After thirty five years of offering pastoral counseling in my church community, I trained at the C. John Weborg Center for Spiritual Direction in 2006-2008. To be honest, making the transition from pastoral counseling to spiritual direction was quite challenging. Although both disciplines require listening, spiritual direction requires a deeper and different type of listening skill. I’ve often described the training as a deconstruction of the typical listening process. Spiritual direction is a prayer practice – discovering where in your life you find God present and where in your life you struggle to find it. The Christian life is a lifelong journey. Engaging in a spiritual direction relationship is about maintaining a rhythm of a monthly check-in with a director to hear about your on-going relationship with Christ in all of life. My own experience of meeting with a spiritual director has been one of discovering a deeper spiritual awareness of God being present. It has been exciting to see others experience the same in their relationship with God, too.