30 September 08 - 19:10
I Can't Get Sick, It Isn't on My Schedule
My six year old son is a very giving child, he shares everything. Including his viruses. 
I fought it off like a tiger for about a week. But one night staying up too late was all it took for that nasty little virus to wrestle my immune system into the ground, and boom, I've got this year's first fall cold. The symptoms weren't all that bad, except that every time I lay down, I started coughing, which made sleep a wee bit problematic. Getting up in the morning to go in to the office just didn't happen a couple of mornings last week.
I started off by telling myself it wasn't that bad a week to get sick. The fourth week of the month is the week my meetings slack off. Oh, except it's September, so there was a bunch of extra things scheduled. I was triple booked on Wednesday night alone. Oh well, at least we were having our Memorial and Celebration Hymn Sing on Sunday, which meant only a two minute sermon, oh, except for the fact that my family was slated to sing for said Hymn Sing, and that meant not only did I need a working singing voice by then, but I also had to squeeze in some practice time. Okay, I decided about mid week, I don't have time to get sick this week, either.
But when is there ever time for a working mother to get sick? I know a lot of my women friends just shrug and say they don't have time to be sick, and soldier on. And then there's this career of mine, which officially maintains the fiction that full time work means 40 hours a week, but actually demands about 50 to 55 from me on an average week, and I am working hard to keep it down to that for the sake of my family. I know a lot of ministers who work more like 70 to 80 hours a week, who sleep three hours a night, and think nothing of it. The work around a church is never done, and if I'm home sick, it will still be waiting for me when I come back. Mind you, that's also true of just about every workplace I know of.
Add to all this the sneaking suspicion that I made myself sick by not taking very good care of myself. Never mind that every second person I've talked to for the past two weeks has this same cold. If I had just kept to my regular schedule of sleep, exercise, and good nutrition, I could have fought it off. So not only should I be working harder, but I should also be taking better care of myself, and getting more rest.
I really hope you aren't buying that last line, because it makes no sense at all. It took a few days for me to realize that not only was I sick, but I was also caught in a classic contradiction of our modern society, that in order to increase my value to society, I should be sacrificing myself for my work, but if I fall sick, it's my fault for not preventing it. Our society has all sorts of these little hooks all over it, all kinds of ways to make us feel guilty, and because we're feeling guilty we never sit back and look at the big picture. I know so many people who are working themselves into stress related illnesses, into marriage breakdowns, who have no hobbies, no outside life, who have lost any sense of self outside their work, and who never stop to wonder why they're working so hard. Is this really healthy? Who really benefits by these sacrifices? I can't imagine it's the individuals doing the work; recent reports on the economy suggest that Canadians are more deeply in debt than ever, with record numbers on the edge of foreclosure and bankruptcy. We may have more stuff than we ever did before, but do we ever have time to enjoy it?
It took me a while to get there, but after a week of trying to keep up with work and also get rested, I realized that my upbringing had left me with no conceptual notion for "self-care" except something that pretty much equalled "selfish." If I take the time to take care of myself, if I stay home from work and cancel appointments, I am sequestering resources out of the system that I'm supposed to be sharing, and that makes me selfish. Never mind that everyone needs to rest to be fresh enough to be productive. Never mind that rest is even in the Ten Commandments (number 4). Our society's need for productivity trumps all that.
Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." I was in my mid-twenties, trying to figure out why it was taking so long to get my life together even with my obvious gifts, when I read a book by psychologist and addictions therapist Anne Wilson Schaef, called When Society Becomes an Addict. After many years of fighting alcoholism in her own family, she came to realize that the society we live in shares a lot of characteristics with alcoholics. One of those characteristics is something AA calls "stinkin' thinkin'." An alcoholic can justify anything that means they get to keep drinking, no matter how little sense it makes to any objective observer. And their family and friends are drawn into this way of thinking, because that's the only way to maintain any kind of relationship with the alcoholic, even if the relationship is dysfunctional. Likewise, our society will justify anything that allows it to keep churning out record profits for shareholders and constant growth for the company. Even $700 billion bailouts of banks that should be slapped silly for their lack of common sense in lending. And people will go along with this because that's the only way they can keep their jobs and keep their homes from being on the list of foreclosures. Nor will they look too closely at what they're doing, lest they can't bear to keep going in to work every day.
I remember reading this book, nearly twenty years ago, and a light bulb went on over my head. Maybe it's not me, I thought. Maybe it's the society I live in that's broken, and I'm just fine. That revelation has been my guiding light for years. In truth it's also the central revelation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as I've come to understand it, that our society is broken and uncaring and we don't have to accept its norms as ours when God wants so much more for us. But it is a little humbling to realize that as much as my brain understands this, all I have to do is get sick to discover that society's norms are lying just under the surface, waiting to pounce like a cold virus after a sleepless night.
On the other hand, the realization that deep down I considered self-care to be selfish was new to me, something I might not have realized if my cold ridden body hadn't pushed me to the edge of my normal coping skills. As I said in the beginning, this blog is about my struggle to maintain balance with all the competing demands on me. Perhaps the struggle is more important than the balance, and what we learn when we fall off the beam more important still.
Blessings, Heather.
one comment
Hi Heather
I hope you have sent the cold virus away by now and that you are feeling much better.
I believe that you have spoken very true words about the body, mind, spirit, and illness relationships. I have long ago learned that one does not exist in isolation from the other three
Thanks for saying “yes” to the call to ministry among us. I pray we will all have a wonderful spiritual adventure.
Blessings, Brenda
Brenda - 05 10 08 - 02:05
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