Self-Restraint and Hope - Learning How to Sit with Complexity from Spiritual Direction

How spiritual direction utilizes hope to refuse the temptation to flatten complexity or bypass suffering.

Jun 24, 2026

I’m a “saver,” but not in the financial sense. Goodness, I wish I were, and I wish this were about that.

I don’t know if it’s the good ol’ Evangelical “impact anxiety” or a sure-and-certain discomfort with discomfort, but I have an automatic, reactive impulse to fix, solve, and save others from their problems. I am quick to identify what I perceive to be gaps when people come to me with a problem, and I am quick to generate a list of potential solutions.

This disposition has been exceptionally helpful in the roles I have carried. When I was helping to lead a team at a parachurch ministry, my job was primarily to help people create solutions to problems. When I consult with churches and organizations, my job is to identify and diagnose problems and pitch solutions. As a teacher, I help facilitate a learning journey for each of my students, which depends, in part, on accurately identifying gaps in their formation. Finally, as a “professional student” working on a PhD, the whole deal is working on a problem and finding solutions over and over again.

If you had asked me five years ago whether this disposition to jump in, diagnose, and fix was a strength or a weakness, I would have given you an unqualified ‘yes’.

I can’t say that anymore.

Today, I am wrapping up a seven-part series exploring the theology and biblical foundations of spiritual direction, a spiritual practice almost as old as the Church itself. If you want to catch up on the series, I would encourage you to read these entries first:

If you are unfamiliar with spiritual direction, I wrote a piece last year introducing it as a Christian practice. You can find that piece here.

Triggering Restraint

If you have been following my work for a while, you know that one of my primary roles is that of a spiritual director. While this specific occupation complements many of my other roles and has expanded them (particularly in teaching and consulting), it has also begun to prompt me to critique how I show up in these spaces. In particular, spiritual direction operates on the axis of restraint rather than the axis of fixing, solving, or saving people.

In my own training as a spiritual director, we were tasked with reading Hilary McBride’s The Wisdom of Your Body.1 As I got into it, I fell in love with the content, particularly how she broke down fight, flight, and freeze dynamics. As a framework-hound, I was really captured by the facts and the presentation. I adopted some of her frameworks into my teaching, and I couldn’t stop talking about it. As someone with a complicated family-of-origin story (to say the least), I could feel the facts she presented.

But it all came home in a conversation with my training supervisor, Lynn. A seasoned Quaker pastor, she exuded a deep calm that both neutralized my tension and cut through the noise of my defenses. In one particular session, as we were going over a recent session with one of my directees, I proudly presented how I had helped this person uncover a deeply held belief that they couldn’t hear directly from God. I was beaming as I shared the story and the reconstructed dialogue. I knew Lynn would be stoked about my progress.

“You really like to open other people’s gifts for them, don’t you?”

The calm on her face and in her steady tone met my ego like a warm knife cutting through butter. I lost all the air in my lungs, and I panicked about what to do next. I thought I nailed it.

As she helped me pick up the pieces of my broken larger-than-life self-image, she highlighted (through excellent questions and only a little bit of steering) the idea that if someone doesn’t experience a truth for themselves, it will never really be true to them.

Years later, I would hear this same sentiment, shared differently, about the importance of personal discovery. While working as a Teaching Fellow at Friends University, my colleague Cyd relayed to our graduate students (and to me) that the act of authentic discovery and the act of hearing a fact delivered operate differently in the brain. If you or I hear a fact from someone else, whether about our situation or about a platypus (there are lots of interesting things about platypuses, of course), those pieces of information are processed as data and let go unless immediately useful. However, when you or I discover a fact about ourselves for ourselves (or about platypuses, I guess), we have a synthetic emotional reaction to the learning process. Because we discovered this thing, it sticks in our memory and can even shape how we construct our identities.

In both cases, what I was learning was this: personal discovery beats extra-personal sharing every time, particularly for things as important as faith formation.

But this is where it gets even more complicated, at least for me: why I was fixing, solving, and saving was just as important as the act itself. In the third chapter of The Wisdom of Your Body, Hilary McBride unpacks the idea of “memory cookies”, or the bits of information that are packaged when we experience traumatic things.2 When something terrible happens, bits of sensory information are stored that help our bodies identify situations where we might be in danger again. Thus, if we smell smoke, depending on our stories, we might go into flight mode because that smell is associated with fire, even if the smoke is emanating from a grill.

While not precisely the same mechanism (at least not all the time), we often act unknowingly, guided by a past experience: something in the present triggers us to react. This reaction works on a script: a nearly automatic way of interacting with the situation that we know will help us move forward.

When you and I sit with people experiencing hard things, it is uncanny how often this puts us out of our comfort zone to the point that we react from a script rather than act with purpose.

This is what Lynn showed me in that supervision session: as I solved the problem of the underlying narrative for my directee, not only did I not help this person – I didn’t help myself either. I had fallen into a well-worn rut that I had simply painted to look like a spiritual route forward.

Instead of doing all this, Lynn insisted, spiritual directors practice restraint: we pay attention to and hold back when we notice reactivity and triggers, attempting to simply stay present with someone without fixing, solving, or saving them. In restraining ourselves, we refuse to reduce people to the problems they experience, allowing them to explore their whole personhood as a meeting ground between God and the person in front of us. By practicing restraint, we embody a way of being with someone that creates space for them to wrestle with God.

Restraint has become a cornerstone for my practice and teaching of spiritual direction, pastoral care, and ministry leadership. But restraint poses a problem – the same problem we have been tackling with each entry into this series. If restraint is an important component practice within spiritual direction, what is the underlying belief that gives restraint coherence? Said differently, what is going on in restraint that is theologically significant? I want to propose that hope is the primary theological belief that undergirds a coherent discipline of self-restraint in spiritual direction.

Hope: A Biblical Account

Unfortunately for us, however, hope is a tricky and slippery concept. The problem with hope is that when treated lightly or as uncomplicated, it is nothing more than trite well-wishing, a way to bypass the discomfort of struggle, setback, failure, and loss. Hope can be reduced to a Hallmark sentiment that “it will get better” or “there’s a bright side to everything,” a way of settling our own nerves as we sit with someone experiencing something hard. In fact, hope becomes more of an anesthetic for our own discomfort than a belief that allows us to be present with someone wrestling with the deep complexities of human frailty. So, what is hope?

Most of us, particularly Christians in the West, will seek to define hope. The Bible does that, thankfully. Probably the most famous exposition of hope is found in Hebrews, where we learn that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 NRSVUE). Faith (or trust, which we explored in this post) is assurance (ὑπόστασις, hypostasis or foundationally firm substance, something resolved and real) of things we hope for. The linguistic center of faith-language in the New Testament is relational trust, and so we can surmise that it is in trusting God’s ability or character that we can have an expectation that God will follow through in giving us what we hope for.3 But what are the “things hoped for”?

The rest of Hebrews 11 offers a story-driven account of trust, going through the Old Testament to highlight that the primary thing hoped for is God’s approval, that he was pleased with them.4 Taking a plain reading of the chapter, I think we can surmise that God’s pleasure in us is the “thing hoped for,” which is somehow, mysteriously, both constituted by and resulting in faithfulness to the end. That is, somehow, God’s approval allows us to move faithfully into even the darkest moments of our experience.

This is a great starting place, and I want to push the idea a little further because, in all honesty, definitions of concepts aren’t all that helpful when you are on the ground, are they? If someone is drowning, they don’t want to know what a life preserver is – they want you to throw them one! And that’s where, I think, Paul can help us unpack what hope looks like on the ground.

Hope as Wit(h)ness

Another key passage that speaks to hope in the New Testament is found in the heart of Paul’s letter to the Romans:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:18-25, 28-30 NRSVUE).

Paul’s masterful theology here underscores something fundamental. Hope is linked to waiting, the act of staying put while things play out. He says that we “wait for it with patience,” the “it” being the “revealing of the children of God.” What does that mean? The hope that we are waiting for, like in Hebrews, is God’s approval and the fullness of our adoption into God’s family (see Romans 8:14-17). But this isn’t the only thing going on.

Pay attention to the verbs. It looks like, throughout his argument, he is making the case that in the midst of waiting, we aren’t alone in our groaning. Groaning (στενάζω) carries a grief with it, almost like a deep cry that is so full that words fail. It’s as if the waiting is so intense, so complex and heavy and problematic that the only thing that makes sense is to bellow in pain. Paul uses the metaphor of childbirth to describe the groaning of creation, and I don’t think that’s accidental: the thing hoped for (the experiential fulfillment of adoption) is painful and laborious, and it seems that the closest thing Paul can reach for is the image of a woman delivering a child, a fraught experience in the first century: it seems that, in Greco-Roman world, estimates have that more than 30% of mothers suffered terminal complications in childbirth, resulting in their deaths.5 The only image that Paul thought his readers would grasp is the agonizing bellows of a mother, wrestling against her own flesh to bring a new life into the world, with all the risks, pain, and visceral reality that image entails.

It is precisely this image, though, that evokes for me what hope does.

I remember sitting with my wife during the delivery of each of our children. The first time, our birth plan was for a non-medicated, natural childbirth. This was all well and good until my wife experienced the waves of pain and pressure as she transitioned into the final stages of delivery. She cried in guttural agony, barely able to catch her breath between pushes and screaming out for relief. I remember when the OB told me (and not her) that medicine would not be coming in time, and that the only way forward was to push through.

I remember the feeling of abject helplessness, watching as my wife writhed and groaned in deep pain. There was nothing I could do to relieve her from the pain, and nothing I could do to speed the process. I had nothing to offer: no wisdom from experience, no sense of what this would be like when it was done. For her, there was no bright side to the experience of the pain, and I would imagine it was even hard to remember why she was doing it in the moment – she longed so deeply for relief, and I couldn’t give that to her.

What I could do, though, is hold her hand and lock eyes with her, staying with her in the moment. I could resist the temptation to fix or flee, instead resolving to be present with her in the midst of the groaning, even as I internally was groaning with her.

She wasn’t alone in her groaning, and neither were the Roman Christians. In Romans 12, Paul tells the believers to “rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer” (Romans 12:12 NRSVUE). Our assumption, at least in America, is generally going to be that this is an individual command…but it isn’t. If you read the context, you will notice that the chapter begins with Paul telling the readers, as a community, that they were to “on the basis of God’s mercy, to present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice” as their reasonable act of worship (Romans 12:1 NRSVUE). These “brothers and sisters” were, according to verses 3-11, to act in a way together that reflected this living sacrifice. The logic of the passage tells us that the “living sacrifices” were to be done for God and done for the sake of others, somehow serving God by serving those in need in the community.

It is within this sacrificial logic that Paul commends the believers to be patient and pray in affliction. In fact, I would contend that he is not encouraging individuals to pray as much as he is inviting community members to pray and be patient with those who are suffering.

But what does this have to do with hope?

Paul writes this in his first letter to the Thessalonian church:

As for us, brothers and sisters, when for a short time we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? Yes, you are our glory and joy!” (1 Thessalonians 2:17-20 NRSVUE).

Look closely: what is Paul’s hope? Paul identifies that the people in Thessaloniki are his hope. It is the community of believers that he longed for that now serves as his hope, his “joy or crown of boasting”: their existence is the expression of God’s approval of Paul’s ministry. This seems to be the same idea Paul is pointing at with the argument about hope in Romans 8 and its connection to Romans 12:1-11: the people with us are our hope, or at least embody it as a sign that God’s approval hasn’t changed.

Restraint in Spiritual Direction

People bring some of the most complicated parts of their stories to spiritual direction - the kind of things that might make someone question the viability of this person’s faith. Doubts, suffering, confusion, loss, setbacks, addictions, and failure all make up a significant portion of the storied tapestry of spiritual direction. I have had devout Christians divulge their sense of God’s abandonment and their inscrutable sense that God might not even be real. I have had people tell me that Jesus isn’t God, and I have had people confess in tears that they don’t think they can follow him anymore for any number of reasons.

In each instance, I can feel my body tense. I have knowledge – both theoretical and lived – that might be helpful to them.

Maybe, I think, I can deliver them from this distress. Maybe this time it will work.

It never does, though. A friend recently relayed to me that some of his growth over the past five or so years has been learning that people don’t need syllogisms; they need Jesus. This was his way of articulating that witness might be less active than he thought it might be. Experience isn’t solvable, as if the complexity of pain is reducible to an equation or a simple diagnosis-prescription framework.

Painful experiences need healing experiences, not data, frameworks, or Bible verses.

Rather than giving in to my impulse to save the person in front of me with some heroic act of wordplay or by referencing an insightful quote, I want to lead them into an experience with God that can be healing for them.

The person I am sitting with doesn’t need me to tell them that God loves them, at least not most of the time; they need God to tell them that he loves them.

So what do we do in spiritual direction?

Paul Kalathini’s memoir When Breath Becomes Air is a story of his growing up, becoming a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, only to die young of an aggressive cancer. Written over the last year of his life, his words show us the limitations of fixing, solving, or saving anyone from their experience. However, the last words he wrote are significant and speak to what we’re talking about here. Reflecting on the last eight months of his life, shared with the first eight months of his daughter’s life, he writes this inscription to her:

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.6

There is something healing about the fact of his daughter’s presence, even as an infant, that eased the pain of his experience. The “sated joy” to which he speaks is a balm on his labored breathing, dying dreams, and progressing cancer. Hope, for him, was embodied in the giggles and snuggles of his little girl and in the presence of his family in the waning months of his life.

This scene corroborates what researchers John Swinton and Katie Cross noted in their Chalmers lectures in 2024, where they describe hope as a practiced belief that consists of “remaining present when redemption cannot yet be narrated. It attends to the wounded body and refuses the closure of theodicy while still insisting that meaning may be enacted, if not yet understood.”7

Hope, as a belief, is lived, not just believed. It is the concrete expression that “this distress will not remain forever,” even as it resists trite or simplistic explanations of evil, wrongdoing, pain, loss, or confusion. In refusing to fix, solve, or save, the hope-sharer embodies a reality that “there is life beyond even this.”

As I practice restraint and refuse to let my compulsions diminish the other person’s experience, I allow them to be where they are, and as I stay with them through the discomfort, they gain a tacit awareness that God hasn’t left them. In a strange and sacramental sense, they learn that God-in-me hasn’t left them, and so perhaps God-in-them hasn’t left either. As I hold tightly to the belief that God’s still with them, too, that his approval hasn’t left them, I am empowered to hold thick space and make room for all degrees of their experience.

You don’t have to be a spiritual director to live out hope and practice restraint. While it takes practice, you can learn to do it simply by slowing down your response time and asking yourself key questions:

What do I want to do for this person right now?
What is the feeling in me that is driving this desire?
What outcome am I hoping for?

These three questions, with sufficient space, will give you a feel for your internal world while also allowing the person to be where they are before you intervene.

This series has been a labor of love for me. I have spent countless hours reflecting, researching, and trying to make connections that would help build a bridge between spiritual direction and the Bible, theology, and everyday Christian practice. While often shrouded in mystery, I really believe that spiritual direction is, more than we think, the tradition of Christian discipleship. The more we learn about it and practice it in our communities and churches, the more we will cultivate cultures of spiritual maturity.

Thanks for sticking with me as we explored all this.

What has been helpful? What have you learned about spiritual direction? Please let me know!

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