Before you read another word, I invite you to try something small with me.

Bring your attention to one of your hands. Close it slowly, then open it. Notice your fingers brushing your palm, warm or cool, soft or a little rough.

That hand, and the quiet noticing you just did, may be closer to noticing how you were made than all the thinking you may do today. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). The same God who knit you together in secret knit this listening into you, too.

So many of us were raised to live in our heads. Maybe you were the bright one, or the capable one who could reason your way through anything. And the mind is a gift. But somewhere along the way many of us quietly closed the door on the rest of ourselves, the part that lives below the neck, that holds our grief and our longing, and a kind of knowing the busy mind can’t explain.

Here is what’s tender about this. Your body is not a machine you drag around behind your thoughts. Scripture calls it a temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. He is already there, in the very place you may have learned to stop noticing. So when you, as a child of God, slow down and listen inward, you are not just practicing self-awareness. You are turning toward the space where the Spirit dwells, who has been quietly keeping watch in you the whole time.

And there is so much waiting there for you. When you learn to listen this way, you become more present, less scattered, more here for the people in front of you. Old feelings that have been stuck can be invited to move through instead of lodging in your shoulders for the rest of the day. You may start to notice a quiet inner sense of this is right, or something here isn’t, a gentle discernment the rushing mind tends to talk right over. And almost always, on the other side of a hard moment met this way, there is a surprising tenderness, toward yourself, and toward the people you love.

You might notice an ache around your heart. You might notice nothing at all but a kind of stillness, and that’s something to receive, too. Whatever you find, you don’t have to fix it or even like it. You can simply notice it. And if what you find is uncomfortable, you might gently name it. You could say, I notice something uncomfortable. This is hard, and breathe there for a moment. And you can ask Him, right in that spot: Lord, are You here with me, in this? Often that turning towards and staying there for a moment is all it takes for something held for some time to finally soften.

This is slow work. The body He designed you with holds insightful information to offer you, held until you’re ready to notice it.

We spend so much of our lives consulting the map in our heads. But there is another map, designed in the body by the hand that made you, and He is ready to be with you as you notice it. He is closer than your next breath.

That short drop, out of your head and into noticing the body with all its cues He created you with, is the map offered this week.

And if you take the elevator ride this week, I’d love to hear what you noticed was there. You can always write to me at Joanna@joypathcoaching.com.