This bi-monthly journal is a space for sacred reflection, soulful discovery, and intentional living. Rooted in the Seven Sacred Signposts of Janie Seltzer, each edition invites you to pause, breathe, and notice what is stirring within and around you.
These signposts—timeless markers of spiritual alignment—serve as gentle guides on the journey toward peace, purpose, and a life lived from the inside out. Whether you're navigating a season of clarity or confusion, momentum or stillness, this journal offers a moment of reorientation—a return to what matters most.
Here, we explore the deeper questions, honor the slow work of transformation, and cultivate a way of being that aligns with your soul’s true direction.
Let this be your companion on the sacred path. One step at a time.
Signpost #4: Struggles
Welcome to The Sacred Path Adventure Digital Magazine, a guide to support your journey to aligned growth and structured peace. In these pages, you'll find inspiration, practical wisdom, and soulful reflections to support your journey.
Letter from Janie & Kathy
Dear Reader,
Each issue, we will share thoughts on our theme and how it's showing up in our life, the lives of our clients and our work. This personal connection creates a bridge between our experiences and yours.
This is where we'll reflect on challenges, victories, and insights from our journey on this Sacred Path Adventure that relates to our current focus.
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Dear Beloved Traveler,
Welcome to Issue Four of The Aligned Growth Journal.
This is not an easy place on the path—but it is a necessary one.
We pause now at the fourth Sacred Signpost: Struggles, and with it, a holy invitation: Grow.
Struggles are not detours. They are doorways.
Though we may resist them, wrestle with them, or wish them away, struggles have the strange and sacred power to stretch us—into deeper dependence, into greater clarity, into unexpected resilience.
In this issue, we invite you to view your struggles through a new lens—not as punishment, but as preparation. Not as something to escape, but something to engage with God.
There is no shame in struggling.
Even Jesus wrestled in Gethsemane. Even the disciples cried out in the storm. And even now, the Spirit groans with us in our weakness, drawing us into growth we cannot yet see.
As you journey through this issue, may you find hope rising in hard places.
May you sense God not above your struggle, but within it.
And may you trust that what feels like breaking is often the beginning of becoming.
With tenderness and strength,
Janie & Kathy
Let's Stay Connected: Text CONNECT to 866-628-0012
Signpost Spotlight: Struggles— The Sacred Place of Growth
We don’t choose our struggles.
But we can choose how we walk through them.
The fourth signpost—Struggles—marks a place where the path feels steep, tangled, even painful. Yet here, hidden in the dark soil of difficulty, the invitation to Grow quietly emerges.
Growth doesn’t always feel like blooming.
Sometimes it feels like breaking.
But in the kingdom of God, both are holy.
Janie often teaches that struggles are not enemies of our soul, but evidence that something deeper is being shaped. They strip away illusions. They surface old wounds. They demand surrender and spark questions. And if we allow it—they grow us.
This is the paradox of the spiritual journey:
The very places we try to avoid often become the ground where God meets us most intimately.
The psalmist says, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.” (Psalm 119:71)
Paul reminds us that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3–4)
In God’s hands, struggle is never wasted. It becomes womb-space for new life.
So if you find yourself wrestling today,
don’t rush past it.
Lean in.
Listen.
Something is growing here.
Step Four: The Growing Ground
You’ve reached the fourth signpost: Struggles.
This is sacred soil.
Uneven. Uncertain. Often unwanted.
But it is here—beneath the weight, within the wrestling—that growth begins.
The soul does not grow only in sunlight.
It grows in rain. In darkness. In pressure.
Struggles are not the absence of God.
They are the meeting place.
Where pride breaks. Where roots reach deeper.
Where the soul finds strength it didn’t know it carried.
Do not rush this place.
Do not despise it.
Here, in the hidden ground,
something holy is taking root.
Aligned Growth in Action
Case Study: Naomi’s Wilderness
Naomi didn’t think she was in a season of growth.
She thought she was in survival.
Her marriage had quietly unraveled. Her work no longer brought joy. Her grown children were thriving—but distant. And her prayers, once vibrant, had gone quiet.
She described it like walking through a wilderness.
Dry. Directionless. Alone.
But something in her—a flicker of memory, maybe faith—nudged her to join a SoulCARE circle. She wasn’t sure she belonged. She wasn’t sure she had anything to offer. But she came.
During a guided reflection on the fourth signpost—Struggles—something pierced her:
"What if the wilderness isn’t punishment… but preparation?"
That question stayed with her.
Naomi began to bring her rawness to God. Not cleaned up. Not hidden. Just honest.
She journaled laments. She cried through Scripture. She let trusted women hold space for her grief. And slowly, subtly, she noticed something shift. Not her circumstances—but her soul.
She was growing.
Stronger boundaries. Softer prayers. A deeper knowing of God’s presence in the dark. A sturdier peace.
Now, Naomi describes that season not as a detour—but as her rooting season.
“I didn’t bloom right away,” she says.
“But I grew. Quietly. Deeply. And God met me there—not with answers, but with Himself.”
Reflection Questions
Where in my life am I feeling the weight or confusion of struggle?
(What have I been believing about it?)
What has grown in me because of past struggles—even the ones I didn’t choose?
  • Where in my life am I feeling the weight or confusion of struggle?
    (What have I been believing about it?)
  • What has grown in me because of past struggles—even the ones I didn’t choose?
  • What do I most need from God in this season: strength, clarity, hope… or just His nearness?
Poetry
Secret Life, by Janie Seltzer
Take a moment to sit with these words. How do they speak to your current journey? What feelings or insights arise as you read them?
Community Corner
A space for reader submissions, questions, and shared experiences related to our themes. Building connection through shared wisdom.
Featured Reader Question
"How do you maintain structure without feeling confined by it?"
Submit your questions or experiences for future issues: team@wcsoulcare.com or text us at 866-628-0012
Closing Blessing of Praise
Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into His glorious presence without a single fault. All glory to Him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are His before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen. (Jude 24:25 NLT)
Until we meet again in the next issue, may your path be clear, your structure supportive, and your growth aligned with your deepest values.
Next Issue
Coming March 2026- Our theme will be Signposts: Stillness
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