Not too long ago my friend Dixie started a substack with two other homeschooling moms. While I’m not a homeschooling mother myself, I’ve found it fascinating to read their posts about various aspects of their educational choices. , , and are three very intelligent Christian women who often make different—even opposing—decisions about matters which are not in themselves moral – but are also not insignificant to how they live their lives. They use different curricula, have different policies surrounding technology use, and make very different choices about schooling during the summer months.

Now maybe you are not a homeschooling parent and never will be. Why should this interest you? Because while the content of what they’re writing about may have nothing to do with your life, the method they’re using to approach these conversations is one we can all learn from.

They aren’t saying: this is the only and best way to do things. Everyone should do what we do. Instead, they’re saying: here’s what’s working for our situations right now, and here’s why. Maybe by explaining what we do, it could help you think a bit more about what you want to do.

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Paying attention to varied (and yes, even opposing!) opinions/ experiences regarding prudential (aka non-moral) matters can be extremely helpful for our own discernment because:

• (A) we can see that it really is legitimate and even good to choose differently in non-moral matters

• (B) we can see that other people’s circumstances and reasoning patterns might be very different or similar to our own, which means that what they choose and why they choose it may match up more or less closely to our own circumstances and reasoning patterns

• (C) we can stop comparing only the what, which tends to lead to unhappiness

• (D) we can learn to think about our own why and whether or not we want to adjust it

• (E) we can stop feeling guilty for things that have nothing to do with guilt (again, prudential matters)

• (F) we can see other people making different choices confidently and charitably

• (G) we can be freed from the misconception that there is only one right way and we are doing it right (or wrong)

Without this approach, it can be tempting to simply want to copy another person’s what: “she decided to use a computer-based math program so I should too.” But what’s helpful here is the why. Do you have children who are similar ages with similar learning struggles? Do you want your day to look like hers? Do you have comparable amounts of natural energy? What about home size, or help, or financial resources? Do you have the same vision of education and the same goals for your children?

All of these things matter for discernment, and by paying attention to how and why different people make different decisions, we can be encouraged to steward our own unique lives well.

I’d love to hear from you - is this a familiar concept? A new one? Take the poll and/ or leave a comment :)

P.S. If you are interested in home education, and/ or why people might have chosen to homeschool in the US, historically, Dixie’s got a book out on this very topic! It’s called Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream. Read more here.

Have you ever found yourself surrounded by people who all seem to have what you want?

I’m not talking about things that money could buy, if we only had enough of it - new clothes or a car or even a house - rather, those things that can’t ever be purchased: a great spouse, a happy marriage, children, good friendship, health… things that we often have really deep desires for.

It’s a hard place to be, and it can really affect our discernment.

Because sometimes our (often good!) desires for these wonderful things can make us discern lives we don’t actually have. We want these things so much that we spend most of our time imagining what it would be like to have them and hoping and planning to have them… all our energy goes towards the things we don’t have, but wish we did.

The struggle is real, and I know very few people (even people with great marriages and beautiful children and good health) who don’t sometimes imagine what life would be like, if only…

Fr. Jacques Philippe describes the interior disposition of someone in this situation so well - his words really struck me:

“I have the feeling, according to Rimabaud’s expression, that ‘the real life is elsewhere,’ elsewhere than the life that is mine. And that the latter is not real life, that it doesn’t offer me the conditions for spiritual growth because of certain sufferances or limitations. I am concentrated on the negatives of my situation, on that which I lack in order to be happy. This renders me unhappy, envious and discouraged and I am unable to go forward. The real life is elsewhere, I tell myself, and so I simply forget to live.”

Real life is elsewhere and so I simply forget to live.

Isn’t that the truth? We’re so focused on something else that doesn’t exist, that in our minds, we’ve made it exist. We’ve convinced ourselves that the lives we currently have - right now, in this moment - aren’t real.

Yikes.

So what’s to be done?

“Oftentimes it would take so little for everything to be different and for me to progress with giant steps: a different outlook, a view of my situation which is one of confidence and hope (based on the certitude that I will lack nothing). And then the doors would open to me of unhoped-for possibilities for spiritual growth. We often live with this illusion. With the impression that all would go better, we would like the things around us to change, that the circumstances would change. But this is often an error. It is not the exterior circumstances that must change: it is above all our hearts that must change.”

Did you catch that?

For everything to be different, we don’t need to change everything: just our hearts.

And in changing our hearts, what will happen is not that we will suddenly get all those things we’re really longing for, but rather, we can grow closer to the Lord.

“Let us then be convinced of this and it will be for us a source of immense strength: God may allow me to occasionally lack money, health, abilities, and virtues, but He will never leave me in want of Himself, of His assistance and His mercy or of anything that would allow me to grow unceasingly ever closer to Him.”

The lack of the things we want most deeply is an opportunity to grow in intimacy with God. Because all those good things we want? Really, they’re things meant to point us towards Heaven.

Yes, we can and should ask God for all the good things we desire. But even if prayer doesn’t change those things, it changes us.

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Prayer helps us to re-focus on reality, if we let it.

Prayers of adoration re-centre us on a generous Creator who didn’t need to make us, but did anyway, out of love.

Prayers of thanksgiving remind us of the many, many gifts we do have, despite our unfulfilled longings.

Prayers of lament allow us to be honest about our grief, limitations, and struggles.

If you find yourself discerning a life you don’t have, because you don’t like the one you do have, it’s time to get honest about reality. Start praying honestly. Start focusing on what you do have, and allow yourself to grieve what you don’t. Start getting clear on what is in your power to change, and what isn’t.

Perhaps the ‘serenity prayer’ is a good place to start:

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

And if you aren’t sure how to start discerning these things, do reach out!

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Are you the type of person who revels in possibility? How are you at finally making a decision, after all that revelling? Does it feel painful to choose only one thing, because you know you’re leaving behind all those other options?

Maybe it’s this endless rain that has me wondering if I can find a way to escape it, or if we could have tried to schedule a work trip that will take us to a sunny place just a bit sooner. Maybe it’s the reality of living a transatlantic life where being in one place always means you can’t be in the other. Maybe it’s the daily what’s-for-dinner?-I-could-cook-but-I’d-rather-not carousel that hits my mind every day around 5pm lately.

The “Coulds”

Whatever the reason, I’ve been thinking about the weight of a little condition I call the “Coulds” – some little voice(s) pointing out all the things we could be doing differently.

Coulds are a bit trickier than Shoulds. Shoulds have to respond to the clear voice of conscience: is this a moral issue? Yes, I should feed my children and not let them starve. No, I should not feel guilty for hating minimalist décor.

But where is the guide for Coulds?

I could live in England or America. I could have tacos or salad (or taco salad!) for dinner. I could paint my room blue or yellow. I could marry this person or that. I could draw or paint. I could study law or medicine.

None of these is a moral issue – some of these may have better outcomes than others, but they’re all real possibilities.

The Coulds get even trickier when they decide to pop up around decisions you’ve already made. Could I have planned our work trip for a better time? Could I have prepped dinner earlier even though I had set aside that time for writing? Could I just get a chef during these months of incessant gloom??

Of course it would be silly to listen to the Coulds all the time, but they do have a sneaky way of interfering with good decision making.

The Coulds tend to catch us unawares: they lure us into a world of possibility in our heads, and then just leave us there. Stuck in Analysis Paralysis.

We don’t know what to do, because we could do so many things. There are so many good options available! I could do any one of them! And any one of them could be the best possible decision in all universes of decisions. And what if I chose the wrong one??

(If you are a person who makes decisions really easily and is never tempted by the siren song of possibility, chances are that you know at least one person who struggles with the Coulds.)

The Coulds can stop us from actually doing anything.

I’m still learning how to handle them, but here are some of the questions I employ when I start to feel paralyzed by possibility.

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Five Questions to Ask When Paralyzed by Possibility

(1) Are the Coulds freeing me or binding me? That is, is the thought of more possible options a freeing one that gets me unstuck from a too-narrow thought process, or are they paralyzing me with too many choices? The Coulds have a good and necessary job – they help us when we can’t think outside the box. But sometimes they overdo it. I have to be realistic about firing them when they overstep.

(2) Are the Coulds stopping me from taking any action at all? If yes, I need to do something – any small action that gets me out of my head and into the world around me. I tend to live in my mind: the antidote is to practice having a bias towards action. (If on the other hand, you tend to act without thinking, do the opposite!)

(3) Are the Coulds threatening a decision that I’ve already confidently and happily made? Again, the Coulds can help us step out of a rote way of living, or point out that we aren’t living intentionally, but the flip side is that they can constantly upset our rhythm if we let them. If the Coulds are stealing my peace, it’s time to send them packing.

(4) Can I put the Coulds on a shot clock? Can I give them my energy, hear them out, explore all that they offer – but only for a dedicated period of time? Sometimes just letting them have their day in court is enough to realize how tired they make me!

(5) Do I have an issue with limits? I don’t mean moral limits here – I mean the world of time and space as it is. The attraction of the Coulds is that they trick us into thinking that anything is possible – even things that are mutually exclusive. The Coulds say: “you could just order takeout: your problems will be solved!” Only, choosing takeout means other sacrifices in terms of budget and health. The truth is, every yes to something is a no to something else. Don’t let the Coulds tell you otherwise.

If possibility is paralyzing you, I hope you find some relief from the Coulds!

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Some time between travelling transatlantically on Boxing Day and finding myself in a new, slightly depressing city on New Year’s Eve, I lost track of time. It’s been a week (more? or less?) of not knowing what day it is (holidays!), not knowing what time it is (jetlag!), and not always knowing exactly where I am or what side of the road to be on (expat life!).

I love any excuse for reflection, but at this moment, it feels like the main question is “wait, what is happening?” (Can you relate?)

A few weeks ago we met up with friends for lunch and one asked, “what’s new?” only for me to draw a complete blank. The best I could come up with was that my husband was renovating a doorway (a small thing in a regular house but actually pretty significant in a tiny cottage with very few doorways.)

That’s happened a few times this year: meeting up with friends and feeling like my contribution to the conversation is about finally getting a closet (honestly, a total highlight of 2025 in a tiny cottage with zero closets) or feeling like the front bedroom finally has furniture that holds things. Let’s just say it hasn’t been a year of excitement in the classical sense.

And honestly, I’m fine with that. What I’m not fine with is wondering how I spent my time, and whether it was wisely used.

Thankfully, I’m a big fan of journaling and was able to read back through what I’ve wrestled with this year. I can’t say every minute was well lived, but I’m happy to report that despite recalling very little beyond cottage renovations at any given moment, I did do some of the things I wanted to do.

There are a million different ways to do annual reviews, but mine generally includes a long read through my journals, taking note of the themes that emerge. I also talk with my husband about the year in order to get a different perspective and see if I’ve missed anything big or if my memory might be a bit skewed.

Overall, I focus on two general questions: What worked? What didn’t?

Read more about it here:

Today I’ll be sharing some snippets of what worked for me in 2025. Next week, I’ll send out an email to all subscribers about what didn’t work.

It’s free to subscribe! I’d just like to keep that list a little bit more personal, so if you’d like to read, sign up for free here:

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What worked?

On January 8, 2025, I wrote, “Ok. I feel like if 2025 is going to be different, I need to do something differently.”

Not exactly rocket science, I know! But this simple idea was helpful for me in the day-to-day decision making. Things were not going to just start changing without my involvement.

In no particular order, here are some of the things that worked for me:

Spending money on a good haircut

Is this superficial? Probably. I’ve been a ‘supercuts’ kind of girl my whole life, loathe to spend precious resources on my hair. But then I spend months hating my hair every time I look in the mirror. I do not have hair that is easy to cut well, and it finally occurred to me that I could go to someone who was skilled. Only, I’d have to pay them for their skill. It was totally worth it!

On the one hand, it’s a silly thing. It’s just hair! On the other, it’s something that seems to carry disproportionate weight (for better or worse) for me. My dream is to never think about my hair, and having a cut that just works means that I think about it a lot less.

(Apparently I’ve been thinking about this for a long time because I wrote about it back in 2019: Stop Saying You Want the Goal and Start Saying You Want the Process.)

Having enough comfortable “uniform” clothing to not think about it

If you, like me, are the kind of person who dreads getting dressed every day because you don’t want to sit in pinchy or scratchy or too-whatever-y clothing which distracts you from doing actual work, can I recommend just buying some really comfortable cotton pieces that you can wash and wear on repeat? I bought some lovely winter things in the summer sales, and it’s paying off.

This could be classed as another superficial change, but what I’ve realized is that there are often small-ish things that drag my attention away from the more important things of life, and ignoring the small-ish things doesn’t actually make them go away. If I just fix them, they don’t bother me any more and everyone can move on with their days.

Interacting with creative people

As my husband and I talked through the highlights of 2025, I realized that several of my ‘best’ or ‘favourite’ things involved creative people: artists, poets, writers, etc. It’s just been fun to see their ideas emerge, to enjoy their work, and sometimes even to be invited in to the process. Some of these people are professionals, and some are just ordinary people sharing their gifts.

So if you’re experimenting with a creative something, don’t be afraid to share it! It might be the highlight of someone’s year.

Much of my life involves real people in person, but if you’re looking for a few Substack recommendations, here are some that made my 2025 better:

• Art on my Notes Feed: &

• Poignant, thoughtful, and just plain fun essays: ,

• Poetry: , ,

• Essays/ pieces weaving together distinct threads of thought: , ,

• Theological reflection for going deeper:

• Courage for just being creative in small ways: ’s Good and Beautiful Things

Keeping a reviewed packing list for regular travel

I travel less than I used to, but changes to work mean that we’re visiting some similar places pretty regularly. I wrote out a packing list for each location and season, and then - this is the key part - I made notes of what the weather was like, whether I had access to laundry facilities, and what I actually wore & used. I’ve started packing such that I wear and use just about everything in my suitcase. This is an excellent development for someone whose favourite all-time gift is a luggage scale.

Praying for graces at Pentecost

Pentecost is the traditional Christian celebration of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’ disciples. It’s a season dedicated to asking for the gifts of the Spirit anew. And while I’ve always participated in the liturgical celebrations around it, I’ve never really gotten “into” it, personally. (I think maybe I’ve let myself be turned off by overly enthusiastic people in the past, which is silly, but true.) Anyway, this year I felt blessed by some excellent preaching on the topic and decided to pray for graces - and guess what? They came, and they came in a way that felt very practical, which is always a bonus for these sorts of things.

Clarifying my ‘yes’es and ‘no’s

Part of those graces involved being able to say no to some things so that I could say yes to others, even if those other things are not really public things. (I realize that this could be annoyingly vague, but I’m not trying to be coy.) I’m sharing this because I feel like living in an online world can make us feel like unless we have something public to show for our time, it’s not well spent. Or that we can’t say no to things without telling people what we’re saying yes to instead. But sometimes there are quiet, hidden things in life that need our time, energy, and attention, and it can be humbling to embrace them while thinking that everyone will assume we’re just sitting around doing nothing. (Or, maybe everyone is too busy thinking about their own stuff to make any assumptions about us! Who knows, and ideally, who cares…)

There were plenty more things that worked (and didn’t - more on that for all subscribers next week) in 2025 for me, but I hope that by sharing some of them, you might be inspired to reflect on the things of your own year, be they superficial or profound.

I love getting to peek into other people’s lives, and so I’d really love to hear from you: what worked for your year? You can leave a comment below or reply to this email.

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How’s your Advent going?

I’m usually a big fan of Advent - the candles in the dark and praying through the Old Testament prophets who are ‘preparing a way for the Lord’ and just knowing that Christ has come and will come again. This year, though, it hasn’t been so great for me. I’ve even found myself ignoring the Advent posts and articles I see popping up!

I’m grateful, though, to have had enough up seasons and down seasons to be able to take comfort in the fact that the liturgical year moves along with or without my emotions playing ball. Despite confusing many a store clerk by wishing them “Happy Advent!”, I’m personally ready for Christmas to be over and to start 2026 like a fresh new notebook. But that’s not up to me.

The Christian community, in her wisdom, has been keeping the seasons of the year for centuries: through flood and famine and plague and harvest and victory and success. Surely I can learn from them.

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Acknowledging Advent Even When I Don’t Feel Like It

Advent is a season that observes the importance of waiting. Of preparation for something that doesn’t quite make sense. Of making space, interiorly, to receive God’s gift of Himself to us. Whether or not we feel particularly happy about it.

So here’s what I propose, to myself as much to you, my readers! — Maybe we can set aside some quiet time to reflect on what God has been working in our souls this year. Maybe we can sit with Him and ask Him to show us the hidden movements we’ve missed because we’ve been too busy worrying about, well, everything.

Maybe this Advent, we can turn off the noise – the news, the social, the webinars, the podcasts, the music, and the entertainment – and just sit in silence. (Even for five minutes.)

Maybe we can face that silence knowing that no matter how lonely it feels, He is eager to remind us that he is Immanuel: God-With-Us.

Maybe we can bring to that quiet space our fears, our desires, our emotions. Maybe we can ask Him to show us where He has been in all of it.

I found these questions I wrote for Advent of 2020 (remember then??), and they feel just as timely now. I’m sharing them here in case you want some prayer journaling1 prompts to bring to your quiet time (even if your ‘quiet time’ consists of sitting for 5 minutes in the car alone before the next horde of people begin demanding all your attention and emotional energy.)

Prayer Journaling Prompts for Advent

• What have I been afraid of this year? Specifically? For myself / my family/ my friends/ my community/ the world? Are there small things that I feel are “silly” but are nonetheless real fears? (Lord, where were you when I was afraid?)

• What have I been hoping for this year? Specifically? For myself / my family / my friends / my community / the world? What have I been hoping in? What/ whom have I expected to answer all my hopes? (Lord, have I put my hope in you?)

• What I have been angry about this year? Specifically? For myself / my family / my friends / my community / the world? Why? (Lord, show me what’s behind my anger. Show me where you’ve been in my rage.)

• What good have I seen or experienced this year? In myself / my family / my friends / my community / the world? (Lord, where were you in that?)

• What truths have I been convicted of this year? (Lord, you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life: show me where I’ve succumbed to lies and transform me by the renewal of my mind.)

I hope some of these questions help you scoot a little bit closer to the mystery that is Immanuel, God-With-Us.

Happy Advent!

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And if you’d like to work 1:1 with someone who is steeped in the Christian tradition and understands that making decisions with faith isn’t limited to (a) praying harder or (b) relegating prayer to Sundays while otherwise working our backsides off, but actually is something that we do as whole, integrated persons — well, that’s what I do!

I help you look at your life, see where you want to make changes, and then actually make them. Sometimes that does involve more prayer; sometimes that does involve more practice. We do both.

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I love this work, and I’d love to work with you if it’s a good fit. (I have to put my rates up in 2026, so I don’t want readers to miss out before then!)

Hello, readers!

It’s Thanksgiving week in America and I want to say that I am so thankful for you. It’s one thing for a writer to have all sorts of ideas swirling around in her head, and another to put them out into the world for others to think about and respond to. And I know everyone’s inbox is chock full of words, so thank you for taking the time to read mine.

Last week I wrote about how being experimental is key in discernment. But you know, I don’t just write about these topics, I also try to practice them in my own life! And sometimes it’s helpful to just hear about how someone else’s discernment is going, even if the circumstances are pretty dissimilar to our own. So, today I thought I would share a little bit more personally.

About My Work

I started Clarity Life Consulting in 2018, in part as an experiment: I didn’t have a huge, grand vision, but I did want to help people. I had a good sense of my own gifts — which could sound like bragging but it’s not! — and I also had a good sense of where a lot of people (especially women) were struggling.

I knew how I had struggled (to discern God’s voice, to make decisions, to figure out what I actually wanted after decades of people-pleasing), and I knew that some of the lessons I learned along the way might be of use to others. Over many years, I had also tried to cultivate the practice of asking good questions (the kind that make people pause and say, “oh! That’s a good question. Hmm.”, which happens now on almost every client call.)

Maybe you’ve heard that quote from Frederick Buechner: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I don’t think it’s always and only true, but Clarity does bring me a lot of joy, and I know it helps others who are keen to make sense of their lives.

1:1 Client Work

Over the years, I’ve seen my clients make changes, big and small: leaving jobs, starting new jobs, getting into the dating scene, getting out of the dating scene, growing in confidence, going deeper in prayer, being able to approach their finances peacefully instead of in a panic, knowing themselves better, accepting stewardship of their gifts, and choosing to shape their days around their well-discerned priorities.

As one client said:

“I received much clarity on the things that I wanted to “clear up”. There were also other areas of my life that changed to the positive - areas that I usually avoid out of discomfort- and that I hadn’t really thought of for a long time. Kerri helped me to take control over my life - all the different aspects of my life, to make my life much more manageable and holistic.”

Writing

1:1 consulting isn’t for everyone, though, and so I started writing as well. I started a blog on my website, and I began a newsletter with a handful of subscribers who had been to one of my in-person talks. (If you’re one of those early readers, thanks for sticking around!)

I experimented by doing all the things that the business-building entrepreneurial gurus told me to do, and honestly? They didn’t work. Or at least, they didn’t work in the way that the gurus promised me they would. Most of my clients come through word of mouth recommendations. If you’re a reader who has recommended me to others, thank you. I actually could not do this without you.

In 2023, I moved over to Substack. (Most of you get my posts by email, so you probably didn’t even notice a difference.) That meant that blogging and newsletter-ing got combined in one place, and the Notes feed [I don’t know how to describe it except kind of like Twitter/ X but smaller and nicer] meant that I could connect a bit more with others who might also be interested in talking about discernment, decision-making, and living a peaceful life.

In 2024, I shared how that Substack experiment was going.

It’s nearing the end of 2025, and I’m so delighted that now over 1,000 of you read this letter regularly, and many more view my writing online. You all [or, ‘all y’all’ in Texas] hail from 41 countries and 47 states. [If you know anyone in Maine, Vermont, or Hawaii, send them my way. ;)]

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This year, I’ve also had more international 1:1 clients, which has been fun! One of the joys of running a business over the internet is that we don’t have to be sitting in the same room to talk.

I’m going to continue to experiment in 2026, and you, my readers, are the first to be hearing about it.

Upcoming Experiment #1: Raising Rates

I haven’t raised my rates since 2022 (and unfortunately inflation means that life is much more expensive since then.) I’m going to be raising my rates in early 2026.

This means that if you’ve been thinking about working with me 1:1, now is the time to sign up. There are third party payment plans (run by klarna and/or paypal, not by me), which mean you can space out payments if that works better for you.

Even if you book now, you don’t have to use all the sessions right away - we can space them throughout the first couple months of the new year.

Right now, every potential client gets a free 30 minute audio call with me to see whether working together is a good fit. This is not a sales call. (Those make me feel nauseated.) If it’s not a good fit for us to work together, I’ll be honest. Plus, I always try to recommend other helpful resources.

If you’re curious, now is the time to get in touch. Email me: info@claritylifeconsulting.com

Upcoming Experiment #2: Moving the Blog

Due to AI scraping (ugh ugh ugh), I’ve decided to take down quite a bit of my blog on the website. Right now, you can read everything for free, but that will probably be changing soon. So if you’ve never poked around on there, now is the time! I’m hoping to share a lot of that writing in other forms at some point, but it might take a while.

Being on this email list is the best way to keep up with my writing.

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Upcoming Experiment #3: Other Resources

I’m also going to be experimenting with shifting my business model a little bit and hopefully offering some self-led resources for those of you who want to go a bit deeper than you can with just an article, but for whom 1:1 isn’t a good fit.

If you’ve never downloaded my free Journaling for Discernment workshop (or if you haven’t used it in ages), you can do so here. (Don’t worry - signing up for emails won’t send you double emails.)

Upcoming Experiment # 4: Writing Elsewhere

This is more of a ‘continuing’ experiment, but I’m planning to write about discernment and decision-making for some new-to-me external publications this year. We’ll see how it goes!

» Now I’d love to hear from you: What are you thinking about experimenting with? You can leave a comment or hit reply.

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And just one last nudge to get in touch if you’d like to experiment with the idea of working together 1:1, before my rates go up. It’s really relaxed, it’s all audio calls, and sometimes people find it incredibly helpful just to say things out loud.

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Discernment can involve a lot of experimentation. At the very least, it requires an experimental mindset: sometimes you can’t know whether something is a good fit without actually trying it out. Sometimes, thinking about something more isn’t actually going to lead you any closer to a decision.

But here’s something I’ve noticed about well-meaning people in the process of discernment: we can have a strong sense of commitment. We want to be people of integrity. We want our words to mean something. So if we say “I’m going to move to Arizona,” and then it doesn’t work out, we can end up feeling like failures. Or disingenuous. Or like we misled people.

Wanting our ‘yes to be yes’ and our ‘no to be no’ is a good thing. It’s crucial when it comes to moral matters. When we marry, or take permanent vows, we mean them. But when it comes to non-moral matters, it’s ok to change our minds. In fact, sometimes quitting is a great idea!

But if you find yourself slightly allergic to changing your mind, here’s a little practice that might help: just say that you’re experimenting.

Instead of saying “I’m moving to Arizona,” just say, “I’m going to try moving to Arizona and I’ll see how it works out.” Or, “I’m going to try taking up pottery.” Or, “I’m going try cooking at home more often.”

Now, this little tip works well for the people I described above: those who are deeply committed to whatever they say. But some people are actually way down the other end of the spectrum. They love announcing a new project, and have no problem when it fizzles out. “I’m joining the softball league!”; “This is my year to become a baker!”; “We’re buying a farm!” I’ve actually noticed a good number of people like this online - they’re eager to share, but they tend not to address the fact that a year later, there’s nary a softball, muffin, or cow in sight. Again, these aren’t moral issues, so if someone decides they don’t like softball, then quitting may be the right response.

But the enthusiasts can probably benefit from phrasing their plans in experimental language as well (perhaps less for themselves than for the other people their plans affect.) “I’m going to try playing softball this summer,”; “my goal this year is to perfect a gooey brownie recipe,”; “we’re dipping our toes into farming.”

And what helps everyone, no matter where you fall along that announcement-commitment spectrum, is to give that experiment a timeline.

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Creative coach and author just completed a 30 day writing experiment on her substack. When it was over, she shared her reflections:

“Note: I made sure there was an ending. Without an end date, things can too easily drift into obligation. The experiment could become a lifestyle I might not want to live! Setting a clear start and finish felt like a gift to myself.”1

Now isn’t that insightful? Without an end date, what starts as an experiment can become an obligation to live a certain way indefinitely!

The truth is, discernment requires more than just thinking, and even more than just praying. Those things are good and necessary. But if we forget to take action - even just short-term experimental action - as part of the discernment process, it’s like sitting on a three-legged stool without the third leg: the probability of collapse is high.

So the next time you’re thinking about taking on something new, whether it’s moving somewhere different or learning a practical skill, it might be helpful to consider how you can engage in a time-limited experiment in order to discern that thing better.

And if you’ve ever thought about working with me 1:1 - Why not schedule a free 30 minute call as an experiment?

There’s no obligation and if I don’t think I can help, I’ll be honest about that, and I’ll try to refer you to any resources that might serve your situation. (I’m very opposed to ‘sales’ calls that pressure you into something that isn’t a good fit!)

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I’m going to be conducting my own business experiment in 2026, so these free 30 minute calls might not be available in the new year. My rates haven’t gone up since 2022, so it’s time for me to think of some new ways to keep the lights on at home :).

If you’ve been wondering about getting in touch, now is a good time. And if you’re just curious? That’s ok, too.

Email me: info@claritylifeconsulting.com

What My Clients Are Saying:

“I received much clarity on the things that I wanted to “clear up”. There were also other areas of my life that changed to the positive - areas that I usually avoid out of discomfort- and that I hadn’t really thought of for a long time. Kerri helped me to take control over my life - all the different aspects of my life, to make my life much more manageable and holistic.”

“I am now going to be intentional about the rhythm of my days, especially after identifying the lack of balance from our first exercise doing my life inventory. I’m also going to embrace working interactively with God, listening to how He wants to work through me throughout all ages and stages, and getting out of this ‘should’ or black-and-white mindset. I feel equipped to grow in prudence and gratitude with tangible tools I can take onward.”

“I’m very very grateful for my sessions with Kerri! I loved speaking to someone who also has a faith and could help me see my life from God’s perspective. I’ve just given my first two workshops and I had a lot of imposter syndrome first. I then thought of what Kerri said that the main thing is my presence/time and love - that that is what is the most important. That gave me a lot of peace. I look forward to signing up for some more sessions soon!”

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Do you ever find yourself asking hypothetical questions in discernment?

» Should I have taken the other job?

» Would it have been better if I had said no?

» Will I be happier if I move out of state?

» Did God actually want me to say yes?

» Was that the wrong decision?

It’s pretty common to want to explore the path(s) not taken. Despite being finite creatures who are limited by space and time, we can often find ourselves wanting to live outside of those boundaries. (Why else would stories about traveling through space and time be so attractive to so many?)

There can be real value in asking good hypothetical questions. (Many a beloved novel is the fruit of someone asking, what if…) But sometimes our hypothetical questions about the past are spurred on by unhappiness in the present. Sometimes our hypothetical questions about the future are spurred on by fear of repeating the past. And sometimes our hypothetical questions about God’s will are spurred by doubts about our own desires.

What Would It Change?

Recently I came across an ad for a device that could collect information about a medical condition I have. I’d never seen something so advanced and wondered if maybe I should buy it. Thankfully the price tag was high enough to make me pause before handing over my credit card info, and in that pause I was able to ask myself what I thought this device would do for me.

I asked myself a hypothetical question: if I had the information this device could give me about my health, what would change? What would I do differently?

Asking this hypothetical question revealed something important:

The information this device can give isn’t information that would make me seek a different kind of treatment than I’ve already sought.

The information I might get about myself wouldn’t actually change my actions in any way.

So what would it change?

I considered the possibility that it might change my mindset, somehow - that knowing if things were getting better or getting worse might change the way I think about myself, or the way that I factor my health in to my decision-making. The problem is that I’ve lived with my body long enough now to know that most of the time I end up in “borderline” territory, which, honestly, is partly infuriating and partly comforting because at least I don’t end up in checking the ‘worst case’ boxes on the tests. But if I did check out as ‘worst case scenario’, at least I’d have a clearer perspective.

See that hypothetical thinking cropping up again? If only I knew x, that might be better in y ways.

The truth is, the nature of possibility means that in most situations, changing something will yield better results in some ways and worse results in others. We can’t know the particulars, but we can know that there are pros and cons to almost everything. Sure, some things are definitely better than others, but there are a surprising number of things in life that fall into the “generally ok in some ways and not in others” category.

So why are we so concerned with hypotheticals, especially when it comes to decision making?

I have a few ideas.

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(1) We Want More

The first one is fundamentally theological. We’re finite creatures, but we are made, ultimately, for eternity with God who is beyond all limits. To quote St. Augustine, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” There is a longing in us for more, and whenever we’re disappointed by something in this created universe, we feel frustrated. Sometimes we think that exploring hypotheticals will lead us to the satisfaction we’re craving.

Now, if we’re craving a steak, but ordered the chicken instead, there’s a real likelihood that hypothetically, the steak would have been more satisfying. But there are plenty of situations in which what we’re looking for is something beyond created possibilities. To quote John Paul II:

“It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise…”

Sometimes our “what if”s are really, deep down, about longing for Heaven.

(2) We Want To Learn From Our Mistakes

Other times, we look back on the decisions we made, and the outcomes that those decisions yielded, and we’re unhappy. We don’t want to make the same mistakes again. This is a good thing!

Reflecting on our past decisions is often an important part of the discernment process, as long as we’re careful to make a distinction between the decision and the outcome. It’s possible to make good decisions with bad outcomes because the outcome isn’t always in our control - so when we try to learn from past mistakes, it only works if we’re clear about what the mistake actually was! Not being able to see the future or predict the unpredictable are not mistakes. They’re just part of being human.

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(3) We Want To Wallow

Wanting to learn from the past can have a flip side: wanting to wallow in our mistakes. Look, it’s important to confess our sins when we’ve sinned. But if we wallow, we’re doing something God doesn’t do. He forgives and forgets; we sometimes cling to our mistakes like some kind of broken life raft: If only I hadn’t done x! If only I hadn’t done y! I must replay these things over and over again as a form of self-flagilation!

The thing is, there’s a natural tendency in us to want to make amends when we’ve harmed others. That’s a good thing; to the extent that we can do so, we should. But mental self-flagilation doesn’t actually do anyone any good.

What’s more, sometimes there can be a bit of secret pride lurking in this habit: look at me, my sinful choices are so big they’ve ruined everything. I’m so terrible, nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m gonna go eat worms…

God is bigger than any of us, and any of our choices. Our decisions do have consequences, but even those take place in the context of “God working all things together for the good of those who love him.” (Rom 8:28)

(4) We Want To Escape Our Present Reality

When it’s cold and grey and rainy for what feels like the millionth day of January, it’s a lot easier to wonder what life would be like if we had booked a holiday in the Bahamas. While there’s nothing wrong with a little healthy daydreaming, there can be a kind of escapism that comes with constantly dwelling in what is only possibility and not reality.

Sometimes, we need to do the work to make the daydream come true (save our pennies for that holiday); other times, there are things that “just must be borne.” ’s words about her recent experience of cancer and its residual side-effects apply to all of us:

“When I realize that I cannot will these symptoms away by sheer will power, then I must rest in them. I must wait for them to get better, or I must accept them as they must be accepted. I cannot force them to be anything else. I must admit who I am and what they are. It is always a good, but so difficult a thing, to admit that you cannot change certain things but must ride along with them to see what lessons they will lead to.”

The art of acceptance is a difficult one to learn - one that can take a lifetime. Still, it’s worth it.

Your turn: are you the kind of person that asks a lot of hypothetical questions? What have you found to be underneath that tendency? Tell me about the role ‘what if’ plays in your life.

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In Case You Missed It:

These two articles seemed to ring true with a lot of readers!

Something Has to Give

In my last article, I discussed the relationship between procrastination and perfectionism, and why some of us might tend to wait until the very last minute to get things done. (It isn’t always problematic, either - if you haven’t read that piece, you can do so now - this one will make more sense with that fresh in your mind.)

I concluded by sharing some questions that I ask myself when I find that I might be procrastinating, including the all important, “What do I think is going to change between now and completing the project?”

The truth is, sometimes the only thing I think is going to change between now and completion of the project is that the deadline is going to loom larger. The pressure will increase to the point that something has to give, and that something is usually my unwillingness to just get it done.

Now, if you think I’m going to tell you that I’ve learned to change my approach, you’re wrong. This is not a story of how I learned to get things done ahead of time. It’s a story of how I learned to embrace how I naturally work, which is right up against a deadline.

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Tortoise or Hare?1

For many years, I studied or worked alongside the kind of people who plodded along faithfully and completed projects ahead of the due date. They were consistent workers: 2 hours a day reading, 1000 words a day writing, slow and steady, until the project was in the folder and submitted, without large doses of panicked procrastination. I would think: look at them! They’re so self-disciplined! I’m all over the map. I’m no good. I should be more like them.

I thought my process was bad.

But when it came to outcome, the truth was that mine was roughly on par with theirs. In other words, in my observation, the slow-and-steady approach didn’t yield consistently significant differences in outcome from the frenzied-stop-and-start-until-the-last-minute approach. The tortoise and the hare seemed to cross the finish line with the same results.

The difference was in the amount of anxiety along the way.

When I started dating my (now) husband, he would sometimes observe me wallowing in anxiety as the deadline crept closer and closer. “I really should be working,” I would say, “but I’m just going to read a novel / watch another episode / do the laundry / re-organize my drawers…” And then the whole time I was doing the other thing, I would say, “I know I should be working, but…”

He would then look at me and say with slight exasperation, “if you’re going to work, work. If you’re going to rest, rest. But don’t ruin both at once.”

Ouch. But also: fair. I was neither working well nor resting well. I was just making an anxious little mess of both.

So I decided to change my approach. Not my process, mind you, but my approach. I would still allow myself to make a mad dash for the finish line at the last minute, but in the meantime, I simply wouldn’t allow myself to stress about it. I had lived with myself long enough and had gathered enough ‘data’ on myself to know that (a) I always got it done and (b) I always got it done fairly well. So why not just try trusting the process?

Guess what? It worked! (Most of the time, anyway - more on that in a minute.)

My process hasn’t changed. I still wait until the deadline to get things done. But in the meanwhile, if I rest, I actually rest, instead of beating myself up about not doing work. In other words, I embrace the start-and-stop nature of my process, but without anxiety. I know that my process actually does involve reading a novel / watching another episode / doing the laundry / re-organizing my drawers.

This is both a form of incubation, and an acknowledgement that some people are motivated by the idea of having a project done ahead of time, and some people are motivated by the pressure of a deadline. I’m the latter. So long as my approach isn’t leading me to be uncharitable towards someone else, I’m very happy to just own the fact that deadlines exist for a reason. In fact, I’m glad deadlines exist, otherwise my projects would just spin on out forever.

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What About When There Is No Deadline?

Now, there are some thankless tasks in life - we’ll put them in the category of “life admin” - which don’t have a deadline: things like deleting old photos, backing up digital devices, or cleaning out the filter in the dishwasher. No one is going to chase you down to get them done, and no one is going to fine you or take you to prison if you don’t do them.

The ‘deadline’ only arrives when these things stop working. You run out of space for more photos, your computer crashes and you lose everything on it, the dishwasher fails to clean your dishes.

So here’s the question I ask myself: would I rather do the maintenance tasks ahead of time, or deal with the problem when the ‘deadline’ arrives?

For me, the answer depends. Personally, I’d rather not devote mental space to taking care of machines. I’ll take something like dirty glassware as an indication that my dishwasher needs attention, but I don’t want to think about it until then. Losing documents on a computer is a different question. In that case, this approach doesn’t help much. (Though, I have done it and can testify that it’s not the end of the world to lose everything on your laptop.) Someone else might have very different answers, but since we’re not really in moral territory, that’s fine!

This is an area of life where it’s important to know yourself. You probably have natural tendencies in one direction or another, and you get to choose when and how to work with them, and when and how to work against them. You are the steward of your God-given life.

Now, tell me: are you someone who thrives with the pressure of a deadline, or someone who tries to avoid that deadline? Or perhaps it depends on the type of project you’re working on? Do you have any tips or tricks to share?

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And if you might like some help with self-knowledge, discernment, and decision-making in your own life, that’s what I’m here for.

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(I’m going to be raising my 1:1 rates in 2026, so if you’ve been thinking about working together, now is a good time to get in touch. You can email: info [at] claritylifeconsulting.com.)

Several years ago, I began to notice a pattern, both in myself and in many of my clients. The person who described herself as a ‘perfectionist’ would also name procrastination as a typical problem. This puzzled me - weren’t perfectionists and procrastinators two different types of people? But I saw these tendencies in myself, too, so I couldn’t deny their co-existence. It made me want to learn more, and I ended up discovering some pretty interesting things about why some of us put off until tomorrow what could be done today.

Procrastination vs. Incubation

The first thing I discovered was a distinction between what psychologists call incubation and procrastination.

Here’s what my essay-writing habits have looked like for decades: I will choose a topic, think about it a lot, do intensive research, make notes, chat with people about it, and then just stop. In college, I would engage in what I thought was procrastination: go to the cafeteria, stop by a friend’s dorm room, do the dreaded reading for Economics, rent a movie, even do laundry. Just anything to not write that essay. I would procrastinate and procrastinate until the day before (or the night before,) and then “bash out” an essay. (Fortunately or unfortunately for me, this method worked, in that it consistently yielded decent grades, which meant that I didn’t change my habits.)

To this day, I will follow the same pattern: think, research, take notes, have conversations, and then, stop. Clean the house, scroll Notes, watch TV, read a novel, do laundry - anything but write. Then with the deadline looming, I will write in a big rush, all at once. (Only now, there are no all-nighters and I give myself a few days for edits before the deadline.)

It turns out, what I’ve described is more akin to incubation than procrastination.

Incubation is what it sounds like: giving something time and space to grow. Procrastination is just putting it off. “For incubation to work, you start early, get really familiar with the project and then take a break. That isn’t procrastination, which starts with the break and then does the work only towards the end.”1

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Creative Projects vs. (Boring) Necessary Tasks

Studies are still being done, but it makes sense to me. Doing a lot of work upfront, then pausing that work to let it ‘simmer’ or ‘bake’ means that when I return to it, I find that much of the creative work has been happening ‘on the back burner’. And this is something I’ve noticed, too: incubation happens with creative projects that benefit from time to ‘bubble away.’

For me, incubation doesn’t happen with tasks that just need to get done, like housework or the dreaded ‘life admin’ of doing taxes, sorting out incorrect utility bills, and ordering new lightbulbs. I procrastinate those latter tasks, with no real incubation involved. Sure, I might open a spreadsheet, but one look at it has me curled up in a ball of anxiety. I don’t actually do anything to move the needle, nor does my not doing anything yield creative growth. When I return to it, it’s still the same stressful task it was when I abandoned it in the first place.

It turns out, there are a couple of things that exacerbate the tendency to procrastinate: (1) we don’t value the task, and (2) we don’t expect to succeed. (If those don’t describe my feelings towards doing taxes, I don’t know what does!) Think about it: if we don’t think something is important or worth doing, why do it? If we think we’re going to fail, why bother?

Perfectionism & Procrastination

This is where perfectionism comes in. Perfectionists want to do the best job at the most important things! It’s an all-or-nothing approach: perfection or bust. There is no middle ground, so if you can’t do a perfect job? Do no job.

This is where we find the perfectionist-procrastinator combo. It’s really, really difficult for a perfectionist to make allowances for doing anything they deem unimportant or that they won’t be able to do excellently, so the perfectionist just procrastinates and procrastinates and procrastinates any unimportant task which doesn’t inspire immediate confidence in their ability to produce excellent results. In this case, procrastination is just unhelpful.

But I’ve also noticed that procrastination plays another, more helpful, role when it comes to perfectionism. The perfectionist is often someone who has trouble declaring any project finished, because it could always be more perfect! The perfectionist shudders at the idea that “done is good enough.” This means that if there’s any time left before the deadline, the perfectionist is not going to just wrap up the project, put it in the folder and move on. No, she’s going to use up every last moment to perfect the project. The old adage that ‘work expands to fill the time it is given’ applies directly to this situation.

One way the perfectionist gets around it? Procrastination. Consciously, or more often, unconsciously, allowing the time to slip away means that the perfectionist is sabotaging her own tendency to ‘never let well enough alone.’ If you’ve only got 3 hours to get the essay finished, you’ll do a decent job in 3 hours. If you have 10 hours, you’re going to spend 10 hours agonizing over every syllable and piece of punctuation. (Which is, albeit, a worthy task sometimes!)

What’s a Procrastinator To Do? Helpful Questions To Ask

I’ve found that at least part of the solution is simply to identify what’s happening.

• Am I dealing with a creative project or a thankless task?

• Have I actually begun to tackle it in any meaningful way?

• Is anything going to ‘simmer’ while I do other things?

• Am I helping myself to avoid ‘tinkering’ too much?

Sometimes I feel that I can’t proceed on a task because I’m lacking something: it might be information, help navigating a computer program, or even just the energy or ‘brain power’ to deal with it. In these cases, I ask myself:

• What, specifically, would enable me to move forward?

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External Needs

If it is something external to me, I will hand-write a list of every specific thing I need. Hand-writing them so they are visible all on one page makes me feel like I have a bit more control than when all the things I don’t know are just floating around in a stormy cloud in my mind.

Then, I will try to obtain the things on the list. I will search my emails for that random order number, or ask my husband to help me navigate the computer program. I make a point of both adding any new things and checking off all the ‘done’ things on my list as I go along. It’s strangely motivational!

Internal Needs

Now, if what I’m lacking is something internal to me, like energy, that gets a bit more complicated. One helpful question I try to ask is:

• What do I think is going to change between now and completing the project?

Sometimes I really don’t have the energy to face a difficult conversation with customer service or a sink full of dishes, and sometimes I really will be able to tackle it better in the morning.

In this case, what I think will change is that ‘future me’ will have energy that ‘present me’ lacks.

Sometimes, I’m right about that. But sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I never have the energy to deal with the nebulous world of tax codes and I’m kidding myself if I think otherwise.

So how do I know if I’m being honest with myself? I try to ‘let the historical record show’ - do I usually have more energy to tackle annoying tasks in the morning, and do I usually actually do so? Or am I prone to just ignore the thing forever until the deadline is imminent? I’ve reached a point in life where I know I am likely to do the dishes, and not likely to deal with the spreadsheet. I know that the only thing motivating me to deal with life admin is the threat of a looming deadline.

What then? Well, I can’t say I’ve mastered overcoming procrastination, but I’ve found that being honest about what actually motivates me, vs. what I think should motivate me, helps a lot.

Next time, I’ll share more about how to figure out what motivates you!

Tell me: have you ever considered the difference between procrastination and incubation? Is it a helpful distinction? Do you have any secrets to overcoming procrastination?

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In Case You Missed It:

• Are You Prone to Catastrophizing?

• Is Quitting Always A Bad Idea?

• What’s Holding On To You?

In my last post, I asked: Do you rest? Some of us have trouble with the idea of resting, but we aren’t exactly sure why. One problem I noted was our cultural lack of imagination around rest. We tend to associate rest with sleep or inactivity, rather than things that are relaxing, rejuvenating, recreational, restorative, renewing, or refreshing…. things that are different for different people. (One person’s rest is another person’s work, and vice versa!) So maybe we’re uncomfortable with rest simply because we don’t know what it is.

Today, I want to unpack some other, more interior, reasons that we might struggle to rest well.

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(1) A devaluation of being

There’s no doubt about it, we live in a productivity-driven culture. “I wasn’t very productive today” is always a lament, never a claim to rejoice in. Our world, unfortunately, values people not for the fact of their existence, but for what they can do. That’s why (sickeningly) we don’t value those who are classed as a ‘drain on the system.’ This often leads to:

(2) Achievement- based identity

Who am I if I’m not _____? What is the point of my life if I can’t _____? God forbid I become a burden to others.

When our very identity is linked to what we do, who are we when we don’t do that thing? What significance or value do we have? Some of us can’t rest because we’re worried that we’ll lose our very selves in the process. This means that:

(3) Rest is considered low-value

It doesn’t make the priority list. There are always more important things to do than rest! We don’t give it pride of place in our weeks, we don’t make space for it in our days, and we can go entire years without really doing it. (I once heard Marie Forleo say that she hadn’t taken a vacation in seven years of building a business.) If we don’t think that resting is important, we’re always going to push it out of the way with other things.

But sometimes rest doesn’t make the priority list for another reason:

(4) Fear of what might happen if we stop

You know when you’ve been going, going, going like crazy all day and then you sit down? It feels like you’re never going to be able to get back up again! Some of us take that approach to life in general. We don’t want to stop and rest because we’re afraid that if we do, we’re never going to be able to do anything ever again.

The thing is, that ‘never wanting to get back up again’ feeling is an indicator of a need to – you guessed it! –actually rest. I’m no doctor, but it doesn’t take a medical degree to know that our bodies aren’t designed to function well on vast amounts of caffeine and very little sleep. Maybe it’s time to admit that we’re just trying to do too much.

There’s another kind of fear, as well:

(5) Fear that things will fall apart if I rest - aka, pride

Most of us enjoy feeling indispensable. We like being needed, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if it isn’t balanced with the understanding that, ultimately, the world does not keep on turning because of us, we’re in for disappointment. We are not God, and other people are probably more capable than we give them credit for. (And if they aren’t? How else will they grow in capability if we don’t give them the chance?) Sometimes pride creeps in and lies to us, insisting that if we rest, or step away, everything will implode.

Of course, there are some situations in which we really are needed, seasons of survival mode during which a step away would be imprudent. But those circumstances should be the exception, not the norm. If we build a life in which no one else is capable of stepping in to help, we’ve built something as precarious as a house of cards. The Body of Christ is designed to function together. It can be hard to ask for help, and even harder if we ask and others say no! But don’t give up out of discouragement. Keep asking.

This is difficult, especially if:

(6) We’re not in the habit of being receptive.

Rest, ultimately, is about receptivity, not activity. When we rest, we allow “our wells to be filled again” - by God, by time, by nature, by beauty, by others. It requires us to be comfortable with not being the giver all the time. Are we, to borrow a phrase from Emily P. Freeman, able “to sit down on the inside”? For some of us, this comes more easily than it does for others.

If we haven’t acquired the habit of rest, if we aren’t comfortable in a posture of receptivity, why not? It’s worth praying about.

I’d love to hear: have you ever had a realization about why you struggled to rest? Has anything changed for you?

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In case you missed it:

Last week I shared a few quotes to inspire rest. Today, I’m diving into why it’s non-negotiable and what it might look like for you.

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How’s Your “Rest” Life?

When I start out with a new client, I ask them to fill out a simple “life inventory” sheet, in which they note how they’re feeling / what they’re thinking about different areas of life.

Rather than numerical ratings (which personally drive me crazy), each client can select a range of applicable descriptions, from “there’s always room for improvement, but I’m generally content,” to “I have no idea how I feel about this,” to “I’m ready to make a change” and many other options in between. Sometimes, they select more than one description.

The categories are pretty straightforward: spiritual, social, financial, career, etc. But the category that most of my clients have the most difficult time with? “Rest and refreshment.” Some leave it blank, some put a question mark, some say that they feel like they sleep enough, but most don’t really know what it means.

Isn’t that interesting? I have clients from multiple countries and different walks of life, and across the board, the idea of ‘rest and refreshment’ as a key part of life feels a bit strange. Rather than an indictment of my wonderful clients, I think it’s a reflection of our Western, growingly secularized culture.

The life consulting I offer is done within the context of a Christian perspective, and as Christians, we believe that rest is our end. Heaven is rest!

The problem is, we’ve got a weird notion of rest, and a weird relationship to it, so when we hear that heaven is rest, some of us groan inwardly, or wince at the idea of sitting still or doing nothing for all eternity. Fortunately, that isn’t exactly what rest means, although it might be part of it.

The Biblical & Traditional Understanding of Rest

Throughout the Old Testament, and particularly in the book of Exodus, God is leading his people on a journey away from work and into rest, which first and foremost means worship. They’re to stop with the making of bricks for a foreign god (Pharaoh) and come away to a mountain to rest and worship their own God. Obviously, Pharaoh isn’t so keen, and the story of the ten plagues, culminating with the miraculous crossing of the red sea out of Pharoah’s territory is a show-down story: who will win the hearts of the Israelites? God or Pharaoh?

Even after a miraculous escape, the people of Israel find themselves longing for the good ol’ days of slavery, where at least they had onions and cucumbers to eat. They’re not keen on this whole resting in the desert situation. So they get quail, by the bucketfuls. They get miraculous bread that lasts only one day except for the sabbath: when they’re called to rest, the miracle lasts twice as long. Eventually, they are given a written set of instructions by God almighty who includes rest on the list: “honor the sabbath and keep it holy.” We are commanded to step away from work.

Just to keep his people on the right track, God also introduces them to a whole calendar of feasts and seasons, some weekly, some annual, some every seven years - but underneath it all is the lesson that time belongs to God and we are to mark it accordingly: sometimes fasting, sometimes feasting, sometimes working, sometimes resting.

The early Christians continued these practices, with the resurrection making our Sunday the day of rest. Biblical scholars, historians, and theologians will spill much ink on the details of how it all works, but what we’ve inherited is two-fold: our Sundays now include the necessity of communal worship, and refraining from unnecessary work.

That’s another way of saying: we believe that our weeks begin with rest.

How Do You Rest?

So after you head to church on a Sunday, how do you rest? This is the part that people often struggle with. We tend to think of rest as sleep or inactivity: just lying about recovering from the flu and struggling against boredom, but this isn’t necessarily what rest is.

Rest takes many forms, and varies for different people or even different seasons of life for the same person.

First, it’s usually not the same as our paid work. At the very least, it’s not taxing, laborious, or stressful.

Sometimes, the line between work and rest gets blurry in an age of passion-based careers or side hustles. In those cases, good discernment is necessary.

• A gardner does manual labor throughout the week; to rest on Sunday for her probably means not gardening, or at least, not gardening in a heavy-duty way for pay. She might find pottering about the dill and dahlias restful; only she knows.

• A writer whose career it is to write might refrain from working on paid article pitches on a Sunday, but he may enjoy playing with a poem a bit. Only he knows if he’s being called to step away from words all together for the day.

• A business owner couple will hold back from checking their books and working on taxes, but they might enjoy browsing for some new merchandise online - or that may be their ‘excuse’ to work without working. Only they know where the line is.

Deep-down honesty with yourself and God (and probably your people, too) is required.

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Second, rest depends a lot on us, personally.

Some people enjoy binge-reading a novel on the sofa; others love nothing better than a restful half-marathon. (Really, these people do exist! I find them fascinating.)

Extroverts often come away from a big party feeling that they have more energy than when they went in; introverts will likely need some time on their own or with a few close friends.

Some people find talking restful; others find chit-chat tiring. Some people find being indoors restful; others find the great outdoors refreshing. Some people need to move their bodies through time and space; others need to move their minds through a fictional scenario.

Know yourself and steer clear of the temptation to compare. There is no one specific best way of resting for everyone.

Third, there are different forms (or perhaps ‘hues’) of rest.

Consider the following words, all getting at the same reality, but from different angles:

• Relaxation

• Rejuvenation

• Recreation

• Restoration

• Renewal

• Refreshment

We might come away from a period of rest feeling more relaxed, or more restored, or possibly even renewed. We might experience a time of rest as refreshing or rejuvenating. We might plan forms of rest that are also recreation.

For many of us, expanding our notion of rest beyond just sleep or inactivity broadens our possibilities for actual rest.

Questions to (Prayer) Journal With

If you, like many of my clients, don’t really know how to think about the place of rest in your life, you might find these questions helpful. Take them to prayer, journal with them, or mull them over with a good friend:

• Do I take the commandment to rest seriously, or do I treat it as optional?

• What would a restful Sunday actually look like for me, in my current season of life?

• What is standing between me and the ability to rest?

• What is one baby step towards rest that I could take this week?

Tell me: do you rest? Is it something you’re intentional about? How do you incorporate it into your weekly rhythms?

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If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of giving rest a significant place in your life, you’re not alone! Next time, I’ll share some things that might get in the way of our resting well.

It’s summertime, and I don’t know about you, but I’m craving some rest. Maybe it’s because we just finished with an amazing festival weekend that was equal parts life-changing and totally exhausting. Maybe it’s because I’m worn out from a year of moving + house renovations. Maybe it’s because my August is not shaping up to be quite as quiet as I had hoped. Whatever the reason, I keep hoping that a week of nothing will magically land on my calendar.

What about you? Are you craving some rest? Maybe summer vacation has been fun but not restful; maybe you’ve been using the extra daylight to get things done; or maybe the heat and humidity is messing with your sleep schedule?

In the spirit of embracing the need for rest, I want to share some quotes to meditate on.

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Rest-Inspiring Quotes

The first is from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Daniel has already been through the lion’s den, and is now subject to a series of strange, confusing, and often upsetting visions. He doesn’t always understand them, and is often troubled by what he sees. And do you know how God concludes this whole situation? By telling Daniel to rest:

But you, go your way, and rest; you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days. (Daniel 12:13)

This isn’t the only scripture verse to talk about rest, of course, but I found it really compelling because it comes at the end of something mysteriously exhausting. God knows that Daniel needs rest, and so He commands it.

The prophet Elijah is treated similarly by God. When he reaches a crisis point, afraid that Queen Jezebel is going make good on her death threats, he flees to the wilderness, and tells God that he’s ready to die. God allows him to nap, and sends an angel with a snack.

“Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.” (1 Kings 19:5-9)

God knows that we’re human. He knows we need rest as we grapple with the difficulties of our lives - the regular bits and the spiritual aspects, too.

In the New Testament, Jesus continues that invitation to rest:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

In our Western, secular, culture, we’re often afraid to rest, because we think that work is the most important thing. And it’s true that working is part of our design as humans, but it’s not the only part. John Paul II meditated on this in his encyclical, Laborem Exercens:

“Man ought to imitate God both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest. This activity by God in the world always continues, as the words of Christ attest: "My Father is working still ...": he works with creative power by sustaining in existence the world that he called into being from nothing, and he works with salvific power in the hearts of those whom from the beginning he has destined for "rest" in union with himself in his "Father's house". Therefore man's work too not only requires a rest every "seventh day", but also cannot consist in the mere exercise of human strength in external action; it must leave room for man to prepare himself, by becoming more and more what in the will of God he ought to be, for the "rest" that the Lord reserves for his servants and friends.” (Laborem Exercens, 25)

So as we move into August, how do you plan to rest? How might God be inviting you to rest?

(Sometimes we tend to think of rest merely in terms of sleep - but most of us rest in different ways, too. I’ll be writing more about that soon.)

In the meantime, I’d love to hear: are there specific ways that you rest, or things that you find particularly restful?

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Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All

In September of 2023, I wrote an essay called “Leaning (In and) Out, (Not) Having it All: Discerning “work-life balance” for women who don’t like living in boxes.” In it, I wrote about the trends I see amongst the women I work with, as well as in the online discourse around work, home, career, and having a meaningful life. I shared how it’s not only new mothers who are wrestling with whether or not to “stay home”: plenty of single women I know are unhappy with a 40+ hour/week career. (Men might be unhappy too - but anecdotally, at least, I see it less.)

I suggested that the (largely Boomer) model of starting with one company and moving up over the course of a lifetime, building a ‘successful’ career through devoting a significant portion of (wo)man hours and energy to it, no longer seems appealing to many. Nor does it have to be. Thinking about what you want out of a career, or no career at all, is important. You don’t have to want one. It’s not one of the ten commandments.

I proposed instead thinking about a ‘portfolio’ life, of which paid work is only a part. Most women find that over the course of their lives, they will want to dip in and out of paid work, child-rearing, other forms of care-giving, and just being a person with hobbies and time to volunteer and pray and be in this world.

Life Outside the Box

After seeing how well-received these ideas were, I wanted to do more. I wanted to showcase the lives of women who were actually doing this: opting for a life lived differently. Because even though it’s important to get our ideas right, ideas can feel overwhelming without seeing them in action.

I spent the next year interviewing women who were gracious enough to let us get a peek into their lives “Outside the Box.” (If you haven’t read these interviews, they’re all right here.) There were former academics, mothers, business owners, single women, and even a present-day Beguine. Each of them had lots wisdom to share and I was grateful to be able to soak it in.

Why Elite Women Struggle with Marriage and Motherhood

Recently, I published an opinion piece over at Fairer Disputations: Why Elite Women Struggle with Marriage and Motherhood. In it, I explained another related trend that I’m spotting both in my work and in the online discourse: professional women are finding that pulling back from a successful career and stepping into the world of domesticity is surprisingly difficult.

“Surprisingly” is the key word here. No doubt influenced by Betty Friedan, our culture has held onto a narrative that women’s domestic work is low-value, and therefore easy, work. After all, it’s not a prestigious partnership or tenured position! As a result, many women feel like the problem is with them, rather than with society’s expectations.

But the truth is, domestic life is difficult, even if a different sort of difficult than professional life. And, there is no one-size-fits-all way for every woman, or every family, to figure out how to deal with it all.

There are plenty of women who are choosing to embrace domesticity and professional life. There are women who are opting out of one or the other entirely. There are women who are choosing to do one at a time. There are women who are getting a lot of help: from their spouses, families, friends, or even paid contractors. And there are a lot of women who are trying to figure it out as they go along.

What’s Common in a Life Outside the Box?

In light of these essays published before and after the series, I thought it would be interesting to read back through the Outside the Box interviews and see if I could spot any trends there. What can we learn from women who are choosing more than a one-dimensional-job-title kind of life, even if their own lives are all very different from one another? Are there any clear commonalities?

It turns out, the answer is yes.

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The first thing I noticed was that each of these women had a blend of rootedness and courage which enabled them to step outside the box.

(1) A Rootedness that Leads to Confidence

Each in her own way decided that the societal box of “job-title-at-successful-career” was not the most meaningful box that life had to offer. Each chose to root her identity and self worth in something deeper. As said:

“But I am not a box, and I am not a word on a label stuck on a box. I am a person, a beloved child of God. That's my identity. Not the title on my nametag.”

This kind of rootedness bears the fruit of courage: courage to step aside from blindly embracing societal expectations as normative, and courage to take seriously one’s own gifts, talents, and desires. challenged the idea that productivity is the measure of our self-worth:

“I think a confidence in one’s own hopes and aspirations (tempered with reality checks and practicalities) is important. It can be all too easy to worry about how others see us, and whether we are being productive (I am amazed by how much this word is used, even in response to asking how someone is/how their day was, as though our first thought must be to measure our productivity!).

(2) Honesty, Humility, and Embracing Limitations

This kind of courage also goes hand-in-hand with humility in the discernment process. There’s a temptation for all of us to care too much about what other people think, or even what a previous version of us would have once thought. shared with beautiful honesty how pride was holding her back from letting go of her editing business:

“For several years after my husband took over his family business, I tried to make that the thing I said no to. …It was just another thing to squeeze into a too-full life, and I was resentful of it. It took a silent retreat and a candid conversation with a trusted priest for me to finally recognize how much my pride was coming into play. I didn’t want to work for my husband. I wanted to continue running my own business. I hated the thought of people mistakenly thinking I was his secretary. It was pride and stubbornness at its worst.

“…Editing was the right path for me for a time, but I’m glad I can close the door on that chapter and walk toward whatever is coming next.

It was hard for her to let go, but she had wisdom and humility enough to realize that life is seasonal, and just because something was once a good fit doesn’t mean it’s a good fit forever:

“I genuinely thought that because God had answered my decade-old prayer to make editing work out, and because God had given me the skill of editing, that I had to keep doing it forever. Once I started believing that God cares about me as a person, not just a tool, everything changed.”

God’s care is often manifest in and through circumstances that initially appear limiting, as found out:

“Three years ago I had to stop driving for medical reasons. We were living in an isolated, rural area. We had to move so that we could be close to a church community, get my husband his own home shop, and allow the kids and I freedom to walk to parks, the library, etc….All of this was a huge leap of faith. We did not know if our plan would work out. There have been tight times and there will most likely be more, but we feel so blessed to be living and working together as a family.”

The limitation of not driving led to them choosing a home where the family business could grow, and the family could thrive with walkability. They even ended up next to an orthodox monastery which offers opportunities for growth in faith. They had the courage to ‘lean in’ to the limitation, rather than fight it, with beautifully fruitful results.

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(3) Recognizing Trade-offs in Light of Priorities

Choosing where to live was a serious discernment for and her family, too. Like many of the women I interviewed, Taryn prayed about her life circumstances, but also got really practical. She and her husband considered the shape of their family life: what weight did things like paid work, children, and hospitality carry for them?

“It took a while for my husband and me to discern that I could quit working full time. The discernment process involved a lot of number-crunching and prayer. We make sacrifices financially to make it work (for instance, we bought a lovely house outside of the city, which is sometimes inconvenient but also costs less)....

“It’s important to us that we have a home that has room for our family to grow, if God gives us more children; that has room for us to host family and friends; and that has a room for my husband to work from home, so that he can work near us…If we’d had different priorities (for instance, if my husband couldn’t or preferred not to work from home, or if we prioritized living near city amenities like museums and the symphony over having space to entertain), we may have chosen differently.”

also spoke about the trade-offs she and her husband were making in order to prioritize their family life, which included sacrificing some career goals in order to be near family who could help with their children.

“My husband and I said yes to living closer to our parents for the sake of having their help (and so they can see their grandchildren grow up!). We are now saying no to jobs and opportunities that would disrupt our children’s lives. This is not the ideal of individualistic independence that our secular society has set as the ultimate goal, but it works for us, and it’s made us peaceful. I’m not ashamed to admit that I constantly ask for help looking after my children; I need breaks like every other mother out there.”

(4) Intentionality and Trust

Intentionality in discernment was a consistent theme in every interview. Like many of the others, shared how reflection on her own childhood led to the intentional choices she and her husband are making today.

“I should also mention that my Mom was a workaholic. I don't say this disparagingly, she would have described herself this way. But she was a tenacious, incredibly smart, determined, entrepreneur who ended up being incredibly successful…I don't think anything was wrong about this and in many ways I had a lovely childhood, but I just knew I wanted a different situation for my own children.”

While every woman I interviewed was intentional in her discernment, the need for trust also came to light: being intentional doesn’t mean always being in control of every last thing. As put it,

“Sometimes in life you just pray for a gift, and then you gratefully accept the gift, even if sometimes it doesn't even look like a gift you wanted or imagined.”

Sara Boehk spoke about how needing a “grand plan” had been paralysing to her discernment, but letting go of that need was incredibly freeing. When she asked someone she admired how she got where she had, she was told,

“‘By doing the next thing.’ It’s hard to describe the profound relief that unpretentious phrase gifted me.”

(5) Allowing Life to be Blended

Finally, most of the women I interviewed shared how the various aspects of their life were blended, rather than separated out into rigid boxes.

shared how she allows her days of homeschooling and writing/ editing to be a fruitful co-existence,

“I stopped teaching part-time because it didn't fit well into my life; and, in the hours that opened up thereafter, I gradually noticed a keen urge to write. I responded to that urge with a passion that surprised me, and now am able to do part-time work as a writer and editor, work that gives me immense pleasure and exercises my mind in new ways without preventing me from being the mother and homeschooling teacher that I want to be.”

reflected on the giftedness of being able to live a blended life, in part due to the intentional trade-offs they made to live somewhere affordable.

“Put simply, if I were not married and/or if we did not move somewhere this affordable, I'm not sure we would have been able to pull this off as a family. Homeschooling and spending so much time with my kids while they are little is a beautiful, wonderful luxury. Being able to just freelance and write for joy is a luxury. Yet more gifts to accept with gratitude.”

And spoke about how pursing a PhD was actually a wonderful preparation for motherhood, with its initial period of intensiveness followed by more freedom and relaxed possibilities:

“For me, graduate school was a kind of preparation towards living “life outside the box” in its demand for commitment and self-governance….

“Motherhood follows a kind of similar pattern: you have a number of years in which to raise a human being. At the beginning, you’re on a stricter schedule—babies need to eat quite often! As your child gradually becomes (somewhat) less physically needy, you’re left with a problem of self-governance. Sure, there’s no “taking the day off” entirely anymore, but you can get through parenting with various levels of attentiveness.”

I’m sure there are plenty more commonalities to be found in the lives of women who are living outside the box, but these struck me as foundational for anyone who might want to step off the career-as-the-only-thing track. It’s not easy to have the humility or the courage to buck popular trends, but rooting our identity in being a beloved child of God rather than a productivity robot is a good place to begin. After all, we aren’t machines.

So tell me, if you’re living outside the box, what contributed to you getting there? As you read through these interviews, what struck you?

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And finally, if you’d like some help in discernment - whether it’s exploring how you might step outside the box, or something else - maybe you’d like to schedule a free 30 min chat to see if working together 1:1 is a good fit?

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This originally appeared as a post for paid subscribers but I’m sharing it widely now because of how often this topic seems to arise! If you feel stuck, if your career is in the driver’s seat of your life, if you’re constantly carrying around guilt for things that are a-moral, if you’re just hoping someone will come along and give you permission to rest or quit or try something different - this post is for you. If you need encouragement to become the steward of your own life, this post is for you. If you’re waiting for God to just tell you what to do because you’re too scared of making a mistake, this post is for you. If you’re tired of trying to tick every cultural “good girl” (or “good boy”?) box, this post is for you. If you need a nap and feel like it’s a crazy idea to actually take one, this post is for you.

I hope you find it encouraging.

(And if you’re reading on email, it may get cut off: just click the title to open in a browser.)

Do you remember needing a permission slip for things in school? To get out of class, or get aspirin from the nurse, or go on a field trip?

Sometimes I think this childhood practice continues long into our adult years. Here are just a few recent conversations I’ve had, where the idea of permission slips has surfaced:

• With a professional woman who said she felt like she was waiting on someone to give her permission to make a potentially big leap in her work life

• With a busy mom friend who shared that she gave herself permission to let go of the hassle of keeping a separate food waste bin

• With a client who asked me about my own boundaries surrounding digital notifications, and the permission I give myself to not check email on Sundays

Each of these women were discerning very different types of things, big and small, but each wanted permission, and felt freed by having permission to act.  

It really made me think: how many of us have carried over some school day ideas into our adulthood without even thinking about it? Why do we feel like maybe we need permission to be true to what’s good for our own, individual life?

Why We Seek Permission Slips

Sometimes this search for permission comes from a good place: we don’t want to do something wrong. We follow the Ten Commandments, but aren’t sure about how to use the virtue of prudence to apply a general principle (like “love your neighbour”) to our own situation. Is it loving to ignore a string of unkind texts? Is it loving to call them out? 

The challenge is that the virtue of prudence grows in us when we… exercise the virtue of prudence. You have to just try. Aristotle also recommends growing in virtue by looking to others who lead virtuous lives. Then there’s prayer, of course, and seeking wise counsel. But the summary version is that living virtuously is an art, not a science. God knows we aren’t going to get everything right all the time, but knowing our own imperfection shouldn’t paralyze us or stop us from trying to grow in virtue. We don’t need constant permission from others to try to do what’s right.

But why do we feel the need to seek permission on things that are largely a-moral? Why might someone feel the need for permission from some mysterious authority figure to not check email ten times a day, and guilty when they leave it aside? Where is it written that human flourishing is only possible with multiple daily logins? 

Somehow, the status quo, the things we keep seeing on social media, popular slogans, etc. make their way into our consciousness as “should”s:

We should stay in dependable jobs, we should follow all the latest recycling ‘rules’, we should be available at all times on our phones.

The list could go on, and on, and on… We should feel outrage about particular events we actually know little about. We should feed our children only organic eggs we’ve harvested from our own chickens. We should “lean in” and “hustle” to get ahead in our careers.

Right? Maybe. Wrong? Maybe.

You actually have permission to remain quiet when you don’t fully understand something. You have permission to buy eggs you can afford. You have permission to just let work be work and not a project you devote all your life to.

You also have permission to investigate world news wisely and speak out against political policies. And keep chickens. And build your career. If you discern that these are good things for you to spend your particular life on.

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Where Permission Comes From

“You are the boss of your life. It is not the boss of you.”

This quote from Myquillin Smith is really refreshing in a world where so many of us feel like we can’t step aside from what our contemporary culture demands of us.

Guess what? I – and you – don’t need a permission slip to stop checking email incessantly. (Or to make a career move. Or to get rid of the food waste bin. Or whatever it is you’re holding onto.) 

God has given each of us our individual lives: our gifts and talents, our challenges, our situations, our energy levels, and our interests. We have certain moral responsibilities, but we are not responsible for the whole world. We’re responsible for stewarding our own life well.

Let’s give ourselves permission to re-think the things we do on autopilot, the subtle cultural beliefs we might hold subconsciously. Let’s let the real “shoulds” be shoulds and the rest fall away. Let's have the confidence to discern our own God-given lives and live accordingly, in big ways and small.

Naming the Unspoken

Some of the biggest things that get in the way of our personal discernment are the unspoken assumptions that underlie our decisions (or lack thereof). So before I offer you some prayer journaling questions to get started with, I thought it might be helpful to name some unspoken assumptions I see quite often. Sometimes these are so firmly woven into our worldview, we can’t even see them as the cause of our permission seeking.

• It’s crazy to give up a good job (usually “good” = “well-paid” or “stable”) for almost any reason. Even if: you hate it/ you want to do something else/ your family is miserable/ it isn’t doing good/ etc.

• It’s extravagant/ lazy to hire paid help for almost anything. Even if: you can afford to give someone else a job / you’d rather spend your time doing other things / you don’t have a community to help you otherwise / etc.

• It’s irresponsible not to ‘use your education’ (which usually means getting a well-paid job in the field you studied.) Even if: you are interested in something else/ you’re seeking more meaningful work / you’d rather devote your time to caring for people / etc.

• It’s lazy to take time off work. Even if: you don’t want to be wed to a company through a phone / you have vacation days / you can afford it / your health is suffering / etc.

Again, this list could go on and on! It’s important to try and name the cultural assumptions we’ve unintentionally elevated to a moral code. What personal assumptions are you holding on to? Are they good, true, and helpful?

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(Prayer) Journaling Questions

If you’re struggling with needing permission in your personal discernment and decision-making, big or small, here are some (prayer) journaling questions to get you started.

• What do I wish that I had permission to do, or not do? Is this thing good or neutral in itself? Will it negatively impact any of my God-given responsibilities? 

• If it’s good or neutral and can be done without injury to the people I’m called to care for, what’s stopping me from doing it? What assumptions do I carry around it?

• What would ‘permission’ look like? 

• Where do I think permission should come from? Whose ‘voice’ am I imagining in my mind?

• When I imagine receiving a permission slip, it says _______, signed by _____.

• Finally, why not try actually, with the help of the Holy Spirit, writing your own permission slip? 

If you read this and found yourself wondering how to discern how to steward your own God-given life, maybe I can help. I offer 1:1 consults for individuals who want to learn to discern well so they can move forward with purpose and peace.

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Here’s what one client had to say about our work together:

“Kerri helped me to take control over my life – all the different aspects of my life – to make my life much more manageable and holistic.

I began to see that everyone's life is different. That I have something to give. That my life isn't chaos as I felt it was. I really appreciate Kerri's excellent questions that made me think, rethink and see things from other perspectives (for instance my finances - I will never forget that "the saints didn't give any advice/write a book specifically about how to manage one's finances"!). I also appreciated that it felt as if she got to know me very quickly and understood what kind of person I am. I also felt that the positivity was really helpful!!

Now I structure my days /weeks and live more intentionally. I regularly reconsider/update what are the “big rocks /pebbles" as my life progresses. I allow myself relaxation and don’t feel bad for binge watching sometimes!!

Anyone who would like to be more in control of their life, who would like to discern something (s) and needs a wise and intuitive person to ask good questions about it would benefit from Life Consulting.

I'm very very grateful for my sessions with Kerri! I loved speaking to someone who also has a faith and could help me see my life from God's perspective.”

I always offer a free 30 min phone chat to see if working together would be a good fit. Want to schedule one? Email me: info@claritylifeconsulting.com.

Now it’s your turn: have you ever noticed yourself wanting permission to do / not do something that is culturally normative? Have you ever felt freedom by giving yourself permission to discern your own path? What cultural narratives do you see most commonly at play in people’s decision making?

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What are you good at?

We’re about to celebrate Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit poured out gifts on the apostles, and through them to the rest of us in the church, so it’s a good time to think about the gifts God has given us: the “big” ones like faith, and the smaller ones, like remembering people’s birthdays or playing the piano.

Everyone is Gifted

I find that talking about gifts – by which I mean, generally speaking, things that we tend to be good at and enjoy doing – can make people uncomfortable. No one likes a braggart, after all. Plus, isn’t the Christian thing to do to celebrate other people’s gifts? And maybe we don’t think we really have any, anyway. Let’s just change the topic…

But the thing about gifts is that they are given to the whole Body of Christ. And as St. Paul tells us, in that body some of us are going to end up being big bones and some of us are going to end up being tiny pinky toes and it really doesn’t matter which we are, because we’re all one under the Head, and the most important gift is the charity that unites us. So it’s not about us. It’s about the Body. It’s about Christ.

But… we are the Body. Which means it’s just as problematic to ignore or deny our own gifts as it is to ignore or deny the gifts of others. We’ve all got them. We’re all supposed to share them.

False Humility is False Vision

Sometimes we’re afraid to own what we’re good at. We think it might make us insufferable braggarts or lead us into the sin of pride. And I suppose if all we ever focus on is how we’re so good at x or y, it can.

But that fear sometimes pushes us to another extreme, where we bury our talents or fail to acknowledge the gifts that God has given us, or even the privileges that others have offered us through their own gifts. 

If we had, for example, wonderful, hard-working teachers who invested in giving us a good education, and parents who sacrificed to make it possible, it would be silly and even ungrateful to declaim it.1 If we’re good at Latin or Algebra or Geography, there’s no way it’s entirely through our own merits. Some combination of God-given intellect, other’s instructions, and our own hard work have landed us in a place where we’re good declensions or equations or cartography. And if we really enjoy and get life from those things? Well, that’s a gift!

So, however we got here, now we have something that we’re good at, and that something is a gift. Spending time parsing out just what percentage of that talent has come from where is usually a poor use of time. How much we can claim for ourselves just isn’t that important. 

In his Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes about the virtue of humility:

“By this virtue, as by all others, [God] wants to turn [our] attention away from self, to him and [to our] neighbors….[God] wants to bring [us] to a state of mind in which [we] could design the best cathedral in the world and know it to be the best and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than [we] would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants [us], in the end, to be so free from any bias in [our] own favor that we can rejoice in our own talents as frankly and gratefully as in our neighbor’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. [God] wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even ourselves) as glorious and excellent things… He would rather [us] think ourselves a great architect or a great poet and then forget about it, than that [we] should spend much time and pains trying to think [ourselves] a bad one.”

When we can rejoice in our own gifts “as frankly and gratefully as in our neighbour’s”, we’ve reached a healthy place in life.

And we’ve also reached a place where we can serve others better too.

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3 Reasons to Know What You’re Good At

1. When we know what we’re good at, we can love our neighbours with our gifts.

   Maybe you know you’re really good at baking cakes. You love it, they’re delicious — and photogenic, to boot. Maybe your sister-in-law is exhausted with a new baby and stressed out about her preschooler’s upcoming birthday. Rather than hiding your talent, you can offer it clearly: “I love baking cakes! Could I help you out this year by doing one for Susie’s birthday?”

2. When we know what we’re good at, we can say no more easily and confidently.

   Maybe you’ve tried being on the hospitality team at church, and it makes you want to curl up in a ball just thinking of greeting so many strangers. But you actually really like clearing up after coffee hour. You like serving quietly and are happy to wash dishes and listen to the chatter. For a while, friends kept telling you to “stop hiding in the kitchen!” and so you tried — until you realized that it wasn’t hiding. It was serving, and you love it. Now you can say no to being a greeter without guilt.

3. When we know what we’re good at, we can make room for others to use their (different) gifts.

   Maybe your volunteer organization needs a treasurer. You don’t love accounting and aren’t amazing at math, but no one else raised their hand at the meeting so you stepped up. Only, now there’s actually a new member who’s a whiz at spreadsheets, but is suffering from the aforementioned tendency to bury her talents. She doesn’t want to look proud by announcing that she’d be a great treasurer. If you know what you are good at (cakes, cleaning, etc.) you can say no to what you’re not (math), and thereby leave space for someone else with different gifts to step up.

Taking ownership of our gifts is one way of living that great commandment to love God and neighbour.

Now I’d love to hear: what are you good at? :) Please leave a comment or reply on email.

And if you’d like to explore your own gifts and/or discern how to use them, maybe 1:1 consulting would be a good fit for you? We can always schedule a free 30 min chat.

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The word “radical” usually conjures up images of screaming street protests and burning things down, but that isn’t really what it means.

The root of the word “radical” is “radix,” which in Latin means “root.” Someone who is radical is supposed to be going back to the root of the thing. And in discernment, it’s important to get to the root.

A situation in my own life had me thinking about this a lot...

Once, someone close to me was treated in a seriously unjust way. I found myself extremely angry: I was upset and frustrated with the total disregard for any sense of justice.

As the situation progressed, I found myself unable to overcome my anger. I couldn’t think clearly about a positive response because I was so overwhelmed by angry feelings.

Now, feelings are feelings: they’re like the weather and liable to change any time there’s a new cold front coming in. They aren’t reliable indicators of how we should move forward, but they do often tell us about ourselves.

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And this is where I had to get radical. On the surface, I was angry about injustice - I absolutely was. But I had to dig into that anger a bit. I had to discern why the heck I couldn’t let it go. (By which I mean, (air)punch it out, write through it, talk it out with a friend, pray hard, etc. etc. I tried all the healthy processing tools [and probably some not-so-healthy ones, too.])

What was at the root of that anger? When I dug deep, I found that in addition to my hatred of extreme injustice, there was fear.

This particular injustice was a de-stabalizing kind. I felt that the rug had been pulled out from under someone I love, with no warning signs whatsoever. It felt like: if we can’t trust this situation that we had no reason not to trust, what other situations might turn out to be totally unstable?

I was afraid that all sorts of crazy bad things might start happening out of the blue, just like this had.

I couldn’t get past the anger because it wasn’t only anger that I was wrestling with. I had get to the root of the anger to see that it was tangled up with fear and uncertainty.

Sometimes in discernment, we can’t take a step forward because we haven’t gone to the root of what’s holding us back. We have to dig things up and see what’s tangled there.

Now, I won’t say I’m totally past the anger, but as soon as I named fear as a factor, I felt a sense of relief.

I could then take all my healthy processing tools and apply them not just to anger, but to fear. (My best tool? Playing worst-case scenario. Try it! It works so well.)

Getting radical about discerning what the heck was going on (and what I could do about it) really allowed me to know and deal with things as they were – and see a light in the tunnel moving forwards.

So next time you find yourself inexplicably stuck, try rooting things up. Get radical in your discernment.

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Today’s post is quite long, so if you’re reading on email and it cuts off, just hop on over to the home page to keep reading.

asked this question over on notes: “How do you tell the difference between a Holy Spirit prompting / discernment, and good old fashioned anxiety?” It’s a great question, especially for those of us who struggle with things like self-doubt, worry, and fear of doing the wrong thing.

First, let’s define our terms. A ‘prompting’ of the Holy Spirit tends to mean some interior movement, push, nudge, urge, or sense that we should do something, or not do something. It may or may not be accompanied by emotions, positive or negative. ‘Anxiety’ is a bit of a catch-all phrase, but I’m using it here to mean the feeling / emotion of concern or worry or even in extreme cases, panic, about some specific thing or even just in general about the state of things. (For our purposes here, ‘good old fashioned anxiety’ is not the same thing as OCD or a specific psychological diagnosis, although there may be some overlap.)

Second, let’s clarify our boundaries. It is not possible for a human being, under normal circumstances, to have 100% complete certainty about what God is doing in his or her soul. That’s because (a) we’re fallen human beings who struggle with “darkened intellects” and “weak wills” (to borrow language from the tradition.) It’s also because (b) we’re finite, which is a design feature, not a flaw. A finite creature—even without sin—can never fully comprehend the mind of God. So we’re not aiming for, or expecting, total and complete certainty in every case. Instead, we’re aiming for “pretty sure.”

With that in mind, these questions are designed to help you move closer towards being “pretty sure” you can tell the difference between the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and ‘good old-fashioned anxiety.’ This practice of discerning between God’s voice and our voice, or other voices, takes time! It’s not a skill that can be learned overnight. One of the best things you can do is find someone truly wise and ask to talk with them about how they do it. You can also keep track of your own experiences and inclinations over time through journaling. (If you’d like to learn more about journaling for discernment, I’ve got a free workshop for you here.)

1. What is this prompting me towards, and what is it prompting me away from?

The Holy Spirit always prompts us towards good and away from evil. If the thing you’re being inclined toward is evil, that’s definitely not the Holy Spirit.

Anxiety is all over the map, but generally prompts us to avoid anything painful or uncomfortable, even if that thing is a good thing. So pay attention to the object or goal of the prompt, and the motivation for moving away from or towards it.

Here’s an example: If you see someone drowning, you have to help them, even though it’s scary. The Holy Spirit is never going to prompt you to just let someone drown in front of you. That desire to run away? That’s anxiety. Now, you may not be able to swim, in which case your duty isn’t to try to rescue the person by swimming out to them and also drowning yourself needlessly – but you can throw them a life preserver or call for help.

2. Is this prompting accompanied by peace?

One of the first rules of discernment is that God’s Spirit speaks peacefully, through peace. “Peace” in this case, does not mean “the absence of war” or even “the absence of difficulty.” It is not the same thing as feeling emotionally happy. Peace is something that dwells in the deepest parts of us, far beneath the surface level of emotions which tend to change like the weather. Peace might be described as a deep spiritual settledness or deep spiritual rootedness, a calm beneath all the emotions, be they positive or negative. Emily P. Freeman uses the phrase “being deeply okay.”

True peace can co-exist with urgency, but not with panic. True peace means acting from a place where we acknowledge that God is bigger than any situation, and that anything that happens to us – good or bad, has been at the least permitted to come via His loving hands. (This is because, while He never wills evil for us, He also doesn’t want to take away our free will and therefore our ability to love. He honors our freedom and becomes one of us, to be with us in the mess that we’ve made with it.)

If you’re trying to discern whether something is a prompting of the Holy Spirit, ask if it’s coming from and with a spirit of peace. Peace tends to be insistent, consistent, and persistent – strong enough to withstand the surging waves of emotion or anxiety.

Here’s an example: you might find yourself in a situation where you feel an almost urgent need to speak to someone. You might not even know what to say – just an insistent sense that you ‘ought’ to say hello. You might feel nervous or worried about looking stupid, but underneath those anxieties is a strong prompting to walk over to them for seemingly no reason. The sense underneath the surface level emotions is stronger and more insistent, and even the negative emotions can’t drown it out.

3. Have I dealt with the anxiety through standard natural human means?

There are a lot of normal, human things that are important for us to do when we sense that anxiety might be rearing its little stressed-out head. Take a walk. Eat protein. Take a nap. Drink water. Deep breathe. Cry. Touch grass. Disconnect from everything digital. Phone a friend. Handmake something. Read good literature. Listen to good music. View good art. Hug someone. Light a candle. Sit in church. Pray.

The list goes on, and if you’ve reached a point where you don’t do these things regularly, or you’re spinning out trying to discern who or what is speaking, hit pause and do something. Put the question aside and address what might be anxiety with all the normal and natural remedies possible. Wait a bit, and see what happens.

The Spirit of God is gently insistent and hard to ignore, like a loving mother trying to gently wake a sleeping child. Anxiety tends to be annoyingly demanding and hard to ignore, like a toddler having a whiny tantrum. A prompting of the Holy Spirit won’t go away if you take a nap, but anxiety might.

This is also an opportunity to assess whether you’re choosing to live a life that cultivates anxiety. If you’re always online and lack real (in-person!) friendships; if you work so much you never sit down to eat a nutritional meal; if you rarely pray, spend time in silence, or walk in nature – if you’ve been ‘so stressed out!’ for years, you might be cultivating anxiety as a way of life. And it’s hard to hear the still small voice of God when anxiety is the norm and not the exception. (Again, we’re not talking about serious diagnoses here.)

4. Have I checked my habitual inclinations?

The choices we make shape us. Character is forged through a thousand tiny daily decisions.

If you’re habitually inclined towards damaging or sinful behavior, it creates a disposition towards evil, which means that going against the evil will feel uncomfortable – perhaps even anxiety-inducing. But if you’re habitually inclined towards the good, going against the good will feel uncomfortable – perhaps even anxiety-inducing. So your habits and habitual dispositions matter.

Here's an example: maybe you’ve been in the habit of watching p*rn, which creates a disposition to see other people as objects of sexual gratification. If you decide to quit, it’s very likely that anxiety will raise its head and make you feel nervous, scared, lonely, bored, and maybe even like a loser for giving it up – after all, everyone does it! It’s not so bad!

On the other hand, if you’re in the habit of going to church on Sundays, and one weekend you decide that you just don’t feel like it and ‘deserve’ to be lazy for once, it’s very likely that you’ll start to feel uncomfortable, and even guilty. Guilt for sin is a gift! It’s the voice of conscience telling us we have done something wrong and need to change our behavior. But that discomfort can be mistaken for anxiety, which is why it’s so important to always start by examining the object of our action, as well as our habitual dispositions.

5. When does it show up?

Pay attention to when this interior urge shows up. Is it when you’re praying, reading the Bible, in nature, with good friends? Or is when you’re tired, hungry (hangry!), lonely, bored, overwhelmed, fresh off a disappointment? To borrow a question from the Ignatian tradition: is it coming to you in moments of consolation or desolation?

If it consistently arises when you’re in a negative place, that’s often not a good sign. It doesn’t mean that a negative situation can’t be the occasion for feeling something – but that something, if it is the Holy Spirit, will also persist and happen in moments of consolation.

Here’s an example: You might see someone on the street experiencing homelessness, and you might feel upset. Maybe it sparks some anxiety about being homeless, yourself. You wonder if maybe you should start donating regularly to or volunteering at a soup kitchen. Is this a prompting of the Holy Spirit? It could be. It certainly passes the “good object” test – it’s a good thing to donate time and/or money to help others. But to have a better sense of whether or not that immediate reaction was a call, it’s good to wait. Does it keep recurring in prayer? Does a friend mention her own volunteer experience out of the blue? Do you get a flyer in the mail asking for donations? A confluence is usually a good indication of a prompting. And of course, the best thing to do if you’re not sure is just to try it out.

6. What’s happening in my body when I experience it?

We are body-soul unities, and although these different aspects of ourselves aren’t always in perfect harmony, it’s important not to completely ignore our bodies in discernment.

When you’re thinking about it, what happens in you, physically? Do you get heavier or lighter? Do you have more energy or less? Whether or not the thing feels difficult, do you sense that you, in particular ‘must’ do it, or do you feel like it’s a good thing and someone should do it? Do you feel called or drawn towards it, like a magnet, regardless of how easy or difficult it may be?

Anxiety tends to produce recognizable physical symptoms: a racing heart, shallow breathing, dizziness, nausea, heaviness of limbs. Again, the prompting of the Spirit of God is accompanied by peace, which means that it tends to persist despite these physical phenomena, although sometimes it can be strong enough to push them away.

7. Do I have experiences I can learn from?

Unless you’re brand new to the spiritual life (welcome!), you’ve probably had moments where you felt fairly sure that something was the Spirit of God prompting you. Not every experience is exactly the same, but often there are similar threads running through them.

If you had to describe a ‘pretty sure’ scenario from your life, how would you describe it? Are there any similar characteristics to the present situation? On the other hand, if you’re pretty sure you’ve experienced anxiety, what was that like? Was there anything in it similar to your current situation?

Anxiety has a tendency to confuse us. Very often we have strong negative feelings – fear, worry, doubt – and if we examine them carefully we can see that these feelings are often about something other than our current situation.

Here’s an example: you might feel a prompting to leave your present job. This is scary, because in the past, you’ve been unemployed and you never want to experience that again. You might even feel physically sick thinking about it. If the prompting is from the Holy Spirit, it’s going to persist underneath all those uncomfortable feelings, and when you sit down calmly and examine carefully what’s going on inside, you’ll be able to name many of the reasons you feel anxious – those reasons will be tied to your past experience and fear of repeating it again, not to this one particular prompting to leave your job. If you can isolate the feeling of prompting (which takes practice!) you’ll notice peace about that. It’s the ‘what ifs’ and ‘oh no, not agains’ that are making you anxious.

Foundations Matter

Of course, there’s no perfect way to know with 100% certainty what is God’s voice and what are external voices. But where we’re starting from matters. Do we believe that God loves us and wants to provide for us, ultimately with the gift of Himself? Do we believe that discernment is some kind of guessing game where we can very easily mess everything up because God will only whisper once and if we miss it, it’s our own fault? Or do we believe that God wants a relationship with us, which involves ongoing, loving, patient, communication? Whatever our presuppositions are, we bring them to the discernment process, so it’s important to examine our foundations, too.

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If you found this helpful, you might also like these related articles:

How Do I Know if I Can Trust My Desires in Discernment?

How Do I Know if I’m Open to Hearing God? (Part I)

How Do I Know if I’m Open to Hearing God? (Part II)

What about you? Do you have experience distinguishing between a prompting of the Holy Spirit and anxiety? What have you learned?

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When something goes wrong, do you give it a lot of headspace? Do you imagine all the ways it could continue to morph into a giant mushroom cloud of problems? Or perhaps you make sure to think of all the ways something could go wrong before it does?

Maybe you’re excellent at reviewing all the ways things did go wrong, and the myriad other ways they might have?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you might have a tendency to catastrophize.

You may have been accused of “making mountains out of molehills,” or being a “worrywart.” You might feel guilty for feeling as though the worst case scenario is always the most likely scenario.

Two Sides to Every Catastrophizer

Catastrophizing can be burden for the catastrophizer, and for the people around them. If you have this tendency, or you know someone who does, you probably already know the burden of it. But, like most things in life, catastrophizing can be a double-edged sword. 

Someone, after all, needs to think of the worst case scenario in any given situation. Imagine a camping trip that didn’t anticipate foul weather or poisonous insects or hungry predators: everyone is better off for someone having made in-case-of-an-emergency plans. Imagine living in a part of the world prone to natural disasters: someone in California needs to make sure every new building can withstand an earthquake. Imagine a fire department where no one knew what to do if someone got trapped in a burning building! Thinking ahead, planning for the worst disasters, imagining how to respond when emergencies happen – this is a gift. 

The trouble is, this gift can become a burden when it is our only posture towards the world around us. Sometimes we need to be crouched and ready to spring, yes, but sometimes we also need to be able to sit back and relax.

So what’s a catastrophizer to do?

How to Deal with Your Own Catastrophizing

1. Helpful or Harmful?

First, recognize the double-edged sword for what it is, and ask yourself if thinking of everything that could go wrong is helpful or harmful to the situation. Is the thinking fruitful, or are you caught in a doom cycle?

Is thinking about the airline losing your luggage helping you to pack more effectively for your trip, or is it just stressing you (and your whole family) out? 

If you’re not sure where you are on the helpful-harmful scale, it can be useful to ask:

• What actual actions is my catastrophizing causing me to take or not take?

• What is my attitude towards others in the midst of it? (Am I impatient, irritated, and easily angered? Am I gentle, kind, and patient?)

• Am I operating primarily out of fear or peace?

• Do I trust God and feel called to plan well, or am I burdened by feeling that everything is up to me? Have I asked others for help? Am I unwilling to cede control by asking for help?

  

2. Is it Mine to Do?

The helpful element of catastrophizing involves planning for things to go wrong, whether that takes the form of a thorough risk assessment, or a well-packed first aid kit. 

But sometimes we find ourselves worrying or even planning for things that are entirely out of our control. We might watch the many catastrophes on the world news and think that we could do a better job getting foreign aid to refugees, or dealing with a dictator. And who knows? Maybe we could! But the question remains: is that mine to do? Are we being called to volunteer or run for political office? If so, that’s the next step in what is ours to do. If not, we’re spending valuable energy on something entirely outside the sphere of our influence, when in fact, we could be spending time on things that are ours to do, within the sphere of our influence. 

This is an area where practicality is immensely helpful. Do you have a pragmatic friend? Give them a call and ask them to help you sort things through. (I do this sort of thing with my clients regularly.) 

Make a list of all the things you’re tempted to catastrophize about, and ask your friend to point out the areas that you can: 

(A) obviously do something about (like packing an extra blanket on a camping trip or getting an electrician to investigate potentially faulty wiring in your house) 

(B) obviously not do something about (like changing the course of a world war)

(C) potentially could do something about (like starting a charity to help the homeless in your town).

Do the items in list A, commit to praying without worry about the items in list B, and start seriously discerning the items in list C. 

(If you’re not sure how to discern, that’s what I help people do! I’ve written a whole series about discernment on my website, or you could get in touch for a free 30 minute call to see if life consulting is a good fit for you. Hit reply or email me at info@claritylifeconsulting.com.)

3. The Mind-Body Connection

If you find yourself on the unhelpful, unhealthy side of catastrophizing, help your mind by using your body. The mind of a catastrophizer is an amazing labyrinth of hypothetical scenarios, possibilities, and occasional corners housing fear-mongers. But you are not only your mind, you’re a body-soul unity, which means that your mind and body need to work together. (This is much easier for some people than others.)

Try forcing your body into strenuous activity for at least 20 seconds. Run in place, tense all your muscles, punch or scream into a pillow. If you’re athletic, a long run or swim or cycle or dance session might be even better. Let that adrenaline and cortisol flow out, rather than keeping it all inside. You might find that you actually want or even need to rest after that. If so, take a nap! It’s exhausting to always imagine the worst.

Another trick is to give your hands a repetitive action: fold towels, pet the cat, knit a few rows, dig up some weeds. If your body is still while your mind races, it’s easier to feel out of whack. Let the thoughts flow, but do something while they do. Bonus if you can stick your hands in good clean dirt or sand or water. God made us material creatures - we’re part of the natural universe and sometimes in our hyper-digital culture, it can be easy to forget that.

4. Pray about It

When you’ve given your body and mind a chance to catch up to one another, it might be time to take your catastrophizing tendency to prayer. Be honest with God about all your fears and worries. Maybe you’ve been hurt in the past, or caught off guard by the failures of others. If, ultimately, you find that you catastrophize because you don’t trust God, or you feel like He’s let you down before, tell Him. (God can take it. Read the psalms! There’s some serious honesty in there.)

Pray about whether or not it might be helpful to talk to someone — a good friend or therapist or wise mentor can often listen well and help us to see things we can’t, either about ourselves or the wider situation.

Ask for the grace to see what’s under the surface, and the knowledge of how this tendency can be helpful (or harmful). Ask for the wisdom to use it well, and release it when it’s no longer useful.

Chances are, if you’re not a catastrophizer yourself, you probably know someone who is. Top tip: saying, “don’t worry!” is almost never helpful. :) Instead, you might try offering to listen to their worst fears, or go on a walk with them, or help them plan for something so they don’t feel so alone. You can pray for them, and let them know that you are. You could also share this article.

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I’d love to hear from you: do you have any experience with catastrophizing? What has helped you? How do you use the gift to help others?

You can comment below or hit reply to this email.

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With Lent fast approaching, it’s a good time to pause and consider how intentional we are with various aspects of our lives.

Borrowing from the Tradition

Traditionally in this season, Christians focus on the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Scripturally, we walk with the Israelites through their 40 years in the wilderness, and Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. We pray to be free of attachment to things that separate us from God: either (1) sinful things that lead us away from what’s good, and/ or (2) good things that we might have forgotten are actually designed to be gifts reminding us of the Ultimate Good, rather than distractions from it. 

One thing that I think often separates us from God is technology. Hear me out! I’m not suggesting we throw everything digital away. What I am observing, in myself and in others, is that the digital world is noisy. Sometimes that noise leads to things like, shall we say, less than charitable comments to strangers - or downright use of other people as objects. Other times, that noise might help us find others who seem to be saying similar things, or sharing similar interests. But then sometimes those connections end up taking the place of real people in our real lives - the people God has entrusted to us for this season. Tech can be used well, but even the ancients knew techne is a powerful force and one that humans should handle with care. 

So I’d like to borrow a traditionally Christian practice and apply it to our digital lives: a technological ‘examination of conscience.’

If you’re new to the concept, an examination of conscience is a set of questions or list of actions used to help an individual discover and name the areas where they’ve made choices that lead away from God. Formats vary widely, but the most common is probably the 10 Commandments. 

The questions I’ve listed in this technological ‘examination of conscience’ aren’t designed to help the user name things that are sinful, per se; they’re designed to help someone identify the ways in which his or her tech use is unhealthy and unhelpful.

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A Technological ‘Examination of Conscience’ 

(Available in printable form below.)

1. Am I afraid to be without my phone? Do I ever purposefully go out without it?

2. Is a phone my constant companion in the uncomfortable or boring space between one thing and the next?

3. If I arrive early to an appointment, do I immediately reach for my phone?

4. If I am in an awkward or challenging social setting, do I retreat to my phone?

5. Is it the last thing I see before going to sleep at night?

6. Is it the first thing to greet me when waking up?

7. Do I know how much time I spend on it, and for what? Have I measured?

8. What do I actually need it for?

9. If all my work calls, messages, and family connections could be magically taken care of, would I really need it?

10. Am I the boss of it? Or does it have a kind of “pull” or “sway” over me?

11. If I misplaced it somewhere in the safety of my own home, could I leave the house happily without it?

12. Do I use it to try to be in two places at once? (Checking work things during family time? Responding to one friend while out with another? Looking at a different event while I attend my own?)

13. Has it replaced reading real books?

14. Can I get through – and enjoy – an entire meal without it being present?

15. Can I get through an entire activity of any kind (exercise, social evening with friends, family games night, work meeting, etc.) without thinking about it?

16. Have I ever used it to get out of an uncomfortable situation?

17. What does it “represent” to me? Security? Connection? Safety? Status? Something else? (To find out, ask yourself how you would feel if someone took it away but deleted your personal details without looking and gave you your money back for the cost of the device.)

None of these are sins, per se – but answering these questions honestly can offer a picture of the kind of space our phone takes up in our lives and the place it fills in our souls

This is available in printable form - it’s free to download here:

A Technological Examination Of Conscience Printable

214KB ∙ PDF file

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Making Strategic Changes

Here’s my honest confession: I wrote this examination six years ago, and when I pulled it out last week, I winced. My answers to many of these questions are not ones that I’m proud of, and I’m trying to make some changes to my own tech use. 

I’m not above admitting that I see tech having a strangely addictive pull over me - and I’d categorize myself as someone who isn’t very tech savvy. I’ve never gotten past “level 1” of any video game and don’t find them appealing; I hate giving out private information and probably have about three apps on my phone that I actually use besides a browser; and I’m not really on social media, beyond Notes. In short, even for someone who doesn’t care much for the tech world, it’s still a siren song. 

A few years ago I gave a talk on the role of tech in our lives, and a woman came up to me afterwards waving her phone. “I’m 90,” she said “and I’m addicted! It’s not just the young people!”

None of us is exempt. But most of us need to navigate the world as it is, and not as we’d like it to be. I can’t move all the people I love, who are flung across oceans, to the same small town. I can’t be available to people only by post. I can’t run my business through a mail-order catalogue. (Wouldn’t that be fun, though?)

So what’s to be done? I don’t have answers for anyone else, but I have been collecting stories and strategies from others. Here are a few ideas that might be helpful in your own discernment.

• Some people are ditching smart phones in favor of a flip-phone, or a light phone. Some are trying a device like the Brick, which turns a smart phone into a dumb phone with a physical tap.

• Some set boundaries around the time they use technology (“weekends without wifi”); or the places in which they use it (only in public areas of the home, for example).

• Some limit what tech can do for them - for instance, they only message someone to set up a time to have a phone call or in-person meeting, rather than ‘chatting’ over messages.

• And many work hard to return to reality, so that they aren’t merely giving up tech, but instead replacing it with real-world interactions, hobbies, and skills.

Now, because I like hearing what works or doesn’t for others, I’ll share where I’m at. My phone is permanently on silent or vibrate for calls, and I have notifications off for almost everything (with my husband set as an emergency contact whose calls and messages will come through no matter what.) I’m still on my phone a lot throughout the day - sometimes for reasons that are legitimate to me (like work!), sometimes for reasons that are not (like scrolling Notes for more than 10 minutes without switching over to read a long-form piece), and sometimes for reasons that I’m not sure how to categorise in terms of legitimacy (like shopping for used furniture that we don’t exactly need right now, but would be useful to have eventually.)

In terms of strategic boundary setting, I’ve tried: a holiday from the internet; airplane mode from bedtime until after my morning prayers are finished; ‘do not disturb’ during work hours; deleting the Substack app from my phone; and most recently, reinstalling the Substack app with a daily time limit. These have all met with varying degrees of success, depending on my work schedule and personal season of life. 

What I’ve found to be most helpful is regular reconsideration1 of whether the boundaries I’ve set are helpful, and whether I’m actually following them.

I’d love to hear from you: did this technological ‘examination of conscience’ strike any chords? What kind of strategic changes have you made regarding technology? How do you discern what kind of boundaries you want to put in place?

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