I was a honeymoon baby.
Was the first of this tribe that was significant in my own sort of development, what shaped
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me in terms of my love for community, my love for a little bit of chaos, and a sense of
home that matters.
And then spiritually, the sort of tenor of our family was heavily marked by my parents
being very devoted in their Catholic faith.
And so they were early front runners in the folk mass movement in the mid-60s.
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My dad was one of the first people playing a guitar at the front of a Catholic church.
And then they got very involved in the marriage encounter movement, which has helped people
all over the world.
But I would say there was a time in the mid-70s when they encountered Jesus in a more dramatic
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way.
My mom had been invited to a neighborhood Bible study, a bunch of women, some of whom
I think were in a Baptist church or who knows where, but she had never read firsthand, even
though she'd gone to all these Catholic schools and been faithfully attending mass and all
these other things, had never really been encouraged to read the Bible for herself.
She just was so captivated with the person of Jesus and began her own faith journey.
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And my dad was a developmental biologist.
And so his approach to the Bible was absorb it, understand everything, and he was as likely
to quote something from Amos as Ephesians.
He just absorbed it and saw it all as a whole.
And so for me growing up, it was a very integrated faith.
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If we had to sell the house and the market wasn't good, my parents would invite the kids
too fast and pray with them.
And so their journey just was very significant in my formation and in my family's formation.
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There were times even when after we had sort of left the Catholic church and then when
we moved to a small town, that was really the main church in town.
And so we went back and I ended up going through confirmation and several of the younger siblings
ended up getting baptized.
But my dad took very seriously the role of his being sort of a priest of our family and
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he would come home on Sundays and we would all be bickering about who's going to get
what kind of donuts because we had stopped at the donut place.
But dad and mom would sit us down and go back over the scriptures that had been read in
the mass and help us understand what they were all about.
So it was a very, very vibrant experience of faith, high expectation that if we prayed,
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God would do things.
And if the Bible said it, that's how we would live our lives.
Yeah, I love that because my parents came to Christ around the same time in the early
70s and also really had that integrative faith and let our family together and growing in
the Lord together, reading the Bible together, talking about it, praying together, sharing
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what we were praying about and praising God for the answers when they came.
And it marked me because I knew God was alive.
God is alive.
I do have friends who grew up in a very, like a very devoted or committed, I'll say, family
to a Christian expression of some kind.
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But it was completely, utterly divorced from actual life.
It was, you know, we go, we do the thing, it matters that we go.
And there was a high priority, but it just didn't relate to the rest of life.
Didn't inform their life.
Correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, as you moved into adulthood, your faith really did inform your life and your decisions.
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So where did that lead you?
I went to a very secular university and, and sort of, I think, wandered a little bit, not
knowing how to integrate my faith.
I tried a couple of different campus ministries and where I went to school, they thought they
were cults.
So I was in the library at the man library at the Cornell College of Agriculture and
(09:10):
Life Sciences.
And I was studying for microbiology and I love the sciences.
I love all that stuff.
But I, I was sort of meandering.
I hadn't really anchored in any faith experience and I, I almost knew better.
Like I knew too much of the Bible, but I just, I couldn't find anything that felt relevant.
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And I probably wasn't trying all that hard, but I just hadn't.
And I was reading this microbiology and I remember this textbook and I remember sitting
at a big table in this public, you know, in the library and just putting my head down
in the middle of the crease of this book.
And of course, I don't remember what I was studying besides the broad topic, but I had,
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I remember feeling like, what difference does it make?
What difference does it make?
If I'm learning this, what difference does it make if I'm even alive?
I mean, it wasn't anything like suicidal.
I wasn't depressed or anything.
It just was like, why does any of this matter?
Why does it matter?
And so I just felt like at my head was in it and I was like, why, why does any of this
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matter?
I just sort of prayed like God, if you want to find me in this space, if this stuff does
matter, my life matters, I need help.
And then as one does, I just sort of picked up my head and started reading again.
In minutes, a tap comes on my shoulder and a friend who I had known through the sort of
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fraternity scene and he knew I had a faith.
I knew he had a faith, but it wasn't like the driving force of our life at that point.
But in both of our families of origin, it had been.
And he said, I just want you to know, I've started going to this Bible study at the Sigma
Chi house and these people are kind of like normal.
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And I think you would enjoy it.
And so if you ever want to go, let me know, I'd be happy to bring you.
And that Sigma Chi house was a rival to his fraternity.
And so I thought, must be God.
Yeah, if you going there.
And I went and sure enough, the man who was co-leading it in his fraternity room, the Bible
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study is now my husband.
And we began dating and it was a season of the lights all starting to come back on for
me.
Like, I knew so much truth from my childhood, but I hadn't been with peers.
And it's a whole different thing when you're with your parents, friends and your own siblings
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versus you're sitting around with a bunch of other college students who are reading a
verse on prayer and talking about midterms and talking about fraternity and sorority
rush and talking about their wrestling team or whatever.
And it was a very compelling environment.
And all of the like sort of backstory of my life just came rushing to the fore.
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And this is such an encouragement to people who are raising their kids and going like,
I don't know if they're ever going to follow Jesus.
And then the light bulb comes on at some point that's outside of their control.
And all of that building into just came forward.
So anyway, that's what we did.
My husband or that boyfriend at that time.
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And I really, we got involved with Campus Crusade, which is what it was at the time.
And it's like, what else do you want to do but give your life to the Great Commission,
to the purposes of God in our world.
And I didn't think that only meant vocational ministry.
It could mean any number of assignments that God brings.
But our orientation is what is God inviting me into and how am I following him.
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And so, the conclusion of undergrad, my husband really wanted to go into seminary.
So he went to Dallas Theological Seminary and I got, we got married a year later.
Again, my sort of propensity to pull a lot of things together.
I graduated one week and walked down the aisle the next week in June of 1987.
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So a long time ago now.
And then when it was at Dallas, so I just was in the marketplace.
I just found work in the area and you know, so that was it.
They say that I got my Ph.T. for putting hubby through.
So he graduated from seminary and then became a pastor.
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He became a pastor's wife.
What happened was he took a couple years to do internships.
So he did one internship up in Connecticut for a year.
So I got a different job up in Connecticut and then we moved down to Dallas for him to
complete.
And then we learned about a church doing evangelism and discipleship, which of course that was
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our now our big heart drive.
And there was a church that was doing that.
We also, he had professors at seminary, Aubrey Malfers and others who were talking about
church planting as being the primary way in a vocational traditional church kind of setting
where some of the aspirational goals of a paratroop organization were actually being realized
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where evangelism was a priority and discipleship was a priority, which praise be to God, many
churches that is a higher and more explicit priority now.
But at that time, it was not common to hear churches talking about what their strategy
for evangelism or discipleship was.
And so we were, we both ended up applying for an internship, a church planting internship.
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So that had great alignment to what we were concerned with that was being offered at Willow
Creek Community Church up in the suburbs of Chicago.
So we did a church planting internship for a year.
And it was after that that he became a pastor.
We both had been on the staff of that church, but we, yeah, that's what we did.
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So just tell one or two things.
I knew you had been working in business and then you go to a church planting internship.
What did God do or teach you during that year?
It had to be a total shift of mind.
There were a lot of things, a couple of things.
Willow Creek was, was even at that point large enough compared to many other churches that
the, the more business environments that I had been involved, they brought that level
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of professionalism to ministry.
And so in some ways it was like, Oh, these people are serious about this stuff.
They're serious about their faith.
They're serious about all this stuff.
And so it was, it was almost reassuring to find a cultural familiarity with the level
of intensity to the gospel, but professionalism brought to the systems of, of a ministry.
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But I think another really big transformational thing for me while we were interns there,
my husband has more natural gifts in evangelism.
I would say my gifts lie more in discipleships, spiritual formation, teaching, edification,
that kind of stuff.
Compared to being an intern at Willow, I kind of held this little dark secret view in my
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head, which was like, if somebody doesn't want to follow Jesus, like that's, that's
up to them.
Like it's not our job to like, I don't know.
I, you would think after being with Campus Crusade, I would have been very, very highly
always evangelistically motivated, but that's my confession.
I'm not proud of this.
What shifted for me that year, this was in 19, what year were we there?
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1990.
Okay.
So Willow was only 15 years old at the time.
It was not what it became over time.
And with their mission to help lost people become fully devoted followers of Christ, they
were very focused on how are we reaching out to people.
And on any given Sunday, you would be sitting in their weekend services, which was basically
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their church as it were services happened midweek, but there every weekend they were
putting on evangelism sessions that were the time an invited guest might come to church,
thinking it was church.
So they, it was really focused evangelistically on the weekends.
On any given Sunday, you'd sit in the service and, you know, person to the right, person
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to the left, statistically, one of those two people did not follow Jesus at all.
And I had never been in an environment like that, that was so fruitful with people coming
to faith and then for the very first time, then these, these was, I mean, the statistics
they used to throw around years and years ago was like it was 85% conversion growth.
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And like that's exciting.
They weren't just pulling from other believers at churches that, you know, as often can happen
when a new more contemporary church comes along.
Like this was, this was conversion growth.
And I was humbled by that.
I learned that the professionalism that could be brought to ministry was good.
I felt God's heart for why we leave the 99 to go after the one.
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I was mentored by many people, other women who were in leadership, ministry leadership,
and men as well who were very articulate about the interior life and how the interior life
really matters for all the things that we care about and matters to God.
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And back at that time, I think we were so focused on making sure people believe the
right things that we weren't necessarily paying attention to the inner journey, to the inner
story.
I didn't myself do as much journeying as I eventually did while there, but I will say
that it was the beginning of, of me having a growing awareness.
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For example, one of my mentors required a required reading that I had that year was,
I think it was Henry Cloud's first book that he and John Townsend wrote.
And it was, I remember thinking this is like stuff I've never heard before, never read
before, but it was terribly edited.
And so it just, it was a thick, like you had to work really hard to understand what they
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were saying.
And at the same time, it was like, this is life changing.
It did eventually get republished and edited more holistically under a title that people
may be familiar with, which was called changes that heal.
Changes that heal became one of their first and even boundaries, their sort of landmark
book came out of the framework that was introduced in this changes that heal.
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But my goodness, I had never, never encountered somebody who was really plumbing the depths
both biblically and psychologically and helping us connect those dots.
So it was a powerful year for me, very transformational.
Well, that's a new concept for I think many, many people because we spend so much time
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on learning the scripture that it is difficult to integrate it all into our life as a human.
But we'll talk more about that later.
So after you were an intern, you and your husband felt called to Boston where you planted
a church and cheer about your time in Boston.
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And really how that led to a crisis that really did change your life and even transformed
your relationship with God.
This is one of those stories that you're happy to share if it ever helped somebody else,
right?
We went to Boston, which is a hard ministry context and church planting is not an easy
ride.
So we were doing a hard thing in a very difficult place and we did it in the hardest possible
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way.
We had no sending organization.
We had no sending funding.
We had no oversight to speak of other than friends.
And so we started our own 501c3, handled all the taxes, banking, everything.
And by God's grace, he very clearly led us.
And there was a little core group of people that started to come around it.
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I had no, well, it was back to that boundaries idea.
I had no real boundaries.
And if something needed to be done, then I was stepping up as hard as I could to try
to make sure that happened.
And again, part of my family of origin, right?
It's like you're a hyper responsible person and you're taking care of people and that's
what we do.
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And so when you add God layers onto it, it makes it even more difficult to ever say,
no.
And that's too much or I'm already doing this and I need space and I couldn't say any of
that stuff.
And so, you know, about five years midway, what became a 10 year beautiful season in
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Boston, but five years in, I woke up one day with some pretty severe neurological symptoms,
stuff in my optic nerve and brain and all this stuff and had me extremely ill, couldn't
hold down food, couldn't see straight, couldn't walk, couldn't drive, couldn't read, couldn't
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write, couldn't watch television, couldn't do anything.
And it pushed me into a very unwelcome season of forced rest.
I was at that time kind of running the whole back end of the ministry.
So all the finances, I was handling all that, all the communications, a lot of the administration
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of a church and also trying to encourage my husband.
He at that point, like we both responded to the stress of Boston in different ways.
He started to kind of spiral into a bit of a depression that probably by the time this
happened to me, he was probably in a full on chemical depression where your brain is
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like actually reinforcing what might have started as a circumstantial kind of situation,
but now is turning biological, which we had no language for.
I can say these words right now, but I didn't have any words for that.
We had no idea what was going on and my reaction was to overwork.
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Like, I got to keep him together, I got to take care of this two-year-old, I'm pregnant,
oh, and I was like leaving three different small groups.
So it's like all of these things were happening all at once and I just kept responding to
it with more and more productivity because I didn't have any other way.
I had to get hospitalized several times because I kept dehydrating so badly I went into premature
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labor and the baby was too small, we couldn't do that.
Oh man, it was a very hard season.
Yeah, and those physical symptoms, they were just the outward sign of what you referred
to as the implosion of your soul.
And I mean, that's kind of like what?
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What does that mean?
Explain, explain what you mean by that.
And the very real and spiritual and emotional turmoil you were undergoing.
Yeah, there was a lot.
On the mental side, I couldn't handle knowing that all these balls that I was working so
hard to keep in the air, they were dropping right and left.
So that was like heavy on my heart.
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And finally, I couldn't meet what Jeff needed.
So what's going to happen if he's not well and I'm not well and what if I never get better?
And so emotionally I was spiraling.
I may have told you that one of the neurologists, because I was spiraling so badly, one of the
times I was hospitalized, the neurologist, he pulled my husband aside and said, look,
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this baby is coming, whether or not she's better and you got to start getting ready
for that.
And which of course, he was so incapacitated, like that he wasn't really able to respond
to that.
But anyway, I hear that this is what the guy is saying and I am wailing in despair.
Like I can't, don't tell me I can't take care of my newborn, don't tell me, like I just was
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irrational and miserable.
And this neurologist stood by my bed and I mean, and I'm like, you know, puking my guts
out in one of those little kidney bowls.
I mean, it was such a mess.
And he says to me in the loveliest bedside manners, Ms. Caliguire, basically you have
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two choices right now.
You can either accept this and make the best of it or you can make yourself and everyone
around you miserable.
And he walked out of the room.
So anyway, I'm just telling you, there was physical, mental, emotional, and he told
my husband, you better get her with some sort of a counselor or something to try to give
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her emotional support because if she keeps spiraling, it's going to compromise her ability
to get better because your physical health is so tied, which I didn't know at the time,
so tied to emotional, spiritual, mental well-being.
I didn't know that.
I thought those were totally different categories.
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So I traipse myself down to Dr. Lombardi's office.
God bless Dr. Lombardi.
I think there were only three Christian psychologists in all of New England and one of them was
down the street from where we lived.
And so even though I couldn't drive or walk, Dr. Lombardi had space in his calendar for
me.
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And the first time we met, I told him a little bit about the last five years and what we've
been going through and some of my family of origin and things like that.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, Mindy, I can't speak to what's going on biologically,
you know, all this stuff.
It was a cerebellum and optic nerve and all this.
But from a psychological standpoint, you have forced out of your body what could never
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come out of your mouth, just the word no, which leaves us to the spiritual side.
So you know, you asked about these very specific things and I will say the spiritual side was
probably the most confusing of all, because I kind of started out this journey of being
in forced rest a little like, hey, God, you know, what gives?
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I'm on your team.
This is not strategic.
There's all this stuff that needs to happen.
And silence.
Just try telling God that something he's doing is not strategic.
Oh, really?
Oh, the arrogance.
So hard to admit.
And then God's tenderness is so kind.
So in the middle of the night, often I couldn't sleep.
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And if there are listeners who have been in that space, when you are really ill, sometimes
you just can't sleep at night because you're not getting normal amounts of movement during
the day.
There's probably a ton of reasons, but you can't sleep.
And during one of those episodes when I was up at night, and kind of just arguing with
God about the whole thing, I really sensed him saying to me, you know, you remember that
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verse you were having all three of your small groups memorize?
And you read it at the beginning of our time, John 15.5.
If you remain in me, you'll bear much fruit.
We love that part.
But the second half is also scripture.
And Jesus said to his followers then and now, apart from me, you can do nothing.
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I just sensed God saying with maybe a bit of a snarky voice as only a divine snark could.
You know, Mindy, what part of nothing didn't you understand?
Maybe that was part of the reason why I really didn't ever blame God for what was happening.
It wasn't God's fault.
I knew if something had gone awry in the spiritual realm, it was most likely on my end, not his.
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So I kind of resisted that at first because like, what part of nothing don't you understand?
I mean, we're Bible believing people.
We know that Psalm 139 says there's nowhere I can go that's away from his present.
You know, Roman says that there's nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God,
not like death, angels, demons, nothing.
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So what did Jesus mean?
What did he mean when he was saying that?
And so it really put me in more disequilibrium spiritually than almost any of them.
But I think all of us have to get to that point of disequilibrium and honest, honest
wrestling, not just like slapping on, oh, I can do all things through Christ this time
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and then we just keep moving.
Like if you don't let the disequilibrium in, God can't kind of like shake it up and show
you a new way.
But by God's grace, I was shaken up enough that I've, he really did invite me into a
new way.
It did save my life.
Tell us about that journey of recovery and some of the principles God showed you and
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how they practically played out.
I'm a very practical person.
You know, how did they practically play out in your daily life?
And it's really fun.
I'll say that you mentioned some of the books.
The newest book that just came out a few months ago is the one that goes into this story in
greater detail than I've ever really done before in writing.
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I say it.
I share my story all the time and gladly in contexts like this.
And so there's lots of practical steps in there as well for folks if they're interested.
But yeah, to give you the highlights, it's sort of like in the big three categories,
it's like God led me, first of all, to realize I had never been taking care of my soul.
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My soul was saved, but I had no way of life that was allowing me to arrange for this real
time in the moment connection with God, this abiding, this remaining, whatever word you
want to put on it, where we are invited by Jesus to receive our life from Him moment by
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moment, day by day, not just a one time decision that I pray to prayer or whatever.
Those are important, but how are we finding a way of life to receive our life from God
moment by moment?
So that was sort of the punchline of where this journey took me, but it didn't start there.
I was, I was all over the map, Jody.
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I needed to learn ways, new ways of being in my own skin, knowing my limits, knowing,
like accepting who God had made me to be, right?
Being in my own skin, different ways of being with others, like a lot of my leadership training
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and stuff, everything was about like who was leading, who was following, friendship was
like in the fluffy zone, like who's got time for that.
And it's now I was starting to learn that, oh my goodness, there are some very powerful
ways of relating that God has designed us for that aren't about where someone is positioned
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next to someone else, but are about a way of being together.
And I think that's one of the most transformational things that God has made available to us is
these highly connected, open relationships.
So I had to learn how to be in my own skin differently.
I had to learn how to be with others more authentically, more vulnerably.
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And then I did have to learn a different way of being with God.
I think I knew how to know things about God, but I didn't really know how to just be with
like the way you would with a friend.
Again, so much of my malformation was in performing, right?
It's like I knew how to produce, I knew how to get stuff done, I knew I was really good
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at that stuff.
I wasn't good at just being, being in my own skin, being with other people and being with
God.
And you've heard that before that, you know, we end up being human doings rather than human
beings.
And being is a different way.
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That was a lot of my journey.
It was mentors, it was authors, it was friends, it was so many different, again, ways of being
that opened up everything that has happened to me since.
Because when you're living out of the overflow of a healthy soul, not a perfect soul, we're
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talking about health, which is a different dimension.
And when souls are healthy, they're vibrant.
They feel good to be in and they feel good to be around.
So you'd always had a strong faith and you knew that, you know, God wasn't at fault here,
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but as you were going through this, how did that, how did your faith and your belief system
change?
How was it impacted by all of this?
Because, you know, you still knew Jesus was the way to salvation.
I think I was broadening what that meant, honestly.
Like the way to salvation, you know, the Romans wrote, you know, we know all those things.
I think, I mean, the root word in the Greek for salvation is the same as the word for
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healing.
And the idea that we are being healed over time, that we are being shaped and formed into
the image of Christ.
Like I think I thought that that formation process was like a bonus optional decision,
right?
Like you can make a decision to have Jesus be Savior, but it's a different decision to
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have him be Lord.
Well, I think that's a false dichotomy.
And I think it's, I think we're reaping some of what we've sown with perhaps inadvertent
messages like that, where we want to compel people toward discipleship, but we end up
minimizing salvation and making discipleship optional.
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And so reintegrating what a life of salvation, a life with God, a life lived in grace, what
that looks like in real time, instead of some intellectual decisions I've made about the
Bible or about who God is.
It was a complete reorientation of, yes, it was that same foundational faith.
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But now it was like, I'm like struggling with words or a metaphor.
It's like it went from like this two dimensional thing that you thought you were looking at
a line.
And all of a sudden it turns and you realize, oh no, this is an entire canvas.
It opened up a whole different dimension for me of like what is happening right now?
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How am I connecting to God right now?
Not what do I believe?
What is true in the Bible?
Those are important things, but where's the Lord and His presence and His goodness and
His grace to me right now?
And how am I creating paths to practically connect with that?
One of the things we talk about in Soul Care all the time, because I know you want some
(37:15):
practical ideas, is we talk about the importance of a page, a person, and a plan.
And these are just about as basic as you can get.
And sometimes if people say to me, like, all right, you've convinced me, I probably should
or God has convinced me, I should probably take care of my soul.
What's the one thing I should do?
(37:36):
And I don't think the whole of our life with God necessarily gets reduced to one thing,
but it helps to have an easy way to think about where to start.
And the page is a really important invitation into like journaling and reflection and taking
time to honor your own journey enough to pay attention to what is going on inside you.
(38:01):
And the people that keep journals are explorers, and we are moving into uncharted territory
as well.
And ours is the future.
Who are we becoming?
What is God doing?
And how am I responding?
So journal is a big place to start being very real about what's true.
(38:22):
And so that's a key part.
A page in the person is those connections.
Could be a person you pay, it could be a therapist, a coach, a spiritual director, those are all
really important ways.
Could also be a friend, somebody like my mom happened to meet who was a neighborhood friend
that was leading a Bible study.
Who is that person that's helping you on your journey of becoming?
(38:48):
And then there's usually a plan.
I think we suffer if we think that we're just going to float downstream into greater intimacy
with God.
It's like you got to have a plan.
What is not rigid and mechanical, but intentionality.
And even within that plan, I have found that it's possible like forever.
(39:13):
I was having a quiet time every day, right?
Like you had to check it off your list.
You had a quiet time, you said your prayers, you did the laundry.
Again, this way of being in my own skin, being with others and being with God, I began to
realize that many times I might have burned through a 45 minute quiet time, but I had
never actually connected.
(39:35):
I'd never actually been open to God.
It was all, what am I learning?
Very mental.
What am I learning?
What should I do?
But more me thinking about it all, not me relating to God.
Yeah.
There are times.
I'm not really sure about our devotions, very task oriented.
I am a little bit more on the task oriented side and I've really had to learn how to focus
(40:00):
on the relationship side.
And yeah, you read, you pray, you, and then you do the next thing on your list.
And you can even write down a few thoughts in a journal.
I mean, you can, you know?
And still it's not the same thing as what you're talking about, which is getting real
with your struggles and putting them before God.
Yeah.
And letting your soul rest in God's care.
(40:22):
I didn't have categories for that.
And it, it was all sort of very mental, very analytical.
You know, as you learn to abide and remain in Christ, what changed in your life?
I felt like I was coming more and more to be who God had made me to be.
Like I felt, and I felt like I was being invited into this wild adventure that I didn't
(40:49):
plan on or expect.
So like everything that has happened through soul care over these many now decades, honestly
was never part of like a five year plan or like me figuring out where did I want to go
work and submitting resumes.
Like it just wasn't, it wasn't pushed.
Like I wasn't ever pushing.
(41:10):
You get to live this life of freedom and invitation and yet what spills out over the edges of
your life is things that somehow help other people.
And it's the funnest thing in the world to, to be invited by God into what he's doing
(41:33):
in our day.
And so like all these ideas about soul care and resources that we could create and journals
and like I just, they just would unfold.
They would just happen and doors that I didn't even know existed.
It's just like me taking care of my three kids, spending time with God, working out at
(41:55):
the health club, like just living my life.
And then doors would open for me to do other things that had God's fingerprints all over
them.
It wasn't striving.
It wasn't, I didn't have a plan.
It just was a unfolding and unfolding that was such a blessing.
I think that would be one of the markers of the difference is that, that, that sense
(42:20):
of living out of overflow versus the hustle and grind that even in many Christian contexts,
we think is how we're supposed to approach ministry or our spirit to life.
And it's like, that doesn't sound a lot like, I don't know, through the spirit.
The unforced rhythms of grace to use Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of Matthew 11.
(42:47):
And the contrast, I think to those who encounter your life is massive, but the contrast even
internally, you're just so much more free.
And you know, that, that wasn't the end of your life's challenges.
Clearly, the one, the one soul implosion, but now you really started approaching them
differently.
(43:08):
So just share a couple of examples.
And I got to tell you, it changes everything because once you know how to receive your
life from God, wherever God takes you, whatever circumstances befall, you are able to be
well.
You can be fundamentally well no matter what.
And you're right.
Again, that book we've talked about that we had these terrible wildfires in Boulder three
(43:34):
years ago, the ones that just happened a couple of weeks ago in LA have been very poignant
reminders of what that was like.
And that was what impacted our community and some land we have out here in Boulder.
Just devastating and, and very disruptive.
But if it hadn't been for these, these ways I know how to anchor my soul in God, which
(43:58):
takes time or none of your time, it's how you are with God.
And it's, it's helped me and I, you know, I've had challenges with my work assignments
and I mean, I've served in some pretty high intensity leadership contexts and that always
comes with challenge and that's not bad.
(44:20):
That's not wrong.
There's things that God wants us to, to contend for and to show up in our world, but out of
overflow, not out of grindy or proving or just all kinds of things that can malfunction
if we're not living in that overflow.
I was just reading the end of the book of Acts this morning and it's like, you cannot
(44:43):
tell me that Paul and Peter and all these other guys thought they were getting a life
of bliss in following Jesus.
Like that isn't what anybody of us signs up for.
Our life is a living sacrifice and it's possible to live that life with circumstances that
(45:07):
are pleasant as Paul talks about or circumstances that are devastating, but we're held, we're
held and we're receiving our life from God moment by moment in it through many dangers,
toils and snares, I have already come and if it's grace, not a one time forgiveness
(45:29):
grace, if it's grace as Dallas will define it as the active presence of God doing for
us what we cannot do on our own behalf.
If it's grace that's brought me safe this far, it will be grace that leads us home,
that brings me home.
So what does God have you doing now?
You've mentioned soul care.
Yeah.
(45:49):
Yeah.
So you're into that organization and it's really birthed.
Well, I did.
Yeah, well God did, but yeah, it's an ancient term, soul care, the care of souls.
And really the URL was available when I was first creating those soul care journals back
in 1997 and 98.
(46:09):
So this is a long time ago.
So I was able to grab the URL and over these past decades it's had different expressions,
but when I finally left my last corporate job, which I loved, I loved the team, I loved
the mission of the organization, but in the wake of the pandemic, I felt like this is
the time in my life where I want to see if I can't give as much lift to this topic globally
(46:33):
as possible.
And so what are the teams, what are the tech platforms, what are the digital environments,
what are the in person environments?
How can we pull together what now soul care is becoming?
So there's a whole team of us now that are creatives and spiritual directors and coaches
and all kinds of amazing people, other communicators like myself.
(46:58):
And it's like, all right, what are the resources?
What are the emails that could show up on a regular basis that invite people to take
a breath and do a soul care check in?
How could we embed monthly retreat into our year round engagement with people?
And what does that monthly retreat and digital spaces look like?
(47:18):
So anyway, it's been a fun challenge and had many amazing partners along the way with
the ECFA and National Christian Foundation get to serve great organizations like Compassion
and some of the amazing churches in our country and around the world.
And so I, it's a sweet season.
So we're trying to figure out how to get that ranch up and off the ground.
(47:40):
There's a couple of little small bungalow type sheds.
I mean, they're nicer than a shed that you keep a lawn mower in.
They're like got nice leather couches and stuff in them, but, but people can overnight
and have these beautiful views and, and rest in God.
And so that we call it whisper ranch.
So yeah, my time right now is soul care whisper ranch and now a grandson or boys are my daughters
(48:10):
in law who are amazing.
It's a sweet season.
I just have so much gratitude to the Lord.
Like you could never, you could never from that first night I was hospitalized in March
of 1995.
You could never, no one could have imagined the journey.
(48:33):
You know, the Lord says, no, I have seen no ear has heard what God is going to do.
And oh, for everyone listening for you yourself, Tony, like it's like, I would not want you
to miss one thing of what God has for you that's coming out of overflow.
He wants to reach his people.
(48:54):
You know, I've been in Christian ministry, my, you know, almost my whole career as well.
And there's a tendency among people, particularly in vocational ministry, but not, not solely
in vocational ministry to struggle with the idea of self care.
When we're also trying to live out the scriptures of let's take up our cross daily, let's die
(49:16):
to self.
And how do, how do you balance that?
What balance have you found?
What advice do you give that comes up a lot, especially when we're talking with like mission
organizations and things like that.
Um, first, let's go back to that, you know, taking up our cross daily.
(49:38):
That is not an optional.
That is what Jesus invites us into, right?
Again, living is a living sacrifice.
These are these are important thing.
I've been crucified in crisis no longer I live and Christ that lives in me.
The life I now live in this body, I live by faith, you know, there's all these, and those,
some of those were quite formative to me in my recovery.
(50:00):
Cause it's like, if I ever get my life in the body back, like this is the path.
This living by faith is something I need to learn.
I mentor mine, one of the women who influenced me most used to give a really kind of wrenching,
gut wrenching talk to leaders.
And it was called, I died to myself and myself almost died.
(50:25):
And she in it raises the idea that there are ways that were to die to self.
This is how I talk about it.
We die to our self will.
We die to our self orientation.
We die to our agendas.
We die to our control.
(50:46):
There are things we need to die to early and often.
And a lot of times Christian leaders haven't died to any of those things in the name of
what they think they're dying to.
Those are the things that we die to getting sufficient rest, honoring a Sabbath, going
(51:06):
for years without a vacation.
Those are not, in my view, what Jesus was asking us to give up.
And do we give up our self orientation, selfishness, self, pretty much anything self-hyphenated?
I've shared this before on my podcast.
So some of my listeners may have heard this, but when I was in my early 30s, I was in a
(51:29):
ministry, a humanitarian ministry, and I was traveling all over the world.
And I was saying yes to every project that came.
I would raise my hand.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
And one day I remember waking up.
I didn't even know where I was.
I was not in the United States.
I woke up in this hotel room and I thought, I love everything I'm doing, but I hate my
life.
(51:50):
And it was a wake-up call to me.
I was like, I've said yes to everything without asking God if I was supposed to say yes to
that.
And I was burned out.
I had traveled on weekends to save ministry money.
I had done all of these things.
I've missed family events.
I've missed church a lot.
I disconnected from friends.
(52:11):
And it took me about a year.
I went home and I went home to my boss and I'm like, I can't do it anymore.
Fortunately, he was a pastor.
He had a pastoral heart and said, okay, let's put some boundaries in your life and didn't
shame me for it.
It took me about a year to kind of feel healthy again in my spirit, in my soul.
(52:32):
They used to say in the 80s, I'd rather burn out than rest out.
Well, the level of burnout among those leaders that you're talking about who might be like,
oh, it's selfish to do this.
I couldn't disagree more, first of all.
And they're all burning out.
And no one wants their jobs because no one wants their lives.
So 20 years from now, those missions organizations, if they don't find a different way of doing
(52:57):
this, they're just going to be gone.
These things are crumbling right now for having lived such unhealthy patterns of leadership
and life.
People are not flourishing and they are killing themselves in order to give other people a
message of life, which has all levels of irony that I can't even handle.
(53:19):
Yeah.
I mean, I'm glad I had that experience when I was young and I was fairly resilient.
I didn't have a family at that time.
And I mean, you know, a family, I had a family origin, of course, but not, I wasn't caring
for anyone else but just me.
But you know, it enabled me to really be on the lookout for others around me that I was
(53:40):
working with that were doing that.
So I could say, hey, you know, back off, take a vacation.
You don't need to work until nine o'clock at night.
I mean, what are you supposed to love one another?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
Love your neighbor as what?
As yourself.
And so not self obsessed, not self whatever, but caring for yourself is just wise.
(54:04):
Are there times of sacrifice?
Absolutely.
Are there times of great discomfort and pain and endurance?
Yes.
Is there suffering?
Is there persecution?
Yes.
Are you living a life that is beyond what God has assigned to you in terms of self generated
suffering?
Well, that's on you.
Self care usually gets defined in our culture as, you know, a good nourishing meal, making
(54:28):
sure you're working out, having a bubble bath, you know, these kinds of things, which I think
in general are innocuous and lovely.
And I would think, I think God would be honored if more of us ate healthy food and worked out
a little bit more.
I think that's not a bad thing.
And it is.
I mean, there's all kinds of data around how that drives our mental health, drives everything
(54:51):
else.
So that self care is important.
The reason I distinguish it a little bit from soul care is a little bit like how you
can have a 45 minute quiet time and not really connect with God.
I think it's possible to have a bubble bath, a good workout and eat a very nutritious meal
and whatever other things you might put in that category of self care and not ever open
(55:14):
your soul to God.
And it's not to say that every workout you should figure out how to cram like my awareness
of God into that, like maybe that comes, that's great.
But like let a workout be a workout.
Do your self care.
But don't assume that because you're doing self care, your soul is finding a way of life
(55:35):
of being open to the living God.
That is a, it may be a separate category and it is one that we must as a first order priority
make sure we're pursuing.
Yeah, I remember one, one day I was in Columbia and I was walking through a barrio massive,
(55:56):
massive, went on as far as the eye could see and I was walking through saying, God, how
can I help all these people?
How can I do it Lord?
I mean, I'm just little old me.
I mean, I had an organization behind, I was representing an organization, but you know,
we didn't have the capacity to do this.
And I heard him say, if Jesus were here, what would Jesus do?
(56:20):
And it was just take care of the one in front of them.
I mean, Jesus did heal thousands of course, but it was, he also walked away from thousands.
He didn't heal everybody.
They were still people that were being healed by the disciples after Jesus went to heaven
that had been there on the earth when Jesus was there.
(56:41):
And it just freed me a little bit from the responsibility to be the savior of everyone.
Yes, yes.
Well, and that's even a word for single women.
I've got several friends who they look at their coworkers and they're like, oh, you
need time with your spouse.
You should probably get home be with the kids and they take on more and more and more.
And it's just not healthy.
(57:02):
It's not that comes from a pure and sweet and servant heart, but it also comes from
a profound lack of awareness or regard for the value of their own soul.
Like, and they'll say like, well, how can my well being matter when all these other,
(57:22):
all this other suffering is, is going on?
And I'm not saying those are easy things to navigate, but we have got to recover a way
of navigating those things from a place of biblical and personal integrity in order to
have the ability to say no so that like what you experienced doesn't become the norm.
(57:46):
Yes, we close.
Mindy, would you share briefly about a woman in the Bible whose story has inspired, encouraged
or taught you something?
Of course I love Deborah.
I'm like, who was that woman?
The bumblebee who's the mother of Israel.
Like what kind of leader was she?
Okay, so I'm curious about her.
I want to meet her someday.
(58:06):
But the woman who really probably inspires me more often than that is actually Mary,
Jesus' mother.
And I think, you know, there is a woman who literally got entrusted one of the most assigned,
most important assignments that was ever given other than the one given to Jesus himself,
right?
(58:27):
That was not a carefree and easy task.
She's having to respond to angels at many different points, has to watch her son go
through unbelievable suffering.
She didn't sign up for the easy trip, right?
But she did sign up for life and God was able to entrust something to her because of her
(58:49):
ability to say, may it be done according to your holy will.
You know, whatever it is, whatever it is, God, my answer is yes.
I love that about her.
Andrew Murray in his book, Abiding Christ, I love this quote.
He says, our abiding in Jesus is even more than a relationship, a fellowship of love.
It's a fellowship of life.
(59:11):
I love that.
And you know, John 15.5 tells us that when we strive in our own strength, like we've
said a couple of times in this podcast, we can do nothing.
But as we've heard, Mindy, as you've shared when we remain in Christ, his life flows through
us.
(59:31):
Mindy, would you just take a moment and pray for our listeners?
I would love to.
I would love to.
Hey, everyone, wherever you are, if you can, join us with you.
Maybe your hands open.
Thank God each person who's listening right now, wherever they are, we ask for you to
bless them.
We ask for you to restore things that have felt lost along the way, maybe the health
(59:56):
of their soul, maybe relationships, maybe friendships, maybe even just a sincere or
intimacy with you.
Whatever is lost along the way, God, we pray that you would restore it.
If it's even physical healing that you would bring healing.
(01:00:18):
And God, whatever you've equipped them uniquely to do, each one, God, as they open their hands
to you, would you fill those hands?
Not with more than they can handle, but with exactly what is theirs to do, not more.
And God, I pray that through their attending to the things you put in their hands, that
(01:00:40):
you would do those things that only you could do, that you would redeem and restore those
barrios, those neighborhoods, those brothels, those corporate entities, whatever it is,
God, that where you've placed your people, God, I pray that the redeeming and restoring
(01:01:01):
of all things to yourself would be happening through us.
You said your burden would be easy.
Your yoke would be easy and the burden would be light.
So God, that's the last thing I ask.
Is it each one listening would encounter you in a new and fresh way that allows whatever
(01:01:21):
it is that you've asked them to shoulder to be easy and the burden to be light?
You're praying in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, thank you for tuning in.
Check out our show notes at hergodstory.org for scriptures and other information we talked
about.
There you can also download a free six-week devotional on Women of the Bible and consider
(01:01:42):
joining our company of women by supporting our Wittow and Orphan Fund.
We'd also love to pray with you on our 24-7 prayer and text line.
So give us a call or text anytime at 855-459-CARE or email us at prayer at somebodycares.org.
And now dear friends, I bless you from an adaptation of John 15, verses 9 through 12.
(01:02:04):
May you remain in God's love, keeping His commands so that His joy may be in you and
that your joy may be complete.
Her God Story is a ministry of Somebody Cares America and International.
To find out more about or support the ministry, go to somebodycares.org.
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