If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.
Mother Teresa
I ran into a friend at the library where I was typing out the words to this chapter. She peeked at my computer over my shoulder and said, “Oh, you’re working on your new book? What’s it about?”
“Um . . .” You’d think I’d have my elevator pitch down, and it would be an easy question. “Generosity.”
“Hmm . . . So like a book on giving back?” she asked.
“No, it’s a book about giving it all,” I answered.
Yeah, I’m not so sure she added it to her reading list.
When we read through the Gospels that chronicle the life of Jesus, we can come to only one conclusion: Jesus gave everything.
What did it cost Jesus? Everything.
What should it cost us? Everything.
Jesus doesn’t ask us to just give back—he asks us to give it all.
It’s as hard to type these words as it is to read them. We skirt our way around this truth in our faith culture. Sure, we give back, but Jesus says, “No, give it all.”
It’s not sexy or cute or fun. Seriously, what happens when we give it all to him? We fear we will have nothing left—no money, time, resources, or dreams.
But as strange as it sounds, this is the kingdom formula to having it all. In his book Radical, David Platt says, “We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”1
There’s nothing confusing or unclear about Jesus’s words to his disciples as he prepared for the cross: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23–24 NIV).
This “deny yourself and follow me” road isn’t easy. There aren’t guarantees of safety and security. As a matter of fact, there are many risks along the way. I want to explore two of them with you.
First, giving it all means we empty ourselves. But if we aren’t consistently taking time to refill and recharge, we find rather quickly that we have nothing left to give.
In the middle of writing this chapter, I had to stop and take a long break. Somewhere in the process of getting these thoughts on paper, I discovered that I wasn’t just weary and tired from a hectic season. I was completely empty. Again.
I haven’t always taken good care of my soul.
The best way to know you need soul care is when it feels too late to get it. I didn’t even know the term soul care until October 2015 when I got an unexpected email from someone I’d never heard of inviting me to join her and a handful of other nonprofit leaders at an all-expenses-paid weekend at the Ritz Carlton in Vail, Colorado. Um, excuse me? I sort of dismissed it with the other robocallers who want to give me money. But Brandi, the gal on the other end of the computer, was persistent.
I learned that SoulCare Retreats was legitimate, and after talking to a couple of women who had benefited from the relaxing weekend—where you’re pampered and loved and given space to let God renew you—I began to consider it. Terrell would have put me on the next plane out of town because those closest to us see burnout long before we are going up in flames. The last trip he talked me into was my first trip to Kenya in 2010, so I was both excited and terrified. I said yes.
I read the agenda for the retreat while in my car waiting in line to pick up my youngest from school. A lump formed in my throat as I read the words rest, renewal, unscheduled time to relax, no agenda, and by the time I got to a quiet time to care for your soul I was undone. I sat in my dirty minivan and cried until I couldn’t breathe.
For months I had been feeling anxious and more overwhelmed than normal, and those feelings were preceded by years of carrying a crushing burden. My life had become one meeting after another, answering emails all hours of the day, staying up late to complete writing assignments, and filling my days at the Mercy House warehouse. I had become a master multitasker, juggling motherhood, marriage, and ministry, but even pro jugglers drop balls.
I was so tired. I was weary in well doing. I’ve never been good at resting, and I realized I stink at caring for my soul. I was functioning on fumes, and I felt panic every time I looked at my list of things to do.
I began reading passages of Scripture about Jesus removing himself for solitude, finding secluded places of prayer, and even napping on a boat in a storm. It dawned on me that my refusal to stop and rest to renew my soul wasn’t strength; it was weakness. It was pride.
I’ve heard it said that keeping the Sabbath is experiencing freedom. I didn’t really understand this until I admitted how hard it was for me to stop working and actually rest. In Deuteronomy 5 we read: “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. . . . Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (vv. 12, 15 NIV). About Sabbath rest Tim Keller says:
In the Bible, Sabbath rest means to cease regularly from and to enjoy the results of your work. . . . Sabbath is about more than external rest of the body; it is about inner rest of the soul. We need rest from the anxiety and strain of our overwork, which is really an attempt to justify ourselves—to gain the money or the status or the reputation we think we have to have.2
At some point I believed the very dangerous lie that all the things I was involved in—family, work, ministry—functioned only because of me. But I recommitted to being more like Jesus, and if he needed to retreat occasionally, how much more did I need to. Once I gave in to rest, I saw how desperately I needed it as a wife, mother, and leader. When I first walked into my gorgeous room in Vail in October of 2015 and saw the spectacular snowy mountain view, I burst into tears. I lay down on the bed and sobbed until I couldn’t cry anymore. I was treated like royalty with presents and massages and amazing food. I spent hours alone. I read and prayed. I took long bubble baths, and I learned to be still again. I enjoyed every second.
A few months later, my family welcomed into our home Maureen, our Kenyan director who leads the maternity homes we support, and her family for a twenty-seven-day stay. It’s an annual visit we look forward to, but it’s not always easy. Inviting guests from the third world into our first world always breaks me in a new way. It’s impossible not to see how much wealth we have through the fresh eyes of people who have so much less.
We had a hectic schedule of speaking and fund-raising. In a three-month time frame we hosted our Annual Gala, moved our nonprofit into a warehouse five times the size, opened our first fair-trade retail store, and hosted a gathering of nonprofit leaders—most of which we did while having houseguests for a month. It was a demanding and exhausting season, but I watched my family come together and serve. Our kids shared their parents and the demands on our time. Jon-Avery gladly offered his room for the long visit and slept on the couch. Madison helped prepare meals, and Emerson was a huge blessing each time she played with and occupied Amaziah, their young son. It was a time that stretched us in every way—financially (extra mouths to feed and the opportunity to spoil our friends), physically (demanding schedule), and emotionally (listening to hard stories, planning, and so on).
Terrell and I modeled loving God and loving others to our children. But we also showed them how to overburden a family, put strain on a marriage, and take a giant step toward burnout. What we were doing during this time sounds good on paper, but there were hard days, meltdowns, and angry moments. During one particularly tough day I was arguing with my kids because I needed more of their help during the two-week period that Maureen and I had twelve speaking engagements. Madison said, “Sometimes I feel like everything is about Mercy House.”
Her words felt like a slap. Not in a disrespectful way but in a wake-up-call way. And she was right. Some days it did feel that way. Her words were exactly what I needed to remember the important balance we were lacking. I remembered my time in Colorado, and I realized my family needed soul care as much as I had needed it months before. We had a family meeting that night and circled a date on our calendar a week away to love our family well so that we could love the world well. One is entirely dependent on the other.
Sometimes our children speak truth more than anyone else, but we may have to listen through their tears or screams. Some of my most painful lessons of motherhood have been when my kids begged me to rest. It sounded like “Lay with me, Mom,” or it looked like a demanding teenager who was desperately trying to get my attention.
Colorado had become the place for our family to rest, renew, and even heal. (We tend to mess up our kids on this parenting journey no matter how hard we try not to.) Our friends continued to offer us their home as often as we could get away. We had some needed conversations, made some apologies, and took some steps closer to each other. Sometimes we don’t realize how far we are from one another until we pause our busy lives and make a conscious effort to reconnect.
But soul care isn’t a biannual retreat or a cabin in Colorado. It’s drinking daily from the source of life; we cannot lead our families to fullness if we are bone dry. One of our volunteers at Mercy House explained it this way, “We open our hands to what God gives us. It could be time or money or both. We keep one hand open so we can share what we have with others and the other hand open so God can keep filling it.” At the time I was in the middle of this self-imposed book-writing break because I was desperately empty. As she stood in the middle of our warehouse with her palms open, I saw that I had one hand open to share what God had given, but the other hand wasn’t open to receive more. It was busy working.
A second risk along the “deny yourself and follow me” road is this: giving it all doesn’t mean we work harder.
At Mercy House, 2017 started off with more stress than I thought possible due to staff changes, unprecedented growth, and a pressing burden to maintain all we had begun to empower women globally. It was also the first year we had transitioned our two teens out of public school to an online high school at their request, and everything was tougher than we thought it would be. In May of that year I had one of my children at our dear pediatrician’s office and described their symptoms as moody, exhausted, and angry. The doctor asked several questions, including, “When did this begin?” I thought about it and said, “Well, I guess after we got back from Kenya in March.” She has been doctoring my kids since they were toddlers and knows all about Mercy House. She’s given them yellow-fever shots and malaria medicine to protect them. “Kristen, I think maybe your kids are just trying to process what they experienced.” I started crying, and that visit turned out to be a little family-therapy session. We had cared for our physical bodies, but our souls were weary. Our family circled the first week of June, the first week of summer, on our calendars, as a finish line of sorts or at least as a break to come up for air. More than once I looked at that circled date and mentally counted down the days until we could take that first deep, long breath of Colorado air.
Two weeks before our summer trip and after battling a bad cold, I completed my last speaking event of the school year. When I arrived home at midnight and realized we had company coming the next day, I checked the calendar again and thought, I can do this. The kids were on fumes too, and I reminded them the finish line was in sight.
Then one week before our trip our family was at the park across the street from our house with our houseguests. Jon-Avery had ridden his skateboard to the park, and on impulse Terrell got on it and rode off down the street with our dog jogging beside him.
Ten minutes later a neighbor was driving down the street toward the park yelling my name. My blood ran cold when I saw my husband crumpled in the seat next to him. “You need to take your husband to the hospital now,” the neighbor said. After a night in the emergency room, doctors confirmed what we feared: Terrell had crushed his ankle and would need surgery to rebuild it.
The next morning the surgeon put my husband on complete bed rest for the next ten days to try to reduce the swelling so that when he performed the surgery he would be able to close the incisions in his leg. I cried when the doctor left the room because I realized we would have to cancel our Colorado vacation.
Sometimes when you try to take that desperately needed deep breath, you find there’s no air in your lungs. That’s exactly how our family felt—like the breath had been kicked out of us. I thought there was nothing more our family needed than cool mountain air. God thought differently. Our lives slowed to almost a complete stop while we waited for that surgery and for weeks afterward. We didn’t leave our house for days and days. People brought us meals for weeks. While my husband mended, God did something unexpected in our hearts. He showed our family that rest comes in many ways and that sometimes soul care looks completely different than we think it should. I had time to think and pray and be still. There weren’t majestic mountains (unless you count laundry piles) or rocky mountain springs (unless you count my clean commodes), but God was there. He has a way of giving us what we need.
That’s not to say it was the summer we hoped for—there were plenty of tears and pouting and complaining (and that was just me). Early on I told Terrell, “Maybe God has a lesson for us to learn in all this.” I think we learned much about ourselves during this time. I discovered afresh how much my husband does for our family on a daily basis. He serves us without complaint, and we had grown accustomed to it. With him on bed rest for weeks, all the things he normally did either didn’t get done or were done by the kids and me. We tried to remember to put out the trash, mow the lawn, pay the bills, and so on. I was also reminded how much he helps me. More than once I started to ask him to bring me something, put our youngest to bed, or run an errand before I remembered that he couldn’t. And Terrell felt terrible. I think we both discovered we had too much pride. It was hard on Terrell not to be able to do those things that always came naturally to him. It was hard for me to accept help from others.
This season became a time to receive. Giving didn’t always come naturally for my family, but once we started, it became addictive. Receiving, on the other hand, is much harder. It’s humbling to let other people feed your family. It’s difficult to let friends grocery shop for you, pick up your kids, walk your dog, bring in your trash, mow your yard—you name it. But nothing will make you feel more loved.
One night when a friend dropped off a meal she’d spent hours preparing, she hugged my neck and whispered, “Keep going, girl.” It reminded me of the last time I was in Colorado.
I was actually on my way home from a SoulCare Retreat reunion of more than forty nonprofit leaders, and I had a forty-five-minute layover in the Denver airport before my flight home. It wasn’t a lot of time, but sometimes a little is all you need. The night before as I repacked my suitcase to head home, one of our very first and longest Mercy House donors messaged me and asked if she and her kids could meet me at the airport “for just a minute to encourage you.”
I never pass up encouragement so I sent her the time and terminal. We found each other in a sea of travelers, and her adorable little kids gave me big hugs like we were long-lost friends. We settled down at a nearby table at the airport Burger King, and they handed me a greeting card, a Chick-fil-A gift card, a package of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (my favorite), and a beautiful paper crown. Just because, of course.
While the kids shared a soda, I caught up with an online-turned-real-life friend. I had just spent three days at a SoulCare Retreat with a room full of world changers who were so raw and real and vulnerable that I felt at home standing in front of them, sobbing uncontrollably, and letting them into a painful parenting place I haven’t shared with many. (Oh yes, we all have them. That kid who challenges, pushes, frustrates, discourages you. You know the one. Sometimes we just need to tell someone so they can remind us that parenting is hard and we aren’t alone.)
So when my airport visitor asked me how I was doing—really doing—I told her.
I told her life was good and life was hard. That this yes might just kill me, but I would die happy and satisfied. Sometimes when people ask, they really want to know.
My layover time was ticking and my friend called her kiddos over and asked, “Would you like to ask Mrs. Welch your questions now?” She turned to me and said, “Mercy House is a part of our lives. My kids have grown up praying for you.”
I got a giant lump in my throat.
They asked about the water well we dug in Kenya and about the maternity home and then this question, “Have you ever been persecuted?” They paused. “Like has anyone ever thrown rocks at you?”
Not real ones, I thought. But I told them about some of our Fair Trade Friday groups in India who were facing violence and opposition for their faith, and I asked these littlest supporters to pray for them.
I looked at my watch; it was time to go. They walked me to the escalator, and we took some pictures. They hugged me again, and I grabbed my bags, my paper crown, and the unopened card and hurried toward security.
Once I settled into my seat on the plane I took a deep breath and felt a surge of exhausted relief to be heading home again to my family. I opened the card my friend had given me and the first words were “Keep going, girl. . . .”
In row 26 I ate an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie and I cried. Because that was exactly what I needed to hear.
I’m really bad at taking care of myself. And sometimes when you put off caring for yourself it takes time to catch up. That’s what I’m doing. I’m also trying not to give up. Maybe you need to hear these words too. Keep going, girl . . .
Keep going when it gets hard.
Keep going when it stays hard.
Keep going when you really want to give up.
Keep going when you’re afraid and everyone thinks you’re brave.
Keep going when you’re too tired to stand.
Keep going when where you’re going is here instead of there.
I love my job. I love to work. I’m not sure when it happened but at some point work became easier than rest. I have a hard time relaxing and being still. When I was forced to stop I discovered that some of my work was really a need to prove myself, as if all I do depended on me rather than God. No, it wasn’t the summer we wanted, but I really think it became the summer we needed. It was the summer God taught our weary family to rest in the gospel and the summer God reminded us that he was satisfied with us. Tim Keller says:
Most of us work and work trying to prove ourselves, to convince God, others, and ourselves that we’re good people. That work is never over unless we rest in the gospel. At the end of His great act of creation the Lord said, “It is finished,” and He could rest. On the cross at the end of His great act of redemption Jesus said, “It is finished” and we can rest. On the cross Jesus was saying of the work underneath your work—the thing that makes you truly weary, this need to prove yourself because who you are and what you do are never good enough—that it is finished. He has lived the life you should have lived, He has died the death you should have died. If you rely on Jesus’s finished work, you know that God is satisfied with you. You can be satisfied with life.3
When Jesus said, “It is finished,” he was literally telling us, “You’re approved. No more trying to prove yourself; you are covered in my blood. You can’t live up to my Father’s standard because you are fallen and sinful, but I can. I did. I sacrificed. And now I cover you. You’re approved.”
I’m taking my own advice. I started going to regular counseling sessions so I can process the burden I carry, the exhaustion in my soul, and the beauty and heartbreak of giving my all. I started taking a regular day off to rest. And we decided to take two weeks off at the end of that difficult summer. Rest isn’t always sleeping; it’s sometimes being still.
Here are five things we can teach our kids about soul care if we slow down long enough to learn these lessons ourselves:
It’s easy to lose ourselves in caring for others. Parents, we can only give away what we possess ourselves. Schedule some time to care for yourselves so you can care for your families.
And let God renew your soul.