A Soul Friend: finding spiritual direction at a crossroads

A personal story of how spiritual direction can offer a calm, unhurried space for questions, exhaustion, and change.

At a crossroads

Sometimes life reaches a crossroads where you aren't sure where to go next. People in your life want to help and offer advice, but you realise you need something different and you're not sure what it is or how to find it.

That was where I found myself at one moment in my early twenties. I had been sure I was going to pursue a certain path, everything had been going to plan, but suddenly nothing seemed to be working out and I was questioning everything I thought was certain. I didn't know it then, but I was looking for what I would later recognise as spiritual direction.

Looking back, I still don't know how I came up with the idea of taking myself on a silent retreat for a few days. It's not something in my faith culture growing up, and I didn't know anyone else who had. I just had a sense, somehow, that I needed to be still and quiet and listen.

I had turned down the option of booking 1:1 time with one of the nuns there, and so when my taxi dropped me off at the convent deep in the south of England, I expected to hurry to my room and make a start on all my deep thinking and reflecting. However, as I set my bag down in the hallway, the nun who welcomed me asked, “Are you sure you don't want to speak with someone?” And something in me just knew I should take her up on the offer.

I am not sure what question she asked me as we sat across from each other, but I found myself simply crying, and knowing that that was OK. She gave me a psalm and a story to hold over the next few days, and as I sat quietly with these offerings, and enjoyed walks in the surrounding gardens as well as several naps, something shifted, and I was able to lay down what I had been carrying.

Before I left, she gave me a postcard with a picture on it of two figures walking together along a path.

Spiritual direction; a steady, unhurried presence

Life moved on. Seven years later, things looked very different and many of the hopes I’d carried back then had come to pass. I was travelling a lot, doing work I cared deeply about, often in demanding places. It felt full and good, but I wasn't really getting a break and, as I was moving back and forth constantly, I was becoming exhausted.

I just kept going until one morning in Egypt when I could barely get out of bed. I did what I absolutely had to do that week, but I realised something had to change.

I had a friend who often mentioned going to see her spiritual director, and I'd always assumed that wouldn't be for me. I wouldn't want to share my whole life with someone I don't know, and I didn't like to be told what to do. But in this crisis moment, I thought I may as well give it a try. So I found someone, took the bus to her town, and I told her about where I had come from and where I was at that moment.

What I found there was a steady, unhurried presence, and a place where I could bring whatever had been happening over the previous weeks, without needing to interpret it or know what any of it meant. Sometimes we simply sit in silence, and that often feels even more valuable than when the space is filled with words. There was no telling me what to do, and I was free to share as much or as little as I wanted to.

I have, almost without fail, visited this same spiritual director every six weeks for the last eight years. Over time, it has taken on a depth that surprises me, and sometimes she will gently remind me of something I once said or went through which has a relevance in this season, helping me to see the threads of my life over all the years.

A soul friend

A few years ago, I trained as a spiritual director myself. Now I have the privilege of seeking to create a calm, safe space for people in the way that the nun first did for me all those years ago, before I even knew that such a thing as spiritual direction existed, and as my current spiritual director does for me through all seasons.

A soul friend can create a space at the crossroads where you can rest and breathe together, allowing everything to belong.

Where do you find space for your questions, and a safe place to be with them?