The Whole Life: 52 Weeks of Biblical Self-Care

Eliza Huie, MA, LCPC, is the Director of Counseling at McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA and the Dean of Biblical Counseling at Metro Baltimore Seminary. She is the author of Raising Teens in a Hyper-Sexualized World and Raising Kids in a Screen-Saturated World and is the coauthor of The Whole Life. Eliza and her husband Ken have three grown children and a daughter-in-law.

Esther Smith, MA, is a biblical counselor at Life Counseling Center Ministries and is a licensed clinical professional counselor in the state of Maryland. She is the author of Chronic Illness: Walking by Faith, coauthor of The Whole Life, and has been published in the Journal of Biblical Counseling. Esther and her husband live near Baltimore, MD.

Endorsements:

"What happens when you put two godly wise women together to develop a yearlong plan created to help believers flourish? You get The Whole Life: 52 Weeks of Biblical Self-Care. Don't be put off by the phrase self-care this is no shallow psychobabble. Rather, it's filled with the gospel and deep wisdom learned through years of counseling. What a blessing!"
--Elyse Fitzpatrick, Author of Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women

"The Whole Life should be required reading for all seminary students. Self-care has the potential to make or break a leader's long-term influence, though it is rarely addressed in formal training programs. Rooted in the life-giving gospel of God's grace for sinners, the tools provided here will set you up for a lifetime of thriving in ministry."
--Dan Passerelli, President, Metro Baltimore Seminary

"I have to confess that when I saw that this book was about self-care, I was a bit skeptical because my greater concern in counseling tends to be that people care too much about themselves and not enough about God and others. But as I read the book I appreciated that the authors made a biblical case that there are ways in which we need to take care of ourselves if we are going to be able to love God and others well. As my hero Charles Spurgeon said regarding self-care of pastors, 'We are in a certain sense our own tools, and therefore must keep ourselves in order.'"
--Jim Newheiser, Director of the Christian Counseling Program and Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte; executive director IBCD (The Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship)

"When we hear about self-care, our first reaction is often to ask, 'Should we really care for ourselves? Shouldn't our focus be exclusively on sacrificial care for others?' I appreciate Eliza Huie and Esther Smith's biblically-based definition of self-care: 'the practice of drawing on divinely-given resources to steward our whole lives for personal enrichment, the good of others, and the glory of God.' In The Whole Life, they comprehensively and compassionately help readers to steward their lives so that they can live a lifetime of ministry to others to the glory of God."
--Bob Kellemen, Academic Dean, Dean of Students, and Professor of Biblical Counseling, Faith Bible Seminary, Lafayette, Indiana

"If you are traveling on a plane, you are well aware of the instructions before takeoff: place the oxygen mask on your face before you help your child. That seems so counterintuitive, but the point is this; if you don't get oxygen first, you won't be able to help another person! That is what this book is about. It is about stewarding your body and soul so that you can be most useful to others. Stewardship is a word in Scripture that often is only associated with money. But the fact is, stewardship is about everything God has given us, including our body and soul. Eliza and Esther wisely call us to pay attention to ways we must steward these gifts."
--Timothy S. Lane, President, Institute for Pastoral Care and Tim Lane & Associates; author of Unstuck: A Nine-Step Journey to Change that Lasts; coauthor of Relationships: A Mess Worth Making and How People Change