...so I am sitting on the living room couch in my jammies, with the television on. Feels like the first time I've sat and relaxed in about a week and a half. PH and I have some tasks to attend to around the house tomorrow, and I've got an ordination to go to on Saturday.
The challenge of this time is to try to pace myself. I was with my dean today, doing a service of Holy Eucharist at a retirement home nearby, and she said "are you taking your day off?" Last week, no, because of the death of a parishioner. So her comment was a good reminder to me that I am not superwoman, and that if I don't take days off, I'll burn out. There is the temptation to just plug away endlessly, because there is that much work to do. But the work will still be there, and frankly there are few things that are so critical that I cannot address them in something less than an instantaneous way. Slowly plowing through. I've nearly got the Church Register caught up (nothing had been entered since 2004). I reconstituted the newsletter and am in the midst of putting together the FaceBook page and redesigning the bulletin and announcement sheet. It will get done. A team of parishioners is working on the new and improved web site.
Several very ill parishioners, a funeral of a parishioner's mother, a couple of baptisms, a wedding, a renewal of wedding vows for a couple married for a quarter century, all in the next couple of weeks. The people are more important than the administrative stuff, which will get attended to as soon as I can.
But for tonight, I think it's just watching a little tv and relaxing, not even working on sewing the bedroom drapes. Time for rest.
Back in the day when I was a military nurse, occasionally bosses would try to work us 16/24 weeks and weeks in a row (and this was not in wartime). When anyone would protest, the boss would retort, "Service before self!" But if you never take care of self, including rest, then there is no "self" to do the service. So try to keep that in mind. I know it is hard, though!
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