the shire

As soon as I crossed the imaginary line in the parking lot, I knew. The line where I became closer to my destination than from where I had started. My feet quickened with each step and my heart softened. I was coming home. Not to where I eat or sleep, but to a place where I am known. 

I walked into the little pod of portables, sitting like an island of outcasts on the university campus and it was like the shire. The small dusty islands transformed into cottages in green pastures.

No faces were familiar when I crossed that imaginary line or entered the world of fake wood paneling and creaky portable floors, but the classroom carried faces. The memories of friends who had become family. The ones who loved me well and cried with me well — whom knew when everything wasn’t okay.

As I made my way through the classroom door, I paused. I took a deep breath and looked around. The room was bustling with excitement and first day of class summer chatter. I found my chair, the one I will most likely sit in for the remainder of the semester. Like memory foam, I was sinking back into the shape that I had formed over the past four years. More so, the shape that had been formed around me. A place of acceptance.

These were my people. This was my place.

It felt like home. It is home.

Soul care. That is what has happened in this place. A depth of care unknown to a majority of the world is the gift I receive and have learned to receive in this corner of God’s kingdom. I am deeply grateful for it.

Soul care isn’t new. But it’s revolutionary. It transforms and changes perspectives, outlooks and people. It’s not necessary to live in this world, but I’d venture out to say it’s necessary to live fully.

One by one, students shared the last time they felt cared for, particularly in relation to their soul. Tears brimmed my eyes. Their stories dug up emotion, their vulnerability and open spirit dug up vulnerability in the wells of my heart, opening my own soul.

What is soul care? 

Hope amidst tragedy, the perfect parking spot, a chance meeting, having others listen and focus on you, a good cup of coffee, time to journal. The list is unending. The ways God meets each one of us is unending. A class of more than 35 students each had a different response to how they had felt cared for in their lives.

Listening to their stories — stories of goodness, pain, love, grace — was soul care in itself. Being home in that classroom, in “the shire,” meant to be in a place where not only my soul is cared for, but where I may care for others. Sometimes soul care is simply listening to how others receive care.

David Benner writes, “Caring for souls is caring for people in ways that not only acknowledge them as persons but also engage and address them in the deepest and most profoundly human aspects of their lives.”

Soul care cannot be defined absolutely. For if we are to define soul care, we must first acknowledge the soul we are caring for — a person in their humanness, their unique personality, their Christ-likeness, the state they are currently traversing through and how they do life. There is an infinite number of souls to be cared for and therefore, an infinite number of ways to care for them. Let’s start with you.

When was the last time something or someone cared for your soul?

*Photo taken in Gig Harbor, WA — one of the most prominent and profound times I feel that God has cared for my soul