I have a magnet on my refrigerator that says “Joy in My Day”. It was given to me by a friend and it is a daily reminder to choose joy. So often, however, I still choose not to. I recently read What Does Your Soul Love? by Gem and Alan Fadling and it is, to borrow from the name of one of the authors, a gem of a book. I intend this post to be part book review and part exploration of a couple ideas from the book, but the book itself is mostly a series of eight questions on the spiritual life. The chapters are on the following questions: what do you really want? what is getting in your way? where are you hiding? what is most read to you? how are you suffering? what are you afraid of? what are you clinging to? and what does your soul love?

These questions are like spiritual formation questions and, though each chapter invites you to think deeply about each of them and how they apply to your life, the authors don’t just leave you stranded. The book, unlike a spiritual direction session, does provide potential answers to each of the question. One of the more unique features of the book is that each chapter begins with spiritual formation vocabulary terms that apply to the theme of that particular chapter. Words like, letting go, slow, notice, seasons, and one of my favorites: and.

The book itself is beautifully written and it’s one of those you will want to read slowly, savoring the writing style but also the call outs with specific quotes. Indeed, it is a book I found had some poignant sayings, such as “So ask yourself, ‘Do I want relief or do I want healing?’”¹, “A trustworthy person who keeps the long view of your life in focus is a great gift”², and “Presence is about seeing through the fog of their behavior to the person inside”³. Just as beautiful as the writing are the potential answers that the book provides and it is here I want to dwell on a couple as they relate to human flourishing.

The first one is in the chapter on desire, which asks us, “What do you really want?” As Christians, the answer they provide is Jesus. Simply put, Jesus is the one thing needed. They refer to the passage of Mary and Martha and how Mary attended to Jesus by sitting at his feet and allowing him to be the one thing necessary in her life. Martha also attended to Jesus but not in the same way.⁴ The authors write, “Thinking in ‘one thing’ terms focuses our lives and therefore simplifies our work.”⁵ I’ve been trying to focus on Christ alone and keeping my work about him and doing it for him and have genuinely found that it has helped me to stay calmer and more focused as a result. Our work in the garden was never meant to be tedious, but we turned away from the one thing necessary and found the labor of our hands to be cursed by God and a tedious, difficult endeavor. But when we do our work with and for Jesus, we begin to experience the light burden and easy yoke that comes with living in Christ.

The second connection to flourishing I want to dwell on is from the chapter on joy, titled, “What does you soul love?” Here they write, “Habakkuk invites us to choose joy even when the outcome of our work of the nature of our circumstances is beyond disappointing.”⁶ Unless we plan on living a life of seclusion and find that’s what we enjoy, life will invariably disappoint us. But do we really know how to choose joy in the midst of life’s disappointments? I’ve recently found myself facing disappointment. As I seek to find someone to share my life with, I’m one of those Millennials who finds myself still single when I had hoped to find someone. It’s a disappointment and one that has forced me to struggle with God’s timing but also with how to spend my time, energy, and feelings and discerning how to use them wisely and to rethink my priorities in life and what flourishing means in terms of relationships. But I am slowly, but surely, learning to lean into my singleness and to make the most of it with joy, which the authors define not as external happiness but as living in God’s kingdom energy. I may not find someone to share my life with, though I have not given up hope, and if that is the case the journey itself will have been worth it as long as it’s taught me valuable lessons and how to grow in God and in love.

Just these two quotes alone over a wealth of wisdom and I hope you can see for yourself the value of reading this book. But even if you don’t read What Does Your Soul Love?, I hope you will find yourself growing in joy and in your own flourishing as you keep your focus on Jesus who is beside you and in choosing joy amidst disappointment. After all, there is joy enough for every day.

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1 Gem and Alan Fadling, What Does Your Soul Love?: Eight Questions that Reveal God’s Work in You (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019), 73.

2 Ibid., 60.

3 Ibid., 107.

4 Ibid., 21-22.

5 Ibid., 25.

6 Ibid., 161.