I came across Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, by Peter Scazzero, at my parents’ house on a visit over the summer. A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance.

When I asked my dad about it, I was a little surprised when he lit up and started talking. He sent me my own copy, and I started reading it. I think I was only a few paragraphs in when I started looking for a pencil.

I’m not typically one to write in my books. Usually, I’m just consuming. Maybe I’ll add some post-its for later. This book was just different. Maybe because it was mine. Maybe because it was paperback. But I really think it was the content. The first thing I flagged was on page 31:

We become ‘human doings’ not ‘human beings.’ Our experiential sense of worth and validation gradually shifts from God’s unconditional love for us in Christ to our works and performance. The joy of Christ gradually disappears. Our activity for God can only properly flow from a life with God.

We cannot give what we do not possess. Doing for God in a way that is proportionate to our being with God is the only pathway to a pure heart and seeing God (Matthew 5:8).

As I was typing that, I wondered if the missing context would take away from the section’s meaning. Hopefully, you can still get a sense of some of the wisdom the book has to offer. After I marked off that section, I went from drawing a simple bracket in the margin, to brackets in the margins with asterisks, to underlining sentences and whole paragraphs.The book asserts that culturally and in the Church, we aren’t taught how to mature emotionally. I’ve experienced that in my own life. This lack of emotional maturity, which I’d been aware of for a long time but didn’t know how to fix, only started to shift with the reading and searching I did this past year. This book felt like one more piece of the puzzle.

Looking back on this maturing (and having gotten a sense of what a long process it’s going to be), it is often frustrating to see big change in your life and wish you could have gotten where you are sooner and with less pain. The tesseract from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time comes to mind. It doesn’t seem to work that way.

According to EHS (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality), the answer to finding emotional and spiritual maturity is ordering your life with practices that orient you towards God and allowing him to minister to you, teach you, and act in your life. According to the author, emotional maturity can happen independently of spiritual maturity and vice versa, but when there is a confluence, you really get some bang for your buck.

When I started reading the sections on practical application, including observing the Sabbath, adopting a Daily Office (mini quiet times with God throughout your day), and developing a Rule of Life, that is, a set of spiritual and practical disciplines, my reading slowed way down and I started to bristle.

Call it immaturity, but I hate being told what to do. Tell me to do something, and I will likely run away, internally if not externally. If I can swing it, I’ll do exactly the opposite of what I was told to do. And yet my personality is perfectionism- and performance-based. So while I hate being told what to do and I kick and drag my feet every step of the way, I simultaneously find myself feeling deeply guilty and ashamed of the way I’m behaving.

I’m not volunteering to teach Sunday School, but my kids participate in it: guilty. I don’t need or want to feed the neighbor kids when they come over to play: more guilt. I either do quiet time with God in the morning or I don’t, but either way: guilt. Guilt that I did it for the wrong reasons – because I’m Supposed to or because I feel like I Need it, not really because I want to. Or, guilt that I didn’t do it.

Do I make these choices using healthy boundaries, knowing my limits, or is it selfishness? I don’t know if it’s that black and white. And as you can see, a lot of this guilt is over self-imposed expectations.

I took a step back from the book and then slowly read the last section, which was when the rubber really hits the road. He is very clear that whatever structure you put in place needs to work for you, come out of your gifts and personal needs, and be flexible to change as needed.

I know I could use more of these intentional practices in my life. I’m always a little afraid of what will happen in my life if I really let God drive. What if I have to give up something I really like? (Sugar? Soca?) What if I have to sacrifice some part of myself I’m not ready to say goodbye to?

Ultimately, though, I think what it comes down to is that the God I believe in is a God of Love, but I behave towards him as though he were a disapproving parent, watching me and waiting for me to mess up. So not allowing Him to work in my life is not only shooting myself in the foot if He is who He says He is, but it’s also showing Him that I don’t trust Him to have my best interest at heart.

I’m still mulling over what practices I could put into place in my life that would invite God to be part of my moment-to-moment living more than He is now. One way I’ve already experienced a shift is in the way I observe the Sabbath, which Scazzero says is defined by the practices of stopping, resting, delight, and contemplation. I’ll probably visit that over a series of short posts, but the change for me has involved more a shift in perspective and intentionality rather than a big behavioral change.

In short, I found EHS to be readable, practical, and thought provoking: A real challenge to upping my spiritual practice. I’m looking forward to seeing how I can continue to use what I learned to open myself to God’s work in my life.