Why soul care advising...because soul care advising transformed my life when I needed it the most. In one of my lowest moments, I finally threw up my surrender flag (basically, raised my hands!) and opened myself up to the gift of soul care advisors and spiritual mentors. They walked with me as I began to face the pain I had buried for far too long... grief, stress, trauma, shame, anxiety, and fear... all concealed behind a protective armor I thought would keep me safe. Their presence and strength literally became the turning point toward my reparative justice and liberation life journey. But what catapulted me into this deep spiritual journey with Creator God were two life-altering moments. One came through a dream…an unsettling, deeply embarrassing experience that forced me to confront my own sexual brokenness. It was as if something buried in my soul surfaced without warning, and I didn't know where it had come from. I tried everything to push it away…praying, repenting, striving to banish the thoughts. Yet, they lingered. Shame clung to me, whispering lies that I was beyond help. But it wasn’t until I found the courage to share this with a trusted soul care companion that I encountered grace. Instead of condemnation, I received kindness and help. She simply said, "Cynthia, you’ve been wounded." Those words unlocked something deep in me. They named the reality I had been afraid to face: I wasn’t broken beyond repair…I was wounded, and Jesus, the wounded Healer, was inviting me to restoration. That moment marked the beginning of my interior work of freedom in the Spirit. The second moment came from witnessing injustice within my own family. My auntie, a fierce civil rights advocate for African American nurses, worked tirelessly alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to break barriers in the medical field. She fought for equity, for dignity, for spaces where Black nurses could thrive. And yet, in her final years of her life, I saw exhaustion, depression, disappointment and the weight of battles fought without the rest and renewal she deserved. It felt like an absence of the tangible rewards I had assumed justice should bring. Where was the peace, the security, the flourishing that should have been hers? I struggled with God. More honestly, I raged at the disparities I saw…and the ones I had felt deep within myself. It was a built-up anger, a fire that reminded me of Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian woman cast out into the wilderness, abandoned and unseen by the world. I couldn’t reconcile what I was witnessing with the faith I had been taught…the kind that often promised ease and prosperity if only one prayed enough, went to church every Sunday, attended enough Bible studies, or sought healing services. The Western colonial interpretation of faith I had been cultivated by crumbled under the weight of lived reality. And yet, in that breaking, Hagar’s story invited me to see my own pain differently. I was drawn deeper into the mystery of God’s justice…not the kind that guarantees worldly success, but the sustaining presence of a God who sees, who weeps, who walks with the wounded. Like Hagar, I had felt discarded, unseen, and furious at how justice seemed to slip through our hands. But my anger did not disqualify me from faith; instead, it became the doorway to understanding Jesus’ own lament…His righteous grief over the suffering of His people. In that wilderness space, God was not absent. God was seeing, holding, and calling me into something deeper…not just to grieve injustice, but to examine my own unchecked desires, the ones that, if left unhealed, could transform me into the very people and structures I was fighting against. Soul care became the space where I could bring all of it…my questions, my wounds, my rage, my grief, my longing for justice…and be met with the love and generosity of a God who does not turn away.