As summer makes its relentless way to us in June, and the longest day sits just ahead on the calendar, it is hard not to feel the weight of air that simply will not move. The heat and humidity settle in and stay. It is an external condition that feels like what a heavy soul feels like from the inside.
We reach for the phrase “self-care” and find it has been worn thin by popular overuse. But the thing the phrase is reaching for underneath the thin surface is real and ancient and necessary. We don’t tend our souls as a luxury or even an entitlement. We care for our souls because God has already shown us, at great cost, exactly how much we are worth to God. Soul care is our response to that. It is a practice for all seasons, especially the hard ones.
Here are seven ways to do that, drawn from the wisdom Scripture has been offering God’s people for a very long time.
1. Open your Bible and stay there a while:
There is no substitute for the Word of God in a weighty season. Do not read for volume this week. Read for contact. Take one psalm, read it slowly, and let it speak to where you actually are. Psalm 23 has carried more people through more valleys than any other passage in Scripture. Psalm 46 reminds us that God is “our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Start there, and stay as long as you need to.
2. Let your body rest the way God intended:
When Elijah was exhausted and afraid and asked God to let him die, God did not start with a lesson. God sent an angel with bread and water and told him to sleep (1 Kgs 19:5-8). Then God came back and fed him again before saying a single word about what came next. Rest is not laziness. Sleep is not a failure of faith. God will still be at work while you sleep.
3. Stop and be still, even for a few minutes:
Psalm 46:10 says “be still and know that I am God.” Not be busy, not be productive, not be available to everyone who needs something from you or your urgency feels overwhelming. Be still. Elijah heard God not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in a still small voice (1 Kgs 19:12). That voice has not gone anywhere. But it is easy to fill every hour with noise and motion and never give it room to be heard.
4. Stay close to your church family:
Hebrews 10:25 tells us not to forsake “the assembling of ourselves together,” and that instruction exists precisely because the temptation to withdraw is real, especially if we are hurting. When you come through that door on Sunday, you are not required to have it together. You are required only to show up. The body of Christ was designed to carry burdens that are too heavy for any one person to carry alone (Gal 6:2). Let it do that for you.
5. Count what is still good:
Paul wrote the words “rejoice in the Lord always” from a prison cell (Phil 1:13). That is not the advice of someone who had an easy life. It is the hard-won conviction of someone who had learned to be content. Before you go to sleep tonight, name three things that are still good in your life. Not to pretend the hard things are not there. But to keep them from filling every corner of your vision.
6. Take it to the Lord in prayer:
Philippians 4:6 says to be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, to let your requests be made known to God. Everything means everything. God is not waiting for you to arrive with the right words or the right attitude. He is waiting for you to come. The promise is that “the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind through Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7).
7. Remember that God is not finished with you:
Romans 8:32 asks a question worth rereading: “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” God did not hold back the most precious thing in order to reach you. That is the measure of what you are worth to him, and it does not change based on your worst day. Jeremiah 29:11 says God knows “the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.” God is not finished. Neither are you.