“What’s your country song?” Now maybe you don’t like country music, but in asking that I’m echoing the words from Thomas Rhett’s song, “What’s Your Country Song?” If we take the word “country” to mean not so much a genre of music but a term that signifies the place or places that have given our life it’s context, then the question becomes meaningful for all. It becomes not so much which country song you happen to identify with most, though that might give us a clue to your life story, but it becomes about the places and events that have shaped you into the person you are today.

Spiritual direction is the process of one person, the director, providing discernment and insight into another’s life journey by asking open ended questions and acting as a mirror to the other person, the directee. For Christians, the process is actually guided and superintended by the Holy Spirit, at least when both parties are attuned to God’s presence as the third person in the room. Though it includes the word “direction” it really is more an opening to the presence of God in one’s midst and discerning God’s voice speaking to us. It’s two people looking at one person’s life story, or a specific aspect of one’s journey, from different angles, asking, “How is God present in this moment? What spiritual possibilities are inherent in this?”

A large part of our stories are comprised of highs and lows. One of the common spiritual practices which comes from the contemplative stream of the Catholic Church is referred to as the Examen. It’s a spiritual practice that can be done in as little as 5-10 minutes by asking oneself, “Where have I experienced the presence of God during this day or past week? And then, where has God seemed more distant or even altogether absent during my day or week?” What I love about Thomas Rhett’s song is that he basically captures the essence of spiritual direction in down-to-earth vernacular. Without using terms like I have been, such as “spiritual direction” or “examen”, he distills the process even for those who may not be very religious or even spiritual. In the refrain of the song, the lyrics go like this: “Everybody got a small town anthem / Everybody got a story to tell / Everybody got a hallelujah / Everybody been through a little hell”. ¹ Instead of asking where have you experienced God or where has God seemed absent, maybe spiritual directors should consider asking instead, “What’s your hallelujah?” and “When have you experienced a little bit of hell?”

But what makes the process of spiritual direction different is that it is done “by faith”. I believe the book of Hebrews gives us a clue here. In chapter 11, the author gives a litany of people throughout the Judeo-Christian Scriptures who lived the stories of their lives “by faith” – that term being repeated for each name provided, from Abel to Abraham, from Moses to Rahab. But what does hallelujah and hell have to do with interpreting the stories of our lives by faith? Mostly, it involves accepting and including both. I find that, as a certified spiritual director, there’s a temptation for many who receive spiritual direction, or even counseling, to want to either emphasize one over the other, to either gloss over the pain and struggles of their lives by prematurely putting a positive spin on them or by failing to see the potential positive in the pain. But it’s important to hold both in tension. As the book of Hebrews makes clear, “People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:14-16a). Basically, all those heroes of the faith who confessed God were still waiting for a type of Promised Land that would only come when Jesus Christ’s incarnation initiated a new kingdom, one not constrained to a particular patch of earth.

I love what Jeffrey Tacklind, author of “The Winding Path of Transformation” has to say about holding our experiences of hallelujahs and moments of hell in tension. He writes, “I believe these moments of joy are intimately connected with grief. The two form and inform each other. The grief gives our lives depth and meaning, while the joy provides us with the necessary hope and strength….Seeing God’s invitation in the glimpses of joy does work. It takes the despair and reframes it.” ² Spiritual direction is a lot of reframing the stories of our lives in the light of God’s grace, but it will only be done well if it holds together the joy and grief, hallelujahs and hells, blessings and pain together. I hope that in the process, you may be able to discern your own “country” song.

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1 Thomas Rhett, What’s Your Country Song performed by Thomas Rhett (UMG, 2020), https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bEznAPUEW_k

2 Jeffrey Tacklind, The Winding Path of Transformation: Finding Yourself Between Glory and Humility (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 123