Seeing God in the Ordinary: Spiritual Life Coaching (Part 1)

Spending time with my (Joy) maternal grandfather on his farm as a nine year old girl has had a lasting impact on my life. On one two week visit he taught me some things about life for which I will be forever grateful. Feeding the cattle, taking a trip to the stockyards, and visiting the quaint little white post office are some of the things we did together. My grandmother was a clerk behind the black iron bars at the window and was delighted that we came to see her while picking up the mail.These events were all ordinary parts of life for my grandparents. I have learned and continue to learn that there is beauty in the ordinary. Life does not have to have “special” events to be special. My grandparents gave me the gift of the presence of Christ within their ordinary lives in such a way that, now as an adult, I am remembering. I am paying attention to how the Holy Spirit was working in me even then about His presence in the ordinary of life.This is one of the goals for the spiritual discipline of spiritual direction. With the help of a spiritual life coach we more fully notice how God shows up in our ordinary daily lives. A spiritual mentor can be helpful in walking along side of us in our journeys to help us with this part of our spiritual transformation.William Barry summarized it this way, “Spiritual direction is the help given by one Christian to another which enables that person to pay attention to God’s personal communication to him or her, to respond to this personally communicating God, to grow in intimacy with this God, and to live out the consequences of the relationship.”That summertime memory comes to me as a time of God’s communication with me that He is a loving presence who delighted in me through the presence of my loving grandfather even while I watched Him peel potatoes and fry them in the black iron skillet for lunch!