Leslie Parrott - Soul Friends: What Every Woman Needs to Grow in Her Faith

ZONDERVAN

Soul Friends

Copyright 2014 The Foundation for Healthy Relationships

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

ePub Edition March 2015: ISBN 978-0-310-56340-2

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Attorneys and Counselors, Orange, California, and Result Source, Inc., San Diego, California.

Cover photo: Dan Davis Photography

Interior design: Katherine Lloyd, The DESK

First Printing February 2015

For Sara Grace
Your mom is a Soul Friend,
and you are a Daughter of the Heart.

contents

Sincere thanks to...

Lori Vanden Bosch and Sandy Vander Zicht, my brilliant editorial team, whose grace and grit infused this process with joy. I count you each as soul friends.

Tom Dean and the rest of the Zondervan marketing team, for capturing the spirit of this book.

Our dear Seattle friends Kristin and Brandon Hill, for your heartfelt and incredibly creative investment in this project.

Joyce Ondersma and Jackie Aldridge, for all the TLC along the way (and for the fragrant bouquet that arrived at just the right time).

Sealy Yates, for ever-and-always being my champion as I seek to be faithful to my calling through words.

Ryan Farmer and Kevin Small, true partners in our commitment and calling. I couldnt be more honored by your investment of time and talents (or more impressed by your savvy).

My husband, Les, whose wit, wisdom, and loyal love is the very landscape of my life. And to our sons, John and Jackson, whom we adore together. Thank you for sharing every minute of this process and for accommodating those monastic Appassionato moments that created space for me to write.

Mom and Aunt Jill, whose unwavering care form the bedrock of my life and whose prayers have graced every page of this book.

My Friday Friends, who have wholeheartedly served as my sisterhood of saints for a dozen years: Arlys, Bonnie, Joy, Lori, Sandy, and Tami. There arent words to say thank you enough.

And more than ever, to the soul friends whose stories fill these pages and whose love and faith have shown me the way forward on my own Jesus journey, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I want you to get out there and walk better yet, run! on the road God called you to travel.

EPHESIANS 4:1

Im not a map person. I have never been skilled with a compass. When I navigate, I tend to use landmarks and intuition, feeling my way toward my destination. The author Herman Melville once said, It is not down on any map; true places never are. To that my heart says, amen. But after wading through the theological maps of the spiritual journey, after mulling over the distilled wisdom of great spiritual thinkers and mapmakers such as theologian Sren Kierkegaard, I began to see the spiritual journey in terms of four major landmarks: Quest, Calling, Crisis, and Communion.

At the beginning we are on a Quest. Each one of us is caught up in following our heart further and deeper down the pathway of our own feelings, dreams, and desires. This stage of life is lived on the surface; we are preoccupied with finding the key to our own happily-ever-after, whether it is in the eyes of someone who loves us, little ones who depend on us, or a job that defines us. We are consumed with understanding and pursuing the desires of our heart. Inevitably some of our dreams are fulfilled and some of them die. Either way, we experience the ache of loss, when the dream fulfilled doesnt satisfy or the dream denied leaves a howling gap.

The next movement is into a more profound place of faith. I think of it as the Calling. When we fail to find the key to the desires of our heart (or even more quickly, when we do find it, and yet our heart still throbs with desire), we travel forward. At this point, as followers of Jesus, we begin to willingly lay aside our own desires and take a leap of faith further into a passionate relationship with Christ. Now our hearts truest desire becomes obedience to the will and purposes of God. At this stage we pour ourselves into the work God has called us to with all the energy, will, and discernment we have. Its that moment when Jesus says to Peter, after a disappointing night of fishing with no catch, and a morning miracle of fish so bountiful they threaten to burst the nets and sink the boat, Come with me. Ill make a new kind of fisherman out of you (Matthew 4:19). And we drop the nets that were poised to catch our dreams, whether empty or full, and follow Jesus willingly, into the unknown, knowing only that he is our Way.

Ultimately we find ourselves once again on the move into a new and deeper inward experience; its a place I call Crisis. After coming face-to-face with suffering or our own limitations as we seek to live out this life of obedience to Gods call, we cry out with the apostle Paul: What I dont understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another... The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in Gods commands, but its pretty obvious not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge (Romans 7:15, 21 23).

We begin to accurately understand our own inner condition, and we come to realize that the ultimate surrender is not as simple as just deciding to live in obedience to Gods law, but instead is turning our very selves over to be completely transformed by God. Only when this miracle occurs can we become completely surrendered to the revealed purposes of God. Surrender like this takes us to the center of an intimacy with God so deep that it has truly become Communion. At this level, our life is so defined by knowing God and being known by God, that our inner complexities have been overshadowed by Gods grace. Surrender to the will of God is now our strength rather than our struggle. And with Paul we can say, I delight in weaknesses... For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10 NIV).

Of course, these stages overlap and intersect. And we might think we are done with a stage only to be thrown back into it. So while this book is divided into four neat sections, the stories and experiences arent so easily divisible. The Quest often contains our Calling, and through our Quest and our Calling and our times of Crisis we find moments of Communion with God. Like the wheel of life, the stages turn and spin and push us forward. But through it all there remains a God-given constant: the body of Christ, or to use the ancient Apostles Creed words, the community of saints. And for me this especially includes my soul friends, the sisters in the faith traveling alongside me.