Feeding The Soul Pdf

[Fritzi Vanderweel]

Thereare many more ways to feed your soul of course, including music, art, having a massage etc. Everyone will have a different list but I hope this provides a starting point. If you would like to work with me on making positive changes to your health and wellbeing, please contact me van...@wellbeingandnutrition.co.uk

Deciding not to buy a large, expensive house could perhaps unchain us from a job that stresses us out. This, in turn, might allow us to instead find meaningful work doing what we really love doing. What a concept, right?! Or perhaps merely cutting back on work hours to volunteer and live a life filled with purpose might feed your soul.

In this season of warmth and gratitude, perhaps some of us may make time to remember what makes our soul sing. What if, instead of investing in empty material objects so much this season, we invested in our souls? My hunch is that the return will be much more powerful and plentiful than we ever imagined.

Tamara Goldsby, Ph.D., is a Clinical Research Psychologist affiliated with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and a sound healing researcher. Her goal is to bring healing to people on a large scale through her research and writing.

All of us, people and animals alike, have a hierarchy of needs we need met. At the most basic level we need air, water, food, sleep, etc., to function. Further up the rung, we find that we need similar things like space, flow, fuel, rest, etc., for the soul. Without these resources, our bodies will fail and fall into sickness and our souls will flounder and fade. We have all felt these effects at one time or another, and surely now more intensely because of the pandemic.

We raised a pair of bonded rabbits we bought from Queen Hive Farm, and I remembered how they rescued horses and trained them for the trails in their back woods. I got on the phone with their owner, Jennifer Cording, told her a little about Emma, about homeschooling and what we hoped to learn. We agree that in exchange for riding lessons with barn hand Hannah Herring, our family (including Ethel on my back) would disperse the morning feed each week for the chickens, rabbits, goats, sheep, and their Jersey cow Chuck Beef.

Together, Em and I would go in the evening once a week for lessons with the horses. We learned how to put on a halter and attach the lead line. We watched how Hannah led them and talked to them, especially when they spooked at something or misstepped or took advantage of a situation. We learned their mannerisms and personalities and quirks. We started to notice their mood changes, if they were not feeling themselves or anxious to reunite with their friends in the paddock.

Often I stood on the fence, watching. I watched the horses while they played and while they grazed. I picked up on the herd mentality and pecking order, and was determined to understand the why behind it all when they interacted with one another. Being there, I learned more about their true selves and their wants and needs. Later, I taught myself how to groom in a more therapeutic way, with lots of soothing strokes and rubs before each ride. I also adjusted my usual pattern of speech, talking in a lower, slower voice.

Our love for horses only grew. Five days a week I turned the key to the barn door, greeted my friends, filled feed buckets, and we ate breakfast together before the sun was up. I played rhythmic meditation music for us all while we finished our food.

Without a doubt, what all of us see depicted on the news is far more catastrophic than my personal crisis. Yet the possibility that our cross-cultural life and ministry may have come to an end on January 30 has created a significant amount of stress and anxiety within me. As many of you know, my wife and I have made Kyiv, Ukraine our home and base of ministry since 2009. In order to facilitate a training program for new missionaries, we traveled to North America at the end of January. We had planned to be in North America for about 10 weeks, with return tickets booked for a few days after the completion of the training program.

We pray daily for peace to be restored in Ukraine and for the safety and protection of friends that remain in Kyiv or in that country. When will the conflict end? Will we ever be able to return to our home? Where will we live if we are not able to return? We are currently staying with relatives in Canada but know that this is not a long-term solution.

Unquestionably, this upheaval and unsettledness has impacted my own personal walk with the Lord. Over the years, I have taught and written much about the importance of learning to feed your soul. I wrote the following in a blog post 8 years ago.

So missionaries must learn to feed themselves if they are to remain strong spiritually. They are on the front lines of a spiritual battle, dealing with stress and loneliness in ways that they never encountered back home. To remain vibrant Christians, reflecting the truth of the Gospel in their daily lives, they must have spiritual nourishment on a regular basis.

So how does this advice work for missionary refugees back in their sending country? Yes, we are now able to attend worship services and prayer meetings in our sending church. We are thankful for that. Nevertheless, those who best understand what it is like to be a cross-cultural missionary and a refugee are thousands of kilometers away. They are scattered across many different countries in Europe and North America. Sermons addressing issues and needs in my local church in Saskatchewan do not speak to the questions and fears that I deal with on a daily basis. So, feeding my soul myself is still vitally important.

So many of our routines have been disrupted and they may remain disrupted for a very long time. The future is filled with questions and uncertainties. But just as in Kyiv, I get up every morning, knowing the first thing I am going to do after I make some coffee is to spend time in the Word. I will sit down and read a passage from the Old Testament, a passage from the Gospels and a third passage from another part of the New Testament. Then I will reflect on what God is saying to me and do some Bible journaling.

Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts. . . .

I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself and I affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow-believers to ponder this matter. By the blessing of God I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials in various ways than I had ever had before; and after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully, in the fear of God, commend it. How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning, from what is when, without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials and the temptations of the day come upon one!

Here, reading psalms of lament from Scripture has been helpful. Psalm 94 was particularly meaningful when I read it a few days ago. Yesterday, I just started the YouBible app and just let the Psalmists lead me in prayer. I listened to about 15 psalms in succession, finding that their cries for God to intervene mirrored my own heart. Friends have shared that liturgical prayers can help when we struggle to find our own words. Similarly, I have found the guided prayers on the Lectio Devina 365 app have helped to center my thoughts on God.

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Take a moment today, go ahead - RIGHT NOW, and think about who YOU are as an individual. Think about your hopes, dreams, aspirations even your silliness. Think about what truly makes your life feel complete, meaningful and gives you purpose.

Folks, NO ONE should be working a J.O.B. In fact, you want to know what J.O.B. stands for to me? It's a Jerky Overabundance of Bollox! I say that with all due respect, but the bottom line is if your heart isn't in it, then why in the hell are you doing it??

I suspect that your work, like so many have experienced before you, is because of some predefined construct that we must work hard and show up each day to some "place" where we are building someone else's dream while we stifle our own no matter if we like it or not. Or even better, you show up every day miserable just because everyone tells you, "That's a great company to work for!" Either of these hitting a nerve?

Is it perhaps just so we can collect a check and buy more "stuff?" Because you feel "stuck" and don't know what else to do with yourself? Because you don't want to live in your parent's or families basement for the rest of your life?

Life....LIFE is too short to be lying to yourself or satisfying someone else's nonsense reasons! This is YOU we are talking about here!! You know, the you that has to live the life you've been blessed with and deserves better?

Here's the trick folks. If you choose to do what is in your soul, what you are so passionate about it stirs up your emotions and or you do what you are MEANT to be doing.... there is NO monetary figure you can place on how valuable that is! Even better, the satisfaction and purpose you will feel are beyond anything you could imagine.

Remember, success is doing something that you are passionate about, something your soul is meant for, and loving the life you've been blessed to lead. Success, is not, going through the motions because you're afraid to follow what's burning deep inside of your soul!

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