In the last few months, I have given much thought to why so many of us feel scattered. We function. We work. We organize. We parent. We try our best. Yet inside, we feel as if we are orbiting several suns at once, being pulled in directions that exhaust us.
The outside noise tells us it is because of our phones. And yes, a lot of our inability to focus comes from never having stillness in our lives, yet this is not the only reason. I say this because this confusion does not come from weakness or lack of discipline. It comes from disorder within the soul. And disorder, as Fr. John Henry Hanson reminds us, occurs when God is no longer at the center.
That is where the Interior Orbit of the Soul diagram emerged for me. I needed to visualize what I feel happening inside of me and what my clients try to describe, but often cannot. A recognition of what happens inside me when I drift away, when I try to “push through” or control my life by willpower alone, or when my emotions take over, and I lose the clarity that comes when everything is rightly ordered. I created this simple picture of what I have lived and witnessed in my work as a Christian therapist in Winnipeg.
When the soul remembers its true center, everything inside starts to settle, almost the way a snow globe slowly clears after being shaken.
The intellect grows quieter and more focused. Old memories lose their sharpness. Imagination becomes less catastrophic and more creative. Emotions soften and move in proportion to the moment. Even the will, which many of us have tried to use as our primary engine for decades, finally stops straining.
I have felt this myself many times. It does not happen through force or elaborate routines. It happens through returning to prayer again and again. Genuine prayer, even if only for a short moment, has a way of gathering the scattered pieces of our interior life and drawing them back toward one place. Sometimes it is as simple as pausing before reacting or noticing a pattern forming within you that you do not want to follow. Other times, it is sitting quietly for a minute in the morning and acknowledging that you cannot and do not want to run on self-reliance today.
Prayer, in that sense, is not an escape from suffering or a technique for self-improvement.
It is an interior turning—a gentle shift in direction. When you quietly place yourself before God, something within you relaxes. It might even help for you to say, ‘ I surrender myself to You.’ The pressure to figure everything out begins to lift. The compulsive thinking lessens. The emotional storms that pressure you lose their momentum. It is the place where the spiritual and psychological realms meet, something I witness often in my work with clients who long for Catholic spirituality and mental health to harmonize in a meaningful way.
Many women I work with long for this simplicity. They carry so much, care for children, work, the invisible emotional load of family life, and often believe they must hold everything together through their own strength. I thought this for years as well. It led me into resentment and loneliness. Only later did I realize that order does not come from mastering more tools, going to therapy 🙂 or strengthening my will. Order comes from slowly allowing God to become the fixed point around which everything else can find its proper place.
When that shift happens, the inner landscape changes. Life does not become easy, but it becomes clear. Decisions feel less frightening. Relationships feel less heavy. The day feels less like something to survive and more like something to embrace. And a surprising calmness overtakes the soul, knowing you are no longer moving through life alone or unsupported.
I often tell clients that prayer restores the interior of the home, the way opening a window freshens a room. You may overlook the transformation minute by minute, but you feel the freshness, and you breathe differently. When God is at the center, the soul’s orbit steadies again. And from that steadiness, everything else in life starts to feel more possible.
This is why prayer is essential. Not because it makes us “spiritual,” but because it makes us whole.