Sabbatical Week #?

I started out this sabbatical with one goal:  to rest. 

I have been resting and taking LOTS of naps, but also I am getting a deeper understanding of why I needed rest. My therapist called it severe burnout. I just know I was exhausted. 

Here's a good thing: I just made that last statement in past tense. Exhaustion is not hanging over me so much now. That's progress.  But I also need to learn how not to go back there. I love UPC and I want them to have the best me, not a burnt out me.

So I'm learning how to be more respectful of my need for time alone. In the process, I'm working on enjoying reading without feeling guilty for spending time in a book. One of the books that's helping is Quiet by Susan Cain. Cain shows how our culture values extroverts more than introverts. Her research and examples are helping me see how I have been disrespecting my own introversion. So we're turning a room in the basement into my hideaway. The picture above shows the big comfy chair I found on Facebook marketplace. I'm excited to start spending more time in that chair as soon as the room is ready. We're painting it green. 😁

I learned something about myself watching an episode of Queer Eye on Netflix.  As the Fab Five were assessing the needs of their hero for that episode, they looked around her house and saw signs of neglect. She was spending so much time at work that she had no time for home and no time for dealing with the emotional stresses of life, including grieving the loss of her mother. I haven't lost my mother, but life has changed dramatically since my husband's Crohn's disease took over his health. Neither he nor I had been dealing with our grief, or dealing with the changes.  That Queer Eye episode prompted some good discussion with my husband and some long-overdue tears. I also realized that I was angry with God about Rob's Crohn's and I was able to address that.

Another TV series helped me see how I was feeling responsible for everyone's opinion of God and the church. The series is called Doctor Blake. It's about a police surgeon in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the subplots is the romance between Blake and his housekeeper. They want to get married, but Blake is married to a Chinese woman he met during the war. They were both captured and unable to find each other after the war ended. Blake will need a divorce, something that was quite difficult to do back then. And the priest at the housekeeper's church will not marry them. Instead, the priest keeps trying to get her to confess and repent. He is neither helpful nor gracious.  Somehow his character made me realize that I have felt the need to make sure people know that our church isn't like that, and that not all churches are, because God isn’t like that. Understanding that I was carrying that responsibility allowed me to acknowledge its enormity and let it go. The weight of it was big and tiring.

So...I'm making progress in big and small ways.  Still more to come.

Thanks, God.