Get Your Life Back
2021 is the year we get our lives back—right?
Even if a vaccine relieves our world of the coronavirus restrictions, the global heartache present before this pandemic is the real threat to our lives!
It started with the neglect of our souls.
John Eldredge observed this soul pandemic and offers “everyday practices for a world gone mad” in his latest book Get Your Life Back.
As a counselor and ministry leader, Eldredge lives a full life and goes first to set boundaries and practice rhythms that create soul space. You may remember him from Wild at Heart (for men). He has written many excellent books since then!
Twenty years later his invitation is bold: Get Your Life Back. In a world that wants to chew us up and spit us out, suck us in and numb us dull, polarize and demonize, isolate and seed hate, it is time we create space to live a better way. Eldredge says:
The more distracted we are, the less present we are to our souls’ various hurts, needs, disappointments, burdens, and fears.
The heart of this message is to open our lives to more of God in our day-to-day, so we are able to pour out His life, healing, and hope to others.
Eldredge practices as the student first, and leads us as a gracious teacher and counselor who knows how it feels to be angry or aimless because of the trauma from too much and grounded with intention from saying enough!
This is my first book reflection of the year—enjoy.
Here are a few of the wonderful practices in Get Your Life Back:
The One Minute Pause
Eldredge observes our generation is living in flight or fight mode—but by taking 60 seconds to pause we can take our bodies out of the race and surrender to a life-giving-pace of pausing and praying throughout the day:
Jesus, I give everything and everyone to you.
Eldredge even has an app to remind us to take these pauses. He notes:
It’s reshaping the pace of my day.
It is training my soul to find God as an experience more common than rare.
I’ve been surprised to find the start of the new year rather busy and heavy. As I take these moments to pause and look to God everything changes. As it should! The God of the universe enters into my moment of indecision and brings peace.
My church is doing a 21-day fast with various challenges for each day. I am touched by how these seemingly small sacrifices are shifting my gaze and heart to Jesus more and more throughout the day.
Benevolent Detachment
Benevolent detachment is an act of releasing, letting go, stepping away, turning things off, and giving things up!
Eldredge says:
You’ve got to release the world; you’ve got to release people, crises, trauma, intrigue, all of it. There has to be sometime in your day where you just let it all go. All the tragedy of the world, the heartbreak, the latest shooting, earthquake—the soul was never meant to endure this. The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this. It’s way too much. Your soul is finite. You cannot carry the sorrows of the world. Only God can do that. Only he is infinite. Somewhere, sometime in your day, you’ve just got to release it. You’ve got to let it go.
Jesus models this need to retreat and take time in prayer with the Father throughout the gospels.
Eldredge walks us through this process of being kind to ourselves and concludes that bedtime is an ideal time to trust the bits and pieces of this broken world, and our broken lives, into the potter’s hands before we sink into our pillow.
Allowing for Transitions
I have six children and was a school teacher for a short time, so I understand the value of transition time whether in a classroom setting or at home—but how often do I think about it for myself?
Transition times can easily trigger me and I realize the biggest contributor is when I don’t give myself space to breathe between events, meetings, trips, outings, tasks (and moms of young children know this just isn’t always possible either).
I talked about this a little in one of my first blog posts In Time and know, while it is something we can be proactive to plan for, it is also an opportunity to trust God when we can’t get the space we desperately desire.
When we look at the life of Jesus and his disciples, we see the roads they journeyed would have allowed for plenty of time walking, traveling, visiting around a campfire, and eating together between ministry appointments.
In our fast-paced world, addicted to efficiency, we can erase all the white space from our lives and then wonder why we are stressed out and out of touch with our inner person. It is up to us to pencil in more white space!
There are many more practical practices in this book—like simply unplugging, kindness towards ourselves, drinking beauty, and getting outside—but I won’t get into them all here because I think you should read this book!
If Eldredge says “my soul just can’t do life at the speed of smartphones” ours can’t either.
Get Your Life Back takes us from the shallows into deeper waters of peace and joy with God.
This book has inspired my soul-care focus and I want to give away a copy!
Enter the winter giveaway for a copy of the book Get Your Life Back + $25 Gift Card in our Traveling Life Together Facebook group or on Instagram (enter in both for two entries).
The contest begins today and ends on January 16th at 12pm MDT!
**I'm giving a bonus entry for those who comment at the end of this post, so if you're not on social media you can still enter!
Have you built a soulful book list?
I designed a page to record soulful books in my Soul Care guide (reflect & prepare monthly for life’s beauty and struggles).
Some great book suggestions were shared by readers in a recent post in our Traveling Life Together group!
You guys, my friend Leah interviewed Wendy Speake, author of Triggered: Exchanging Parents' Angry Reactions for Gentle Biblical Responses, and I was so encouraged by this podcast episode!
Listen in and be inspired to try two soulful practices: the 40-Day Sugar Fast or the 40-Day Social Media Fast!
Now tell us in the comments, what is one practice that is helping you live more soulfully lately?
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