A lot of people who catch the wave of waking up to themselves and the benefits of a spiritual life, or at the very least, one centered around deeper wellness, want to open a holistic center of some type. After all, isn’t the dream to do work that you love? Work that makes you feel good and changes the world? Work that articulates meaning and your Divine purpose here?

When we are exposed to the possibilities of manifesting at higher levels and aligning with our soul’s calling, sometimes the entrepreneur mind in some of us is also awakened. That was true for me, but not as a sort of desperate impulse because the wave had become exciting.

For me, the wave had been constant for decades, a tide that rolled in predictably over and over. The dream of a spiritual center had been simmering in me since my early twenties. It matured as I grew myself to the appropriate level of preparedness and awareness that makes one an effective steward for such a sacred space. It took many years of commitment to my own path of spiritual evolution.

And for me, who is especially bored by and apathetic to the distractions that sometimes come with the buzz of newly found spirituality, this is an important detail. Because opening a spiritual center, especially in the Bible Belt South, required something more than deep trust in the Universe, something more than belief in my ability to co-create with Source, something more than an interest in basic wellness.

It required many years of making deep contact with all the parts of myself, accepting every part, and finding and embracing the seed of genius that Spirit has planted inside me for this precise work. When they say, “God has given you everything you need…”, though I was spiritually precocious, I had to really learn this through a lot of trial and error over a long period of time. So, living as myself, and being inside and observing the spiritual life over time, was the year-after-year practice that helped me understand how to hold the container for a spiritual business like Light House.

This doesn’t mean that I felt like I knew what I was doing all of the time. In fact, most of the time, I was meeting the unknown in countless forms. The questions my then-business partner and I asked were endless: What do people need? What do we stand for? What will produce income? What’s not working? What is taking up more energy than its worth? Why is this idea not translating? How can we be more clear? What boundaries do we need to set in place? What’s being asked of us? What’s our responsibility? What will build more community? What space do we need to fill? How are we changing in ways that are causing the business to change? What matters the most here? What should we invest in? What’s not practical? What’s God telling us?

This inquiry was like a moving organism, with no certain direction and no target point. The business, itself, was a living, moving organism. Just when we thought we understood it, it changed form in some way or asked for something else from us, or became the fire through which we were forging our own personal spiritual growth. We were in a spiritual relationship with the business, as it taught us the way a guru might. I speak in the past tense, only because it was even more that way in the early days. The relationship is more familiar and settled now, but remains a living, changing energy that teaches me on the reg.

I thought I was going to write a bullet list about what having a spiritual center has taught me, but thinking about it now is bringing up this stunning abyss of memories and affection for all the layers present. Taking a step back, I’m looking into the abyss and see, first, a woman who responded to the Divine assignment she was given, with no mentors or models to follow. None. I didn’t invest in a franchise that came with a blueprint or have a pool of spiritual centers to research and emulate in my area. I didn’t have investors or business fairies advising me. It’s good to receive the truth of your own bravery and brazenness, confidence and faith. That’s a level of self-ownership that I’ve come back to full circle through this experience. It’s also clear that I made myself a vessel for something much larger than me to pour through.

In that same abyss, I see how pointed my focus was. Many people in our spiritual community came with their enthusiastic suggestions, personal agendas, well-meaning advice and recommendations, and (sometimes trauma-based) desires to be included – seen, heard, valued. Of course, this is basically good and okay. And also, it’s a lot to carry as the leader. The burden of making space for everyone and balancing the yes’s with no’s and not yets and not for us is a real one. Everyone does not stay around and many do not get the attention they’re hoping for, which is a spiritual invitation in and of itself. And at the end of the day, you still have to belong to your Divine assignment, your instinctual vision, your self, your own life, and your particular dharma. And you have to know what’s yours to carry.

Looking deeper in, I also see how God resourced me. In some ways, that’s the most emotional part. It heals all the remnant, tender cracks of unworthiness that get formed in our pasts. I had been a very single mother once, hopeless, on food assistance and Medicaid. I was making $12,000 a year at one point. I had been the victim of domestic violence combined with mental illness less than a decade earlier. I’d struggled with money, depression, love addiction. I’d been a college dropout, had been through divorce before the age of 30, had problems finishing most things that I started. With all my talents and potential, I had not turned out the way people from my high school might have expected me to. But something clicked in my life just a couple years before opening Light House. It was like the light turned on, or more aptly, it is as if I’d finally made it to the switch.

With the light on, sustainable, genuine love and partnership came into my life, my family grew, my financial life was healed and became more abundant, my self-worth was restored, my capabilities became apparent to me again. My intuition was reignited, my work ethic was energized. I could put it all together like a puzzle with more visible pieces than I’d ever had before. I crossed paths with the soulmate who was my original business partner, whose skills and insight would absolutely be essential to get our center off the ground. Other soul friends were placed like points on a constellation, helping form and grow the whole picture. The how-to came, the money came, the details showed themselves through every fog. Even the hard parts were held more gently by me in a mystery that I came to rest into instead of fight.

What were the hard parts? I heard someone say recently that when you give a lot, you lose something too. There were months when I lost my self-care and balance (jeopardized my own wellness), weeks when I felt I was giving my energy leftovers to my family, nights and weekends when I wanted to participate in all the heart-opening offerings at our center and couldn’t find the time, energy, or anonymity I needed to do so.

There were significant personal losses I had to set aside to show up for other people each day. There were inevitable phases where someone I had been counseling would come to a resistance point in their own growth where they’d project that inner tension onto me as if they had “outgrown” me in some way. I could sometimes cut the silent criticism, jealousy, or thick expectations with a knife, and knew I had to respond with love, compassion, and patience in the face of that and worked to when it was difficult. There were some people who rarely asked how I was doing, as I was there to serve. I thought often of the leadership teachings of Simon Sinek, which basically say real leaders eat last. I ate last a lot.

I also had to learn and maintain what I would call the dance of the minister. I once heard someone describe how a preacher has to hold several theologies at once when they’re standing at the front of the room. We’re holding the theology of the group that’s gathered (which is really a different theology for each person sitting there), and then our own personal theology, and then “the respectable edge”, which is the theological point or limit that we’re pushing against just a little, just enough for growth to happen. This dance is one I felt, and still feel, I know on a soul-level. It is one of my spiritual gifts, but it’s not easy. One major misstep and the fallout can be palpable; and there’s no way to make everyone happy all of the time.

There was also the blow of my business partner leaving unexpectedly. Though I knew that it was all part of the Divine plan, it sure did hurt. The transition was sticky, emotional, taxing, regretful, and brought us face-to-face with our own shadow parts, but it was another way that the organization played the role of guru for us. God offered up healing opportunities and access to deeper truths and openings for the enfoldment and maturation of Light House going forward. What remains now is quiet gratitude, forgiveness, and love, which feels a lot like where we started.

Though the spiritual center still IS, closing the brick & mortar sort of draws a line in the sand on some of these lessons. Some of these things can only be learned when you’re providing a physical container for people, a place that you share in body, where all the energies are sort of amplified under the same roof.

I haven’t even begun to process everything I learned in the house of our center. I suppose it took 20 + years to build the dream and it will take about that amount of time to reflect on it and mine all of the gems left behind. But I feel this sense of humility and honor in my chest. It comes from the acknowledgement that I heard God speak purpose into me and answered the call. Anyone who does that can be okay with who they are and the life they live and whatever happens. I remain a missionary of the light, which just means that I’m a pretty dedicated student. I’ll report what I’m learning as the course continues. A spiritual center with walls around it is just a tangible metaphor for the one inside that asks all walls to be removed.

Love & light,

Kendall