The New Horizon

I remember the moment it happened and what I was doing and where I was. 

I was riding my bike on a part of our local bike trail I don't frequent often. It goes by a different lake than the usual one and through a grove of damp trees that makes me feel like I'm riding through a forest and then through a residential area more populated with traffic than the usual part of the trail. 

On my way home, while riding back through that forest-like section, the words floated across the front of my mind like one of those banners that trails behind a blimp in the sky, its message printed in red capital letters.

Midwife of soul and word, the banner message said. 

I recognized it for what it was and scrambled to bring the words back to center before they floated away.

Midwife of soul and word. 

I knew, in an instant, what it was. It was my vocation. It made sense of everything else. With that banner message, something clicked into place that had puzzled me for so, so long.

***

For years, by that point, whenever someone asked what I did for a living, I pulled my standard answer out of my pocket.

"My life runs along two parallel tracks," I'd begin.

They'd perk up, interested in hearing the story of a two-track life, even from a stranger they'd just met.

"On one track, I'm a professional book editor," I'd say. "On the other track, I'm a spiritual formation practitioner and spiritual director." 

Then would come the usual questions. "What sorts of books do you edit? What's spiritual direction?" 

And, eventually, my concluding line: "I expect, at some point, one of those tracks will end — likely, the editing one — and I'll put my attention fully on the other. But until then, I keep doing them both." 

In truth, I'd been straddling those two parallel tracks of my professional life for so long that I'd begun to wonder what was the hold-up. When would the end of one of the tracks come? Was it coming? Was I missing something?

It turns out, the end did come. It started that day on the bike trail, with that floating banner of words: Midwife of soul and word. Except that instead of a switch to just one track after the ending of the other, the two tracks came together. They merged.

I never imagined a merge.  

***

I received a call to ministry in early 2008, but I've been a publishing professional much longer than that.

Seventeen years ago, I graduated college and stepped onto a career path I thought would mark the rest of my days. With dreams of a future that included moves to New York or Boston and a climb through the ranks at Random House or Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, I gobbled up books on the publishing trade — Betsy Lerner's Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers and A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius among the first — and learned within a month at my first job some key things about myself.

I learned, first of all, I was a quick study. I lost no time learning my way around The Chicago Manual of Style, The AP Stylebook, and Strunk and White's Elements of Style. My copies of these industry style guides stood next to my computer, within reach at all times, their pages soon peppered with fluorescent tabs at the places I thumbed most often.

I also learned I was good at this work. 

I'll never forget the day Jason, a writer who worked on the other side of the building, found his way to my office and sat himself down. 

"You're Christianne?" he wanted to know. 

"Yes," I stammered. Only a handful of people, all of them on my department's team, had stepped foot in my office before. 

"You edited this?" he asked. 

He placed on my desk a green folder whose blue-and-white sticker tab indicated the project's name. It was a study guide of the book of Ephesians I'd finished editing earlier that week — my first book-length edit. 

"Yes," I said again, sure by now I'd done something wrong. 

He paused and regarded me a moment, no doubt taking in my young age (I was twenty-one) and the fear flashing in my eyes. 

"You're good at this," he finally said. 

"I am?" 

"I've never had an editor edit me the way you have. I had to come see who you were."

"You're the author?" I asked, feeling faint.

He nodded again. "I'm Jason." He looked around my office. "You're new?"

I told him I was. I also told him his study guide was my first book-length edit.

"I was afraid I did too much with your words," I admitted, my memory of the red markings on each page inside that green folder flying to mind and making my face hot. "But I tried to make the language tighter where I thought it could be."

"You're right to have done that," he said, "and don't apologize. You're challenging me, as a writer, to be better, and I want that. Have you ever heard of Maxwell Perkins?"

And that's how I was introduced to the legendary editor who is credited with bringing the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe to the rest of us. Jason lent me his personal copy of Scott Berg's classic biography of the man, which went a long way in teaching me the kind of editor I wanted to be while affirming the kind of editor Jason saw I already was. 

***

Over the years, I kept working in words.

To my résumé line of staff editor for an international nonprofit organization, I added the credits of writing director for an honors college, associate book editor for a traditional publishing house, magazine and web editor for a trendy tastemaker of culture, writer-for-hire for nonprofits and for-profits and would-be authors, and full-time book editor on a freelance basis.

But right in the middle of all that, I received the call to ministry.

It happened in early 2008. The previous year, I'd left my in-house position as an associate book editor to follow the dream of creating a company that supports women in the discovery and development of the stories they're meant to live. I followed that dream straight to a graduate degree in business after realizing I was coming to work in the book department each day more lit up by the prospect of learning what God was doing in the lives of my co-workers than by the words on the screen I was helping to craft into perfectly edited books. 

I was halfway through business school when I heard the call the ministry, so after graduation, I went straight into more school. A graduate degree in spiritual formation and a certificate program in spiritual direction set me on my way toward the new future I had come to believe would mark the rest of my days.

It led me here, to Still Forming. 

I discerned a call to work in online spaces. I developed that call here, and it deepened through several webinars and workshops I was invited to lead on the subject, as well as an online initiative I created for spiritual directors called The Soul Online. Eventually, my work here began to shape itself into the development of an online spiritual community.

Through all of it, I continued to work with words — specifically, books — on a full-time freelance basis.

But looking ahead, on the horizon of my life, all I could see was Still Forming. 

***

Last year, in June, I had the opportunity to attend a writing retreat in Ojai, California, led by a close friend whose memoir I'd been privileged to edit. Hers was one of three books I'd helped three close friends bring to life in the previous year in a way that exceeded any experience I'd had in a decade and a half spent editing books and working with writers.

In each of those book pairings, the author and I did good and solid book work — work we could be (and were!) proud of. But while doing that book work, we also did soul work. We discerned together about the book and the book's publishing path. We asked questions of the book and questions of their soul in connection with the book. We listened to what was said and not said. We noticed what emerged.

It was immensely beautiful and immensely gratifying.

It was what I'd always wanted my work with authors to be.

***

I didn't have a book project to bring to the writing retreat in Ojai, but I assumed I would spend time working on the next project I was developing for the Still Forming community, and I did do some of that.

But what stayed with me after the retreat was a conversation I had one evening with one of the writers. After hours, we stood in the kitchen, next to the island and the tea station, and out of my mouth popped words I didn't even know I knew. 

"I loved my experience of working with authors in this way — from conception to completion," I said, my hands moving from right to left, indicating the length and fullness of the journey I had traveled with my three author friends the previous year.

"Usually I'm contracted by a publisher to work on a manuscript," I said. "They send me the manuscript and give me a deadline, and I do the work and send it back. I don't often work directly with the author. But with these other three projects this past year? We worked together through the whole of the creative process, and I loved it. That? I could do that forever." 

And I could, I realized. Midwife of soul and word. That's what it was. A blending of both parts of my professional life. A merging of the two tracks into one.

***

I came home from the retreat with that conversation ringing in my ears.

If I wanted to work with authors in that way, why didn't I? While I was waiting for Still Forming to become the full-time work I fully expected it would become someday, what was stopping me from at least planting a flag — creating a simple landing page on a website, maybe — that indicated I was available to work with authors in this way? 

Nothing was stopping me. I decided to try it.

Little did I know, everything was about to change. 

***

What I thought would be a simple landing page kept developing into a fuller and fuller website. And the more I worked on the idea, the midwifery metaphor serving as inspiration, the more it expanded. 

"I feel like this idea keeps taking up more and more room inside of me," I told Kirk one afternoon when we went out for a long drive to talk about it. "It feels like it's taking up 75 percent of my heart, professionally, right now. And Still Forming feels so small — just 25 percent. That is freaking me out. I've never felt that way about Still Forming before. And this other thing hasn't even become real yet! It's just an idea I keep following." 

"It feels expansive," he agreed. 

A short while later, after stopping for a quick stretch, Kirk landed on the perfect name for this expansive new venture: Bookwifery. 

But I admitted, again, it was freaking me out. 

"It feels like I have to keep following this," I told him, "but it also feels like a sharp right turn. I've been looking at the future straight ahead for so long, and the horizon has always been Still Forming. But here's a right turn I know I'm supposed to keep following, that feels so right and true, but it's turning me toward a horizon that's completely different." 

He nodded, getting it. 

"I don't know what this future looks like," I told him. "And I'm scared of what it means for Still Forming. What happens to it, if it's not the horizon anymore?"

I knew he couldn't answer that question for me. But I also knew I couldn't let the unanswerable question or the fear of a new and unknown future keep me from continuing into this right-hand turn that was feeling so right and true. 

I had to keep going. And so I did. 

***

I worked on the development of the Bookwifery idea and website through July and August of last year, and the company officially launched on September 1.

In mid-August, I had that revelatory experience at Kirk's final retreat for the Transforming Community. By late October, I was attending my first retreat as a new participant in the Transforming Community. And by November 5, I had announced my sabbatical from Still Forming. 

These sabbatical months have been doing their work in me, and I suspect they will continue to do so for quite some time. It's hard for me, if I'm honest right now, to imagine returning to the practitioner work of spiritual formation or spiritual direction, and I think some of that is certainly the sabbatical speaking. My soul continues to be desperately tired, and I'm still asking a lot of hard questions of God and struggling to be still in prayer on a consistent basis.

But I think it is also Bookwifery speaking.

I am loving this new work in my life. I love its creativity and the way it challenges me to bring my very best to each stage of the creative process with each author and their book. I love the connection it provides me with these authors who have beautiful words and gifts to carry into this world and whose spirits are so vibrant and lovely. I love the way discernment and listening and noticing and asking good questions — all hallmarks of the work of spiritual direction — still happen each and every day in this work, and it feels like something of a delightful gift that it takes place with the medium of a book between us. A book! One of my favorite things in all the world.

I love that Bookwifery keeps teaching me what it wants to be and that I have to keep pulling up my chair, like a good student, listening and pushing my glasses up on my nose and poising my pen over a stack of straightened papers, ready to take notes and then act on them.

Something important has shifted and is happening here. I have a new horizon now. I still don't know what the far-off future looks like (as if that can ever be known anyway, for any of us!), but I know I'm heading in a direction that's right for me right now, even as it began with a surprising right-hand turn.

I'm grateful for this space, where I can continue to spill the story of what unfolds.

In Returning and Rest Shall Be Your Strength

When I applied for the Transforming Community program last summer and attended my first retreat in October, I did so with the knowledge that my soul was dry as dust, and I attributed its deprivation to the cumulative effect of all the many losses I'd sustained in the previous three to four years. 

And that was true. That series of losses did, over time, deprive my soul of so much hope and life. 

But it wasn't until the midpoint of that first retreat in October that I realized another factor also at work in this picture. I sat outside during an afternoon given to several hours of solitude and realized, for the first time, that at the same time the series of losses began to fall like dominoes upon my life, I had also made a significant change in my daily life. 

***

It was the spring of 2013.

I was working as a freelance editor on a mix of book and magazine projects, and my work life was primarily project-based and deadline-driven. Clients would contract me for projects, send me the content, and give me a deadline. It was up to me how I got the work done by the time the work was due. 

This worked well for me, given my natural rhythm (which is slow) and my sense of vocation as a contemplative.

For the previous few years, I had increasingly made room in my life for silence, solitude, and prayer. I would spend about four hours each morning, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., tending this contemplative space, and I would use my remaining time to get work done for my clients and take care of our life at home. It was out of these practices of solitude and silence that my soul flourished and my ministry flowed. 

Then, in the spring of 2013, a client asked if I'd be willing to take on more daily work as a copy editor for their multiple online platforms. This work would require being at my desk, inbox and content-management platform open, by 9 a.m., with articles rolling in on the half-hour until 5 p.m. My task would be to copyedit each article as they went up on the sites.

As a freelancer, stability is key. Recurring income is a gift. 

I said yes. 

***

I gave myself to that side job for a year and a half, and I am experiencing the consequences of that decision still today. 

Immediately upon agreeing to the work, I lost those four hours of morning stillness and prayer. I would sometimes wake early enough to enjoy a mug of coffee at my desk with the Scriptures, but it was nothing compared to the deep and slow rhythms of prayer and quiet to which my soul had become accustomed and out of which my sense of vocation and my ministry had flowed in the preceding years. 

The pace of the work affected me. Making a simple trip to the grocery store or to the post office now evoked anxiety. I hurried through each errand with an eye on the clock, worried I would not be home, in front of my computer, by the time new articles went live. 

The content affected me, too. The majority of the work was news-based, so headlines mattered. We worked for clicks. The content needed to command attention. I felt like I was operating at a high-intensity vibration of sensationalism and spectacularity all day long. Such a fever pitch alarmed my soul. 

In the end, letting go of the work was not my decision.

Internal decisions at the company led to their bringing more of the responsibilities in house, so most freelancers were let go. And while I was initially alarmed by this decision, given how much stability that work provided each month to the financial bottom line of our home, I was also quite relieved. I knew the work was not aligned with who I am. 

***

Here's the thing, though. 

You would have thought, when that work came to an end, I would have returned to the slower pace and prayerful routines I had cultivated with great purpose and commitment before taking on that role. That is not what happened. Instead, I found other habits and activities to fill those hours. Along the way, I became addicted to my phone. I loved the dopamine rush of finding new messages in my inboxes and notifications on my social accounts. I wanted more and more of that. The thirst overwhelmed me.

When I say I am still experiencing the effects of the decision to work that intense online gig four years ago, this is what I mean. Its daily pace and activities rewired my brain and my habits of being for this kind of technology- and information-addicted life. It is not my natural state of being, but I allowed it to become so. And the more I gave myself toward those seemingly small activities, even after the online gig had left my life, the more it did become who I was. 

Actions — even seemingly small ones — have consequences.

***

I began to connect these dots during my first retreat with Transforming Community this past October. During that afternoon of solitude, I saw the greater reality of what had happened.

Yes, that long series of losses had depleted my soul over time. But so did the slow draining of my soul's well that happened as I gave myself to a constantly connected life these past four years. The drying-up of my soul happened through the symbiosis of these things. The losses happened, one after another, and I was not giving myself to the contemplative practices that most sustain my inner life. 

Now, once I connected these dots, I wanted to bang myself over the head with a frying pan. The truth is, I should have known better. My vocational call for nearly ten years has been that of bringing contemplative wisdom to online spaces. I directed the thesis research for my graduate degree toward a study of the internet's effect on the soul. As a result, I proposed ways to help the soul flourish in the face of such realities, and I brought some of those solutions to life. 

Rather than bang myself over the head that day, though, I chose to look with compassion on my soul for its sad state and on myself for having fallen down the same rabbit hole most of us do these days, one slow, small action at a time, never realizing just what it is doing to our insides. 

And I decided to make changes in favor of recovery. 

When I got home from the retreat, I started to reincorporate contemplative practices into my life. I made a decision to take a sabbatical from my work with Still Forming. I started exploring the concept of deep work and created a deep-work schedule for myself. 

All of this is still in development. But slowly, slowly, I am on my way back to myself and to God.

***

This past week, I attended my second retreat with the Transforming Community. 

On the second night, as part of our evening prayer service, we were given ten minutes of silence to practice centering prayer. Before we began, we were reminded of the reality of the Trinity residing within us, and we were invited to use this time of silence to be present to this reality. We each chose a word — mine was Jesus — to which we would return when we noticed our thoughts had strayed from the simple practice of being present to God.

In front of the altar was a table that held an assortment of candles. One of the collections of candles was a trinity of tea lights. I stared at the trinity of those flames in the silence and connected to the reality of the Trinity residing with me, at the center of my being.

I was reminded of Rublev's icon of the Trinity that depicts Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seated around a table, their postures indicating a continual flow of love that both gives and receives. Some have come to believe the open space at the front of the table was intended to be an invitation to the viewer to join the Trinity at the table and to participate in their flow of love. 

As I practiced centering prayer in that silence, I began to notice that it felt as though each member of the Trinity inside me — each one a flame — turned toward me with a gaze of welcome. 

"Return," each one beckoned me from their place in the circle, a smile on their face. "Return to us."

Over and again, in those ten minutes of silence, they offered this invitation of welcome to me.

Return to us.

***

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. If any season in the church year marks an invitation to return, it is this one. And while last week's retreat with Transforming Community was not meant to be an entry point for Lent, it has become that for me.

The retreat opened with a declaration from Isaiah 30: "In returning and rest shall be your strength." Then the Trinity invited me to return to them and to join them at the table in their flow of love. And now Lent is here, inviting return again. 

And so I am responding. I am returning to my God. 

The Face of Jesus

"How is your sabbatical going?" she asked me. 

"Well, I'm praying again," I said.

And then I laughed, both because I am embarrassed at this admission that I'd previously been in a season of not praying and because of my joy at the reality that prayer has entered my life again. 

I am praying again. 

***

It started a few weeks ago. 

I had discerned a decision on behalf of my sabbatical and had taken a significant step toward naming that decision out loud. It was a difficult naming. It hurt more than just me. And I felt awful about it, even as I knew it had to be. 

For two solid weeks, I agonized in the aftermath of that naming.

And I went to prayer. 

The image that came in prayer was the face of Jesus, right in front of me. It felt as though we were lying on the ground, facing each other, his face just a few inches from my own. A lock of brown hair fell across his cheek. His eyes looked right into mine. 

Those eyes.

They spoke immediately and deeply to me. 

The first thing they spoke was that I was fully, completely accepted. He held me in peace and truth. He was not shaming me, despite all the ways I was shaming myself and expecting him to do so, too, because of the difficult way that naming out loud had happened. 

The second thing his eyes spoke to me was to stay still. I kept carrying the question about what to do with what I'd done that had hurt more than just me. Should I reach out? Should I do something more, explain something more, try to fix what now felt broken? The questions consumed my heart and mind.

But when I turned to the face of Jesus in prayer, again and again, his eyes told me to remain still. Don't act. Stay here, they said. 

It took great trust for me listen to and believe what those eyes said to me. 

***

Slowly, those eyes are becoming my compass. And I'm learning it is going to continue to ask great faith of me to listen to what they tell me to do or not do.

Here is an example. 

Last weekend, I attended a symposium at which Richard Rohr was the keynote speaker. He spoke on the theme "Everything Belongs" and used Rublev's icon of the Trinity for much of his teaching. It was a time, in the aftermath of our country's election, of coming together with 600 people who affirmed together a God who transcends binaries and dualities and instead encompasses all. 

Outside the conference sessions, I was keeping tabs on world events, and particularly the travel ban that had been issued by executive order against individuals from seven countries. I watched, through headlines and videos, as chaos unfolded at the airports when individuals were stopped from coming or going, which led to protests at major airports, the descending of lawyers on the terminals to offer help and representation, and the eventual action taken by a federal judge to stay the executive order nationwide, in response to a petition by the ACLU. 

I watched these events unfold between sessions at the symposium and raised my voice alongside them. I shared articles and videos and offered commentary. I said I refused to cower to the fear-mongering that seemed at the root of all this.

And when I woke up Monday morning, I was bleary-eyed and exhausted by all of it.

I sat in the spot on one of our couches that has become my place of prayer, and I closed my eyes. I looked at the face of Christ. What is mine to do with all this? I asked. Should I continue speaking?

He looked back at me and, with those eyes, reminded me without words what I know is to be my focus in this season: Bookwifery and my sabbatical. 

I did not like receiving this news. 

My resistance to receiving it reminded me of Henri Nouwen's book The Selfless Way of Christ, where he talks about the three temptations that Christ faced in the wilderness. One of those temptations is the temptation to be relevant, and I realized this was exactly what I feared losing — relevance — should I move away from sharing and commenting on the unfolding events in my country and should I choose not to participate in marches or town halls or phone calls or other forms of activism. 

I fear becoming irrelevant — someone who has her head stuck in the sand like an ostrich. 

That is not who I want to be. 

And yet Christ was making it clear, through his gaze, that I'm meant to be focused elsewhere right now, in the two clear directions he has called me.

***

It troubled me that my first response to Christ's invitation back to my two primary points of focus — Bookwifery and sabbatical — was a concern for my reputation. I care deeply about humanity, about equality, about compassion and justice for all. Those things are deeply true of me. And yet my first reaction to Christ's invitation back to my primary work right now was a resistance rooted in care for my own relevance. 

That was not a pretty reality to face. 

***

Through this past week, I have sought to be faithful to Christ's invitation. I turned my attention back to Bookwifery. I continued to practice prayer. And I kept reading deeply in books by and about Henri Nouwen, which are feeding my soul right now. 

I am still finding my way to the line between being informed about the news and being consumed by it. I haven't yet found that balance.

Perhaps that is a question I can take to prayer, too. 

***

Yesterday, as I found myself upset and deeply troubled, yet again, by some of the news I was reading, I went back to that place of prayer. I sat in that usual spot on the couch, my legs extended over the arm of the adjoining couch, and closed my eyes. 

I'm troubled about my president, I told Jesus in that space. I feel helpless and angry. I don't have confidence our representatives will do anything about it. I fear what our nation will become. How do you want me to hold this? Do you really want me to do nothing?

It was so hard for me to receive what he said back to me with his eyes.

With his eyes, he said to me, Donald Trump is a beloved child of God. He has the divine spark of life in him, too, just like every other human. 

I did not want to hear this. I wanted to continue to look at my new president as "other." I want, if I'm honest, to demonize him. 

And yet the truth of Christ says that I can't. The truth of Christ says that the image of God exists in Donald Trump, obscured as it may be. 

And so yesterday, in that moment, I responded by doing something difficult for me: I prayed for Donald Trump. Truthfully, I didn't even have words for much of what I prayed. I had to trust the Spirit would pray for me. And it felt like the tiniest, most insignificant act. It felt like doing nothing. Yet it was the most true response of my heart that I could offer to God right then.

May I continue to be faithful to seeking out the face of Christ — his eyes and his wisdom — in prayer through this sabbatical time and letting what I find there guide my steps. 

Deep Work

Over the Christmas break week, I read two books by Cal Newport that are having a significant impact on the way I move into this new year. The two books are So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love and Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. 

Of the two books, I was originally most drawn to reading Deep Work because I loved the concept the title suggests. But I decided to start with So Good They Can't Ignore You instead (even though I'm much less of a fan of its title) because Cal wrote that one first.

I'm so glad I did. 

So Good They Can't Ignore You got me thinking about my company, Bookwifery, in terms of skill. It's easy to look at Bookwifery as simply an outgrowth of who I am. I have a facility with words. I am someone who has an ability to see people and ideas and who asks questions and listens and discerns. These things have always been true of me. 

And yet.

They're also refined skills I've honed over many years. 

When I began my first job as a staff editor back in the year 2000, I didn't know much about what I was doing. I had taken literature courses and written many papers in college. I had studied grammar. I had interned for a magazine and a newspaper. I had taken creative writing courses. I had always written.

But I'd never edited professionally. I'd never read The Chicago Manual of Style. I'd never studied the AP Stylebook. I'd never been asked to copyedit a direct-mail piece or significantly edit a book. 

I learned all these things as I went. And I studied my craft — hard. 

Today, going into my seventeenth year of being an editor, I can't tell you how many books I've edited in my career by now. The number is well over a hundred. I've worked for nonprofits and for-profits. I've edited for print and web. I've worked for additional magazines and have written copy, too. I've learned where I excel in this work and where I don't. I've learned what I love about this work and what I don't. 

All of that has been learned by doing the trade, by applying myself to it, by learning from it. 

I have the same kind of learning-as-I-go story about my work in spiritual direction and spiritual formation. Yes, I brought some experience and knowledge to these fields, too, based on my spiritual life and the books I'd read on my own, but those — just like all the word-related experiences I had before I was first hired as an editor — were a kind of starter's education. Once I enrolled in a master's program and a school for spiritual direction, then I set about learning and practicing in more formal and focused ways. I formally studied both those fields for three years each. I became an intern. I was supervised. Then I began to write on the topic and teach on the topic and meet with directees on a long-term basis. 

And now, with the fusing together of the editorial and the spiritual that has become what Bookwifery is today, I can see it is the fruit of so much skill diligently applied over many years. 

Cal Newport, in the subtitle to his book So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, in other words, was right. Skills really do trump passion. (He also says those skills are what create a passion for one's work, and I've found him to be right about that, too.) 

***

Then there's my story of reading Deep Work.

In this second book, Cal talks about what makes for successful work in this time in which we live — a digitally connected time, a deeply distracted time, a highly fragmented time. If we're to make significant strides and impact with our work, he says, we have to push past all of that. We have to clear the decks of our lives. We have to go all in. We have to dive deep.

Deep work happens in sustained, distraction-free periods that encourage exploration, thought, creativity, and risk in our chosen fields. While most people who begin deep work don't last much longer than an hour per session at first, he says, practiced individuals eventually can sustain up to four-hour sessions at a time. It takes time and patience to get there, but its benefits are manifold. 

One thing that helps, Cal says, is to get clear on your highest priorities, both personally and professionally, and to begin to rearrange your life to support them. He outlines an exercise where you name your top priority, or goal, in the personal and professional areas of your life and then name one or two key activities that can best support that goal. 

For example, I named this as my personal priority this year:

Cultivate depth and alignment with God, self, and Kirk in our life together. 

For key activities to support this goal, I named: 

1. Schedule meaningful times of connection in my regular routine

2. Less screen time

Because I know myself well enough to know that I thrive on structure and flounder when I don't have a plan, I then created a daily schedule for myself (a sample of which is pictured above) that helps support this personal priority and its key activities. I also included room in the schedule for the top professional goal and its corresponding key activities that I named.

This daily schedule includes time for depth and alignment with God, self, and Kirk on a regular basis. It tells me when it's time to go deep into work and when it's time to come back to the surface. It tells me when it's time to connect and when it's time to do things like check and respond to email. (That last one alone — scheduling specific times to check and respond to email — has been so freeing and unexpectedly helpful! Now my time spent in my inbox is purely productive, as I'm seeking to read and respond to emails immediately within the period of time I've allowed.)

***

I'm feeling grateful and grounded by what these two books have given to the start of this new year for me. They helped me name the gift Bookwifery has become, and they helped me notice and claim how best to tend to it in this season of its life. They moved me toward creating a structure for my most important relationships and for the greater self-care and soul tending I need in this season of sabbatical I've begun. 

I find it important to say that I haven't followed my new "deep-work schedule" faithfully so far this year, but I'm giving myself room to grow into it. Right now, I'm abiding the schedule about 25–30 percent of the time.

Even so, the time I have been giving to it is markedly different. I can feel life and enthusiasm and energy emerging again. I have more oxygen in my lungs and my soul. I'm grateful. And I'm looking forward to what lies ahead in this new year with its deep-work focus for me. 

Bidden or Not Bidden . . .

I started to realize my soul might need more intentional tending in May of this past year.

For starters, my movement in prayer was happening slowly. The labyrinth moment had happened in early January, and the purple robe showed up on the scene on Good Friday, March 25. It took me about a month after that to move so that I was sitting next to Christ as we looked at the robe together, and then we sat that way, shoulder to shoulder, just looking at it, for at least another month or two still.

In May, when all of this was still going on, Kirk came home from one of his quarterly retreats with the Transforming Community. This two-year program, over the course of nine retreats, teaches its participants about spiritual formation and soul care. One of the retreats, for example, focuses on solitude and silence. Another teaches principles of discernment. They cover lectio divina, different forms of prayer, the examen, the Enneagram, crafting a rule of life, and more. 

Most of these topics were ones I had studied years earlier as part of my graduate degree in spiritual formation. I have incorporated these practices into my life for years and have also taught them to others.

Even so, every time Kirk came home from one of his quarterly retreats, he would tell me he thought I should consider doing the program. And every time, I told him I didn't think it was for me. I did not see the sense in spending several thousand dollars to receive training in areas I had already received training and had been practicing and teaching others for a long time now. 

On this particular time of return from retreat, however, he offered the suggestion through a different lens.

"What if it's not about further training?" he said. "What if you just did it for you, for your own soul care?" 

In that moment, something shifted. I saw the possibility afresh.

Do it just for me? For my own soul care? 

Even though I'd been continuing to meet with my spiritual director every month and had seen God shape and direct my path through these difficult past few years, I also knew something felt off inside me. The labyrinth moment, with its corresponding anger, was the first big clue. The months it took for me to see any movement in prayer after that was another. 

I told Kirk I would open myself to the possibility and see what happened. 

***

We had already been planning for me to join him for his closing retreat with the community in August, so we began to view the upcoming trip as an additional chance for me to discern whether the program was something I, too, was being invited to do. 

Still, even though I was open to furthering the work of my discernment at the retreat, my main point of focus was Kirk. It was his final retreat with this program he had been completing for two years. I was excited to meet the people in his cohort, to see the grounds where he had been taking retreat all this time, to see what it had been like for him to learn in this environment. 

I did not expect at all for God to use the retreat to minister to me. 

But that is exactly what God did. 

***

The first thing that happened was the gaze of Christ. 

On the first day of the retreat, the community met for gathering prayer in the chapel, a room with an altar in the center and four quadrants of chairs facing it. Different large icons of Christ were displayed prominently in each quadrant. 

Kirk and I sat in the back row of our quadrant, and my gaze was drawn immediately to the Pantocrater icon of Christ standing to our left. For the whole of the service, I could not take my eyes off it. And because of the style of the iconography, it felt as though he was not taking his eyes off me, either. It felt like he was gazing right into me.

At some point during the service, I noticed my heart was speaking to him. 

"I miss you," my heart was saying. 

"I know," he was saying back. 

We gathered for fixed-hour prayer several times during the course of the retreat, and each time we sat in that chapel, I continued to stare at this icon of Christ and let myself feel his gaze staring back into me. I noticed that, slowly, slowly, it felt like drops of water were being sprinkled on my parched, dry heart. My heart was being watered by the gaze of the Living Water. 

***

The second thing that happened was that Ruth Haley Barton, who leads the Transforming Community, gave a closing homily on the final morning of the retreat. 

It was a homily meant for the participants, who were bringing their journey together to a close. But, yet again, God used the homily for me too. 

Ruth spoke on the Emmaus Road passage in Luke 24. She described the two disciples on the road, how they had started their walk to Emmaus feeling disillusioned, disheartened, and confused. They were dazed as they woke up to the reality of their lives. What had their lives become? How did they end up here, exactly? 

I felt she was speaking directly to my experience. I, too, felt like I was waking up to a life I did not recognize. How had I gotten here, so far from God? What had happened to me and our shared intimacy?

I was dazed and disillusioned, for sure. 

The tears started running down my face. 

Ruth must have spoken for 20 minutes that morning, and the tears rolled down my cheeks for the whole of it. I could not get them to stop for anything. I felt conspicuous and embarrassed, due to the setup of the chairs that had our four quadrants facing each another. I was a visitor among this group, and yet I felt my tears, which I could not control, were making a spectacle. 

Something was clearly happening at this retreat. God was using it to awaken something more inside me.

***

Over the previous couple years, a regular theme had emerged in my work with my spiritual director, Elaine. I would come to our sessions and tell her I'd been struggling to pray. During the sessions, I would be able to pray. Pretty consistently in those sessions, she would help me see that despite my lack of focused prayer on my own throughout the month, God had been present and active anyway.

This was different for me. I'd been used to regular rhythms of prayer in my life. At one point, in response to my sense of my contemplative call, I had arranged my life so as to be able to spend up to four hours most days in contemplative prayer and other spiritual practices. 

A lack of regular prayer practice in my life unnerved me.

"Perhaps God is teaching you a different way of praying," Elaine would suggest. "Perhaps you are being invited to see the ways God is with you and moving in your life, even when you don't take time to sit and pray in the ways you're used to doing." 

It encouraged me, the way she could help me see where God had been present in the midst of my changed rhythms, how God was moving in and through me despite myself, even when I did not know it was happening. 

***

When the retreat ended, Kirk and I decided to take one last drive around the lake that adjoins the retreat center. As we drove, I shared with him what had been happening inside me during Ruth's homily that caused all those tears to fall. When I finished sharing, he pulled the car over and told me he wanted to give me a gift had purchased for me at the retreat.

It was the plaque you see pictured above. Bidden or not bidden, God is present.

As soon as I saw it, I burst into tears. 

In that moment, everything collided: all that God had been stirring in me during those few days of the retreat, teaching me about my heart's desire and thirst for him and my feelings of disillusionment about what my intimacy with him had become, and all that Elaine and I had been noticing for quite some time together. Bidden or not bidden, God is present. 

It had been hard already, in my work with Elaine, to reconcile that God continued to speak and move and work through me despite my shifting prayer practices. But now, after a few days spent realizing just how much I missed God after nearly a year of anger and distance from him, I had an even harder time reconciling this reality of God's ongoing movement and action through me.

Even as I had been struggling in my life with God, the Still Forming community I had been called to serve was growing. Together, we had walked through several meaningful seasons of learning and sharing over this past year. I knew I had noticed and responded to God's leading into and through those seasons. 

And yet my life with God was struggling. 

How could these two realities coexist? Bidden or not bidden, God is present.

***

It will likely not surprise you to hear that I decided to join the next cohort of the Transforming Community program. It started in October, and it is already helping to reorder and refresh my soul. 

More on that to come.