I keep bumping into a wall. A wall of being tired. I don’t mean just physically tired, but also mental tiredness. This kind of fatigue is more than just staying up too late at night and not getting enough sleep. Yes, physical labor does play a role in this, but your mind is a huge conductor of the way you live your life.
I come from a military family and if there is anything it has taught me its to value every moment. It has truly taught me to put everything into perspective and evaluate the way I spend my time. There is an unspoken understanding when you meet someone who also comes from a military family that you are willing to stop everything you are doing to either talk to or see your loved one(s). Time is precious and it comes in small quantities more often than not.
With that understanding, I have learned to apply that to all of life. I certainly don’t excel at this all the time, but it has become something I keep in the back of my head.
I just recently listened to an episode of the podcast, Views From the Porch called How to Avoid Burnout. In this episode, they talk about how burnout can come and attack you when you need it least. One thing that really stuck out to me in this was that for some people, they are always busy because they don’t want to miss out. They are the kind of people who say yes to so many things and then try to balance all of that with great hopes of not getting overwhelmed by it. On one side of this thought, the hosts of the podcast bring up a good point that there are some people who can handle multiple things at once, while other people are good at being able to focus on one thing at the time. Both abilities and personalities serve a purpose, but sometimes we try to be the one that we are not.
I see this in my own life. I try so hard to make sure that I am always busy because I cannot sit still thinking that I am not doing something. I think that in my mind, being busy is equivalent to productivity. That can be a wrong view as being busy can also be unproductive if you are not busy with the thing that can free up your time quicker. For example, when I was in college, I never sat down to do homework and did it without distraction and getting off track. Those things that distracted me or that I did instead of the homework only added to my stress later when the priority work was due.
I am going to talk more in depth about this later, but the thing I keep discovering is that when the moment of rest arrises, I need to take it. It is Biblical to work and to provide, but it is also Biblical to rest. When we don’t rest, we find ourselves so strung out with exhaustion. If God is putting it on your heart to take time to do something and your response is that you don’t have enough time to do it, that is when it’s a great idea to take a step back and see what is truly important in your life.
Don’t wait to rest. Evaluate what is important and what can wait.
