Sometimes self care can get a bad reputation, especially in the Christian world. “Aren’t we supposed to serve others?” “Shouldn’t I think of others before myself?” These are common questions I get asked when helping women move towards prioritizing themselves so they no longer feel overwhelmed wanting to escape and numb their lives.
Today I’d like to introduce a new definition for self care and 3 guidelines for it. Self care is: receiving from the Lord the provision he has already laid before you. I take this definition from Psalm 23. In the Psalm the Lord is leading the sheep to green pastures, still waters, and places of rest, but the sheep are the ones that have to bow their heads to eat, drink, and rest.
As I spend my life listening to the burdens of women, one thing is clear: selfishness is the farthest vice from them. Their time is consumed with their unpaid roles of chef, taxi driver, tutor, boo boo kisser, sibling referee oftentimes carrying the emotional weight of the whole household. This is usually on top of the time spent at their paid job.
The women I listen to are quick to expend resources caring for everyone else, but are secretly overwhelmed and reach for things to numb and escape their lives.
What if instead of using our time and resources to escape life by clicking onto Instagram, eating chocolate in our pantries, or fantasizing about a different life, we used them to actually bow our heads and eat and drink what the Lord has laid before us?
Here are the 3 questions you can use to examine how to use your time and resources to care for yourself.
What has been depleted that needs to be restored?
What has been too much that you need to retreat from?
How can you reinvest your time and resources now into future you?
Restore
This starts with the 3 things Psalm 23 listed: nutrition, hydration, and rest. These are depleted daily. If you are not getting enough of these, you will be overwhelmed by life. This also includes your emotional and mental resources too. Those are often restored with some form of silence and solitude (even if it’s just the car ride home without anything playing over your speakers).
Retreat
Certain parts of our day inundate us with certain sensory inputs. If you spend all day on a computer, limiting tiny screens at home would be good. If you are surrounded by noise all day, retreating from that will be helpful. This is about observing your life and setting rhythms of balance: taking control where you can to balance where you cannot.
Reinvest
This is often the step we want to skip to. We’ll stay up late to plan clothes and meals instead of sleeping. We’ll use time on the weekends to get ahead on work instead of retreating. When trying to dig out of overwhelm, we should not move to reinvesting until we have assessed and taken action on restoring and retreating.
If you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed and want to retreat, we'd love for you to join us at the end of this month for our annual CRBC Women’s Retreat. It will be held at the church and we will be hosting an IF:Local simulcast. We will spend the weekend listening to speakers dig into Psalm 23. You cannot pour from an empty vessel. Restore your spirit with us March 31-April 1. Sign up today at https://www.councilroadwomen.org/calendar.
Meet the Author!
Phoebe is a therapist in private practice at Bethany Counseling Center, mom to Vivi, Charlie, and Harris and wife to Jeff. She speaks and writes on the integration of faith and mental health as essential to living in our identity in Christ. She enjoys nonfiction books, Disney movies, and, like any good millennial, is a coffee and pen snob.
This blog is meant to further the conversation about mental health and is not intended as medical or professional advice.
