Self-care is a popular topic in our culture, but I question how satisfying self-care is. Has it become just another ‘thing’ you feel you need to do? Just another stress in your life? Today we’re going to learn why you should reinvent self-care into soul care.
Pedicures and bath bombs, Netflix binges and stargazing. Self-care has become a popular subject over the years and rightfully so. We’re an overworked nation who need a little extra care.
While I’m all in favor of self-care what I am questioning is if self-care has become another ‘thing’ or trend we feel we have to keep up with? Has it become another item waiting on your to-do list, creating more stress than benefit?
Like anything good, we tend to elevate it, giving it more power than it’s capable of providing. As I mentioned, I think self-care is a great thing and if nothing else it reminds us that we have to put on our own oxygen mask before helping someone else. But, we have to be careful not to attach self-care with the cure.
Because even if you’ve strapped on the oxygen mask, what you need when your plane is about to go down is oxygen. And that living oxygen can only come from soul care.
Inside today’s podcast, you’ll learn how to reinvent self-care into soul care and how this could be the life-giving oxygen that you need. Not to eliminate self-care but to make it more powerful in a personal way.
motivation
Self-care and soul care may sound like the same thing, but they are quite the opposite. One provides the mask and the other the actual life-giving oxygen. The source of life you need to survive a fall.
Self-care tells you what is good for you where soul care helps you to define that for yourself. It takes good things and makes them even better with a personal spin.
Of course, self-care was designed with great intentions and can be a huge benefit to your body. Self-care brings to life the idea that we can’t give out of an empty vessel, that we need to fill our cup before filling someone else’s.
The problem is, self-care is like the diet soda of health. You’re thirsty, worn out, tired, and sitting with an empty cup. So you fill it, but you fill it with diet soda. It may taste good, but it never seems to quench your thirst.
Ultimately self-care leaves you longing for more because we’ve attached the wrong motive to what it can do for you.
The only way to quench your thirst is soul care. The satisfaction that can only come from faith in the Creator of it all – not in a manufactured idea of something that ‘feels’ good.
we can’t fix ourselves
Self-care comes with the attitude of being your own self hero. The notion that you can find healing inside of yourself. The problem is broken things can’t fix other broken things. Likewise, broken people can’t fix what is broken. Only soul care can do that.
So rather than looking at soul care as a magic pill – use it as a reminder that we need to be filled and we can’t give out of an empty vessel.
The care we need is not buried deep inside of us, and it’s not waiting to be unlocked in some magical retreat or five-step program. The cure is the grace of God, and that should be elevated above all else.
That’s why it’s not about eliminating self-care but transferring self-care to soul care first. To choose to put God into the normal rhythm of your life, not just box him up into your morning routine that you may or may not get to. But to include him in your daily rhythms, even if it’s a quiet moment of awareness, of standing in awe or a simple act of thanks thrown up to him.
See where you can include God into the small habits of your day and let that fill your cup.
quote
Today’s quote comes from Dave Mathis in his book, Habits of Grace.
“Grace is too strong to leave us passive, too potent to let us wallow in the mire of our sins and weaknesses. “My grace is sufficient for you,” Jesus says, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). It is the grace of God that gives us his “means of grace” for our ongoing perseverance” – Dave Mat
action plan
The action plan this week is to put a greater focus on soul care rather than self-care. That doesn’t mean you get rid of the nightly bath routine or the long morning runs, but it does mean looking at your daily life and asking yourself the question;
Where can you see God and include Him into your day?
To put a greater emphasis on filling your soul and letting that translate into a new idea of self-care, one that is personal to you.
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