We live in a world that has become overwhelming.
Just think about the news from the past month alone: hurricanes, mass shootings, protests. Scrolling our newsfeed feels like an invitation to repeated heartbreak.
But we don't even have to go far from home to have our hearts broken. Friends have children with cancer. Bills are hard to pay. Relationships come to untimely ends. Families don't get along.
The business of living is hard.
People respond in all sorts of coping mechanisms to the overwhelming nature of things. Some people self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, food or sex. Others seek escape in Netflix or sports. Some want to stick their heads in the sand and hope it all goes away, while others busy themselves to exhaustion.
But none of this makes the overwhelming problems and pain go away.
One of the side effects of becoming overwhelmed by all that is going on in the world is that we lose our ability to love well -- because we're too paralyzed to help others, or because we get too worn out, or because we get too discouraged. When the problems and the pain seem so big, it is all too easy to give up doing the most basic thing that makes us human: to love.
For people of faith, this is a significant problem because the heart of what our faith is about is love -- loving God and loving our neighbor. If there is something that's going to keep us from being able to love our neighbors well, we've got to understand it, address it and grow beyond it.
We need to understand there is nothing that is going to make the feeling of being overwhelmed go away. It's OK to feel like it is all too much -- because it is all too much. It's OK to be devastated by images of destruction on the television. It's completely appropriate to curse another senseless shooting. It's normal to feel like you just can't even take one more phone call with bad news. To paraphrase a popular bumper sticker, "If you're not overwhelmed, you're not paying attention."
The question is not if we will be overwhelmed, but rather how we respond when we are. The typical coping mechanisms I mentioned above usually come from an unhealthy place and don't move us toward being able to love and help others better. Those coping skills might be a kind of self-preservation, but they are not the kind of self-care that strengthens and restores us. The best way we can address feeling overwhelmed is healthy, generative self-care.
We need to take care of ourselves, so we can take care of others better. We need to help ourselves, so we can help others better. We need to love ourselves, so we can love others better.
Meaningful, healthy self-care can take many different forms.
Personally, I've been utilizing meditation to help me develop a better sense of mindfulness. I use an app on my phone to guide me through a 10-minute process of focusing on my breathing and being present in my body. I've found this practice has helped to decrease my day-to-day anxiety and made me more calm and mindful.
The pain and ugliness in the world is always on our screens and screaming in our ears. The simple beauty that also exists in the world takes more intentionality to notice. Being more mindful helps me notice the birds in the air and the flowers in the field.
I'm also a big proponent of taking a "sabbath." When people hear that, they often assume taking a sabbath means restricting oneself by a series of rules and regulations. But sabbath doesn't have to be that. For me, sabbathing is about tapping into the unforced rhythms of grace and life. I don't always have to go 100 miles per hour. In fact, if I do, I will definitely burnout. Life, weeks and days all have rhythms and seasons to them. When I begin to ride those natural waves of activity and rest, I find I am in much better frame of mind to be helpful to others.
Sabbath is also an act of faith for me. When I intentionally take a break from my work to get needed rest, I am admitting that the world will go on without me. The world will not spin off its axis if I am not there to fix things. Practicing sabbath means I am tangibly trusting that God is still all wound up in what's going on in the world.
There are lots of other ways to do self-care: yoga, exercise, prayer, eating better, fasting from social media, budgeting. And I encourage people to experiment with various practices to figure out what will help them personally grow into being the best versions of themselves.
The purpose of self-care is not ultimately selfish -- it's loving. Because we live in a world of overwhelming pain and problems, we need the kind of coping mechanisms that are going to enable us to continue to love and help others better. Self-care is the path that leads us in that direction.
The biblical wisdom puts it this way: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
That good starts with how we treat ourselves and then overflows into goodness toward others. May God help us.
NAN Religion on 10/14/2017