A Caregiver’s Guide to Soul Care (Especially During a Pandemic)

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A few weeks after my son turned 5 years old, he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. The next morning, we went to his favorite park and saw a friend he happily joined in the sand box.

As I settled a nursing cover over myself and 6 month old, I heard my son explaining his decision from the night before. Soon, two little girls meandered over to play and got embroiled in the conversation. I felt fairly chided that I never expressly told my son to share his faith. Soon that chided feeling morphed into pride as I watched my little Evangelist share his stirring story of coming to faith to this small group of intent listeners. In my minds-eye I could see the entire neighborhood coming to faith in Christ. I could see other parents and youth ministry leaders asking How did this happen? How had all these children accepted faith so easily? “Oh,” I’d sigh, wistfully, “All it takes is the faith of a child!”

My reverie was broken a few moments later when the circle of children dispersed and three of them, including my son, walked toward me. “Mom”, my son said flanked on each side by his new converts. “We have a question for you.” Six little eyes bore into mine. “Yes?” I breathed, wide-eyed and expectant, looking from child to child. I felt confident in my ability to expound on any theological dilemma they may have come across in their brief seven-minute foray into Christianity. You don’t understand the Trinity, kids? Well, It’s like an apple! Skin, pulp, seed. Different- but all still one apple! I had, after all, been to Seminary.

“Well,” my son began, looking off into the distance the way he still does to this day when he is searching for the right words, “What we are wondering is…” he looked from friend to friend for validation, “…what do Christians…do?”

I blinked at them. Twice, in rapid succession, like a pigeon. Like a caged and trapped pigeon. Like a caged and trapped pigeon who had been to Seminary.

After a pause that was just a beat too long, one of the unnamed converts shifted his weight. He took a breath presumably to ask another question and I blurted out over him, “They love God!” I nearly screamed, like I had just smacked the buzzer in a game show. My 6-month old jolted, froze, and then began nursing again. “And they love other people!” I spurted. Now it was the kids’ turn to blink at me, chins pushed into their spines, startled silent. I closed my gaping mouth and sat back on the hard, wooden bench.

They wandered back to the sand pit leaving me stunned, baffled. Dumbfounded. I reviewed my ineptitude. Should I have said, “Christians go to church?” That hardly qualifies. Plus, I don’t want to give the impression that Christianity is about performance: church attendance, volunteering, service. I sat in silence and mulled. The fact that I could not readily translate my faith to a child gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. We love God and other people, right? We make disciples, we worship, and we share the good news. But what does that mean to a 5-year-old? What does it mean that I couldn’t think of any tangible action in our lives, outside of church attendance, to illustrate that? What in my daily life actually reflected my faith? What does it mean to be a Christian? What do we do?

Before having kids, I could have pointed to a slew of projects and activities: leading bible studies, discipling women, serving at the homeless shelter, an hour of silence with my coffee and the Scriptures every morning. But those things had not retained their consistency after children. If I tried to have a quiet cup of coffee in the morning with my Bible, I got climbed on, pages torn, and my favorite Anthropologie candle hurled against a wall (ask me how I know). A couple of years ago I called the inner-city mission to see if I could bring our family to volunteer and was told that children under 12 were not allowed.

My friend Danica told me the night before she went into labor with her firstborn, without any contractions, she instinctively knew he was coming. She got in bed and said goodnight to her husband, knowing, in a way only mothers can, that it would be the last night as a child-free zone. She turned to him and said, “It’s been a good run, babe. See you again in 18 years”.

I feared I had unwittingly done the same to God. I had placed Him in the same container as everything else in my life that I assumed I would come back to after the kids went off to college. I came home from the park that day ready for the first time in a long time to be honest with myself. My lack of sufficient soul rest, years of living meagerly, the rushing, frantic, chaos of childrearing had begun to take a toll. My soul was demanding questions from me that I could not answer.

Where had God been in my life since becoming a mom? Apart from the occasional retreat or conference, how was I meeting Him? What did it mean that I could spout off 100 theological facts or bible verses but I could not articulate God’s movements currently manifesting in my life?

What does it mean to be a Christian? What do we do?

I’ve been trying to answer those questions for the last decade, and the recent events of Covid-19 have only added more questions. How do humans flourish spiritually in a family setting without some suffering at the expense of others? What does it look like to serve one’s community, when we are isolated from one another, not to mention with young toddlers in tow? What does devotion to God look like amidst the demands of laundry, bills and family obligations? What does it mean to be a Christian within a cultural context of overbuilt schedules and constant media accessibility and unrelenting demands? How do I guide my children into an experience of God if I don’t have the time, energy and ability to experience Him myself? With Church and community doors closed, how do I care for my soul, and the souls in my home?

I reasoned that I could be more spiritual if I didn’t have 10 tiny hands groping me all the live long day asking me where their math pages are and if I know how whales sleep. How could I expect to address the deepest desires of my soul if every time I sat quietly someone poked me on the arm asking what time is dinner? I can’t hear a single thought, can’t form a single prayer and by the time they go to bed I am too tired to mentally engage in anything more intense than watching paint dry.

Those of us who long for greater intimacy with God have a hard time finding it in a busy, noisy and chaotic life. We trade communion for consumption, subsiding on a spiritual diet of McDonalds, of fast and easy, of convenience. We pack the gaping spiritual hole with cheap, earthly fixes. We buy more and eat more and demand more and fill our lives with ever increasing distractions on screens. But there is a price to be paid- the health of our souls.

Today’s parents and caregivers must reimagine a theology of chaos. We must recapture the Jesus who is not afraid of it, tired of it, or irritated by it. Instead of trying to contain the need or escape the chaos Jesus stopped, He stooped, He told the little children to come, whining, wiggling, snot and all. We need this inclusive faith, one where Jesus walks along naturally with our children, as we juggle car seats and Target bags and a stick from the park the toddler is unnervingly attached to. Luckily, this is exactly what is offered.

God is not disconnected from us when the Church is closed, when we feel alone, or even when the whole world seems to be burning down around us and we are still expected to help our children turn in reading logs. God is not disconnected from us when we fail to read our Bibles or pray or even remember to call out His name. He is not even disconnected from us when we are disconnected from ourselves.

If Jesus was committed to anything it was radical accessibility; to With-Ness. He could have set Himself up behind a gated mansion, claiming needed security and boundaries. But Jesus’ divine appointment, like ours, was inside the chaos. The Spirit called Him there, led Him there, and equipped Him there. Like Jesus, caregivers exist in a world where we are all but crowded out, people and demands grabbing, clawing at us; somedays we feel all but crushed by human need. Yet I’ll testify: Jesus is still doing some of His best work in chaos.

There is a reason Jesus didn’t point to adults and tell the children to shape up, grow up, and act like them. Instead, Jesus tells adults to emulate children. One of many reasons for this may be that children are by nature integrative- there is no “holy life” and “regular life” for them. It turns out these people sitting around our kitchen tables, grabbing our calves as we chop peppers, telling us to push them higher on the swing- these are not our obstacles to meeting God, they are a catalyst to move toward Him. They are our greatest examples of Kingdom living.

Children embrace play as well as rest. They are more often curious than afraid. They can hold the tension of mystery and seek out adventure. They accept the Kingdom given to them readily and unremorsefully. They know instinctively things we spend a good deal of time trying to re-learn as adults: how to be dependent, how to be present, how to forgive and embrace and accept. Once, I was trying to explain to my 7-year-old what I was doing while practicing the Ignatian Discipline of Examen. I said, “it’s kind of like, I’m trying to be in the present”. She thought about that for a moment while she pushed her tongue through the open gap in her newly evacuated front tooth. She squinted up at me, puzzled, sun in her eyes, “Well…where else are you gonna be?”

Our faith, like our children’s is porous. It has been wisely said that “children are caught more than they are taught”. They soak up their external environment, along with the food we put on their plates, becoming as natural as the air they breathe. If our children are absorbing the life they are in, our task is to cultivate a healthy, nourishing, vibrant life for those in our homes- a life that is turned full-face toward God. Meaning, we cannot care for their souls unless it’s within a context of caring for our own as well.

For me, the vehicle for that life involves practicing the Spiritual Disciplines: the actions the early church practiced modeled after the life and teachings of Jesus. Each month in these writings I will focus on one. We will see how in the discipline of Sabbath we honor our body’s and family’s need for rest. In Silence and Solitude, we are led into that spacious place within ourselves where our souls can breathe. In submitting to the discipline of Scripture we become deeply nourished on the Word, and in Creativity, we create beautiful things alongside our children.

These rhythms have steeped me in the constant, available presence of God. The practices demand we open our eyes to how our external liturgies feed or starve our souls. They expose the quick fixes, the peeling off Band-Aids, the botched repairs that cover our festering wounds. They wake us up to how we settle for cheap comforts when we are anxious or afraid. They invite us to notice how we behave when we are overwhelmed or what we cling to in suffering. They demand we inspect our rhythms and activities and thoughts and patterns and projects and errands and habits. They illuminate where we flee in trials, how we manage disappointments, anger, and boredom.

When I care for my own soul, in very close quarters with my children, I show them what is truly refreshing, worthwhile, lifegiving and sustaining.

Most of all, it moves me from a place of telling my kids second-hand information about God and instead helping orient their hearts toward God, making space in our family to experience God’s presence together.

We have lost so much in this last year, and each grief deserves its title and its time. But for all we have lost, let us not forget what we have gained. With church, school and community doors closed, we are faced with this simple truth: we are the primary spiritual directors of our children’s lives. We can no longer outsource the demands of our faith or theirs. It is on us to guide this ship in a life-giving direction: what an invitation, what an opportunity!

As we launch boldly into the months ahead, my prayer over those reading is this: May the legacy of Covid be a doubling down on what matters most. May we lay the groundwork; may we water the roots. May we push on toward love. Connection is hard, we make mistakes, we fail, constantly. But if Covid has taught us anything, it’s that life will be hard and painful no matter what we do to insulate ourselves against it. And more than that, we are more resilient than we think. Our kids lead the way in this too in their amazing capacity to recenter, to recalibrate and reclaim. God is with us.

We have shouldered responsibility for so much, we have been overworked and over-burdened, and overwhelmed. Let’s shift our focus to see and join the work God is already doing. The earliest monastics viewed our efforts in the spiritual life as simply opening our sails. God is the wind; God is the boat. God, even, is at the helm. May our efforts focus not on doing more but on opening our sails to Him. He can steer this ship toward love and intimacy, if we jump aboard with our families, trusting it will go in a good direction.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (who wrote the Little Prince) said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” May the legacy of this year be that we tended well to the souls in our care and that we never stopped longing for the sea.