Taking Care of Myself

If you scroll through my blog to the beginning of 2020, you will find a series of posts that center around the theme of self-care. I did those posts as a project in my final year of seminary. We students were given the freedom to design a project to help us in our future ministries. At the time, I was doing a CPE internship at a hospital and I had been flirting with this idea of self-care throughout my time in seminary. Self-care has been a very trendy topic throughout social media platforms in recent years.If you read those posts, yes, they have some good truths in them yet, the unfortunate reality is that I, like so many people, have no clue how to actually take care of myself. As I wrote those posts, I found myself still struggling to really care for myself. I have some great practices in place--I love to run, I am an avid journaler, I have a therapist I meet with regularly, I am aware of my health (consulting my doctor, trying to eat well and drink enough water).However, I struggle with actually relaxing and turning my brain off.At the beginning of this year, I found myself fatigued and my arms weirdly achey. I was working in a hospital and so I naturally took the first step and was tested for COVID, fortunately the test was negative. I then made an appointment with my doctor and when my blood tests came back normal and healthy she suggested "rest and rejuvenation." I looked at Will and said, "I don't even know what that means."My response clearly indicates that I was holding onto stress and running myself ragged and had no idea how to change those habits. I have since been committed to find ways to properly take care of myself. I still run and have realized how much joy it brings me and how good it is for my entire well being. I am making sure that I journal and continuing to find how necessary it is for my mind and heart. I continue to meet with my therapist. I have met with my doctor again, this time to discuss what I have realized is anxiety. I have since begun an anxiety medicine, continued my self-care practices, and started to meditate more regularly. It is helping, some days are better than others and I am monitoring it and reaching out for support and professional help when I need it.I have struggled in varying degrees with anxiety for years. I usually just moved faster, throwing myself into various types of work and focused on achieving and producing. This busyness was a way of distracting myself from becoming still and silent. I knew this was a problem, last summer, when I first began meditation. I would get still and silent, in the beginning, for around three minutes and then get anxious and fidgety. As I built up the time I was capable of sitting still, I would relax during the meditation to only find myself jolted into an anxiety spiral as soon as I was done meditating. My brain was not used to a cleared mind, it was used to being overstimulated and as a result it would jump to something to worry about.Learning to not succumb to overstimulation has continued to be a growing edge for me. However, I am far more aware of what is going on now that I used to be. I have learned my anxiety is closely linked with a toxic, dangerous, and false idea that my worth is directly related to the things I do, achieve, accomplish, and produce. I can treat myself like some sort of machine that is only deemed "working properly" by the quality and quantity it produces. But I am not a machine, I am a human, I get tired and would too often ignore that fatigue to just keep pushing.  I also have a strong belief in a God that has deemed me worthy--not because of anything I have done, but simply because I am God's good creation and God's beloved. This is a truth I am relying on heavily in this season of life, allowing it to heal me of the wounds inflicted from believing I am not enough.This season of life, is one of rest. My loved ones have been supportive of me and keep telling me they truly believe I need this gift of time. I may not have wanted this gift of time for rest; some dark voice inside of me tried to tell me that because my plans did not work out, I was a failure and unworthy of this rest. That is not the truth. I have come to realize that this time is a gift, one many people do not get, and I am receiving the gift. I am answering the callings I keep hearing to rest, to reset, to surrender, to become silent, to write and create simply for the joy of it, to enjoy and delight in life.My therapist pointed out to me the other day that I could not continue shoving my gifts out of myself. She shared that I could not be the caregiver I am called to be if I do not take the advice I give to people--I encourage people to be gentle with themselves, to rest, to rejuvenate, to take care of themselves because they are worthy of this. So, now I am learning and I am finding ways to truly enjoy this beautiful life I have been given, and to live from the place that truly believes I am enough.I recently joked with a friend of mine that my behind has been benched. I keep yelling for God to tag me in and I keep finding God lovingly and sternly telling me "no. I need you to rest." Instead of aggressively jumping up and down trying to get the answer to change, I have started to do what I'm being asked to do. I am finding that there is a more sustainable and enjoyable way of being that outrunning my anxiety by overachieving and overworking. Perhaps, this is one of the most important lessons I can learn.Grace, Peace, and Restful vibes,Margaret