Horatio Spafford's biography is one of multiple tragedies, heartache upon heartache. A prominent lawyer and real estate investor in Chicago in the early 1800s Spafford lost it all in the great Chicago fire. Among the losses, the son born to him and his wife Anna.
He and his wife began rebuilding their lives and their wealth and family bloomed. But the pressures of the rebuilding drove him to the edge. The family needed a vacation to get away from it all and planned a trip to Europe aboard the SS Ville du Havre. At the last minute, Horatio was detained by business, so his wife and four daughters went without him anticipating he would join them as soon as he could.
But the Ville de Havre was struck by another vessel on its voyage killing 226 people on board including all four of their daughters - Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta. When the remaining passengers finally reached Wales, Anna sent Horatio a simple two-word telegram, "Saved Alone". On his voyage to meet his grieving wife at the point where his daughters had perished and the cobalt waves of the Atlantic belied its watery graves, he penned the words to the hymn "It Is Well with My Soul".
If that's all you know of the Spaffords, you would be surprised to know that poem is displayed in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Following their life of losses, Horatio and Anna left the life of prosperity and its wanton pressures to pursue a life they loved. They and several friends built a meaningful life of philanthropy together in Israel including humanitarian relief to Muslims, Jews, and Christians after World War I.
You may wonder why I would retell this well-known story when the crux of the title is centered on the prophet Elijah. I think we often use the phrase "well with my soul" to imply that we're ok. Life shoves you around or breaks your heart and our resolute response is that "it is well with my soul. I'm alright. My relationship with God is intact. It'll be ok." A hymned version of "it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine" if you will.
I wonder, kind reader, if the rest of his story has a unique parallel with that of Elijah.
In the account of 1Kings 19 after the watershed experience on Mt Carmel against the prophets of Baal, Elijah fled. The pressures of Jezebel's threats and Ahab's targets were too much. He slept under a broom tree where an angel came, fed him and told him to sleep. The journey had been too much for him. Elijah eventually went all the way to Mt. Horeb.
It was there that the voice of the Lord asked him, "What are you doing here?" Could the underlying inquiry be "Is it well with your soul?" He had gone a long way, on a little nourishment, against intense pressure and it had driven Elijah a 40-day journey away.
What WAS he doing there? Really?
Elijah was living in the fallout of neglected soul care - too much pressure, too high an expectation of himself, too little focus on what really mattered. Like Elijah, we find neglected soul care will take us everywhere we never wanted to go. We long for nurturing and peace and comfort, and when we neglect the proper way to receive them - through quiet, solitude, being present, honoring the Sabbath - our souls find nurturing, peace and comfort in illicit ways. It might look like addiction, or illness, or chaos in our mind or surroundings.
What are you doing there?
What I love about the Spafford's story is not the relatable and timeless hymn that we call upon in our seasons of grief and suffering. It's that following so much tragedy, they turned away from the chaotic life and fed their souls in a life they loved. A life that was selfless even as much as it was soul-tending.
Is it well with your soul? How do you tend to your inner needs? How do you find nurturing, peace and comfort in the midst of your daily stress? Look at the landscape of your soul and ask yourself, "What are you doing here?" What are you doing living in a house in disarray, with health declining, thoughts looping, and just.so.tired.
Take care of yourself. Tend to your soul. It speaks far more powerfully than all the poems written in anguish, more loudly than the spectacle of confrontation.
Is it well with your soul?