This caught my eye:
- Is there any way you’ve neglected to take care of yourself because of the allusion that you have to keep going all the time.
- You need to be fulfilled with energy and vitality so you can love what you do more than you did before.
- Have you been observing a Sabbath?
- Which day of the week can we NOT get a hold of you because your cell phone is turned off?
- Which day of the week do you not respond to emails?
- Which day of the week are your busy doing NOTHING?
- Which day of the week are you feeding your own soul so you can then turn and feed others.
- Until we take care of ourselves, we can’t properly care for others.
- Oftentimes our drive to work and to produce is driven by an unhealthy motive.
- REPENT. Change your thinking.
- Start with yourselves.
- Does your spouse get your very best or does your spouse get what’s left over after you’ve given your best to your church, to what you are building?
(A Sampling of Tim Schraeder’s notes from Rob Bell’s talk at Catalyst)
And then again the same thing here:
Is there any way in your ministry, that you have neglected to take care of yourself? You need to love your neighbor as yourself. You need to take care of yourself so that you can be energized. Which day do you take care of yourself, so that you can give during the other six days of the week?
Does your spouse get your very best, or does your spouse get what is left over from the church? Do your kids get your very best, or do they get the scraps? Our children pick up on what really matters to us without us saying a word.
If it is not going well at home, it will not go well at church. Jesus invites us into a peaceful, calm place in the center of his love. (A Sampling of Kent Shaffer’s Notes from Rob Bell’s Talk at Catalyst
Why it caught my eye–The themes:
1. The inability for self-care
2. And how your inability for self-care affects your family
The reality:
You must learn how to take care of your self (aka self-care). You must learn how to say no to certain things. Even what seems like good things. You must create margins of space in your life where you can breathe and be FULLY present to others.
Because if you don’t….
It’s not just you that suffers, but it will be your family that suffers as well. Spouse, children, relatives. It will be your ministry, or church or organization that suffers as well.
Let’s start with IDENTITY:
Rob Bell is right when he stated: “Oftentimes our drive to work and to produce is driven by an unhealthy motive.” So have you taken the time to stop and reflect on your life…what motivates you to do the things that you do…both healthy and unhealthy? Have you created space in your life to do that? I believe that we do the things we do out based out of a core understanding/misunderstanding of who we are…our identity. And when our identity is misplaced, then we can spin our wheels trying to do more and more to please others or to try to prove our worth. Maybe a parent wasn’t present in our lives growing up so we spend the rest of our lives trying to prove that we are worthy…that we are lovable. Maybe we have failed in some areas of our life, made some mistakes, so we think if we just try harder, and push more, then we will be successful…people will like us.
Who knows what it is for you in your life? I don’t know where you have placed your identity, or where you get your worth from. But we must look at these things, because if we aren’t careful, they can then be the root of our inability to take care of ourselves. And when we can’t, or refuse to take care of ourselves, then we can’t take care of those that God has placed in our lives.
And the really frustrating thing is that I often do such a bad job of self-care…
So what are we to do?
Check out the next few posts as we explore some practical steps towards self-care.
