"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)
This verse has been on repeat in my heart this summer, and it's the one anchoring this month's Daily Canvas theme: Tend.
What I Keep Getting Wrong
Here's what I keep noticing about myself, and maybe you'll relate. I am so good at taking care of everything around me (the house, the calendar, the people I love) and not nearly as good at checking in with what's happening inside me. I can tell you what's for dinner three nights out and completely lose track of how my own soul is doing.
I wrote this month's theme alongside a new friend, Alyssa Bethke. Alyssa is a mom of four, a Bible teacher, an author, and the owner of a shop I love here in Franklin called Neuflora. When we sat down together for the first time, we kept circling back to the same idea: we tend to everyone else long before we ever tend to ourselves, and most of us don't even realize how long it's been.
Alyssa put words to something I think a lot of us have felt but never said out loud. For years, she'd have quiet breakdowns at the end of every week, not because anything was wrong, exactly, but because she'd spent the whole week saying "I'm okay, I'm taking care of everybody" without ever bringing her honest heart to the Lord. She wasn't lying. She just wasn't looking.
Self-Care Isn't Soul Care
That's the difference between self-care and soul care. Self-care tends your body. Soul care tends what's beneath it: the anxious thoughts, the unmet expectations, the joy you haven't noticed because you haven't stopped long enough to look for it.
Self-care might be ten quiet minutes with your coffee before anyone wakes up. Soul care is what happens in those minutes, when you actually let God ask you how you're doing, and you actually answer.
Here's the thing neither of us wants to gloss over: this isn't selfish. Alyssa said it best: when a mom is steady and secure and aligned with the Lord, that's the biggest gift she can give her family. Not a better system. Not a more organized week. A tended soul. Everything else we're managing runs on that.
You Don't Have to Have It Figured Out
There's a verse in Galatians about how walking with God means knowing Him and being known by Him. We can only know the Lord as much as we know ourselves, and we can only be known by Him when we bring Him our whole, unedited selves, not the version that has it together, the real one.
That takes a kind of courage. I think a lot of us avoid checking in with our own hearts because we're scared of what we might find, or scared we won't know what to do with it once we do.
You don't have to know what to do with it. You just have to bring it.
A Place to Start
If you're looking for a place to start, it doesn't have to be complicated:
- A few honest minutes with a journal
- A phone-free walk
- Coffee alone before the house wakes up
- An honest conversation with a friend instead of the version of "I'm fine" you give everyone else
The goal isn't to add another task to your list. It's to actually stop long enough to notice what's true.
My Prayer for You
My prayer for you this month is simple. As you're planning the fall (the schedules, the school routines, the calendar that's about to fill up fast), that you'd start with your heart before you start with your to-do list. That you'd let yourself be asked how you're really doing, and let God meet you in the honest answer.
Because a soul that is tended by Him is the truest gift you can give everyone around you.