You must take every possible day off. You know why. Be honest.
Because your scheduled day off is often not at all a day off, really. You’re running around trying desperately to catch up. You didn’t finish your sermon on your writing day. Your writing “day” is more like a writing “few hours” because e-mail and phone calls and other obligations are incessant and someone died and now there’s a funeral to prepare in addition to Sunday’s service. Because you’re in search for a new Music Director and someone has to review the applications and that someone is you. Because there are four evening events and meetings to attend this week and that means that the laundry, cooking, car servicing, grocery shopping and hair cut are going to have to be crammed into already full days.
So you have this day that looks miraculously unscheduled and it’s not on your regular day off? TAKE THAT DAY. Again, be honest with yourself. Didn’t you attend a meeting or write a newsletter column or make a few phone calls or visit someone in the hospital on your last several “days off?” Then take this one REALLY OFF.
Do not be guilty.Grab it while you can. Sleep. Read. Stare at the ceiling and think. Take a walk. Let the hours simply pass. Observe the dust on your windowsills and do nothing about it. Think about God, or history, or Jesus, or Mary. Paint or knit. Take another nap.
When do you get a whole day, a Sabbath? God knows you schedule them, but ministry is about responding and showing up, and you don’t last in ministry if you tell everyone you couldn’t show up or respond or work on something that had to be done by a deadline because you were being true to your day off. You can postpone some things, sure, and folks will understand, but you don’t tell them you can’t do the funeral because that’s your day off, and you don’t say “I’m sorry about your crisis but I’m having my day off so you’ll have to wait,” do you? You show up. You respond. You interrupt your own plans and needs and respond.
Ministry is the art of remaining ready, willing, and able to show up for people and to be fully present to them in all their humanity when you do. That readiness requires constant emotional and spiritual discipline. You cannot practice that discipline if you do not take advantage of the rare empty squares on the calendar to be fully present to your own life.
Okay? NO GUILT.
This is something I’ve been working on while in seminary. Shoot, been working on it since before seminary since I have the added struggle of having fibromyalgia. I remember shocking some of my fellow congregants at my home congregation because I was the first volunteer to say, “No, I won’t be able to do that, you’ll need to find someone else.” It was the first time they had someone lay down boundaries on time and energy. I push that for everyone, but especially my fellow seminarians and future colleagues.
Somewhere back in September I scheduled a vacation day in conjunction with a day off so that I will have REAL TIME OFF! And it’s communion Sunday, coupled with Advent readings added to an already full service so the sermon/meditation really only needs to be a homily. Knock wood, no one’s getting ready to die. Lord knows that I need it this week!
This is a real challenge and I am so glad you addressed it. I am guilty of it all – not taking time off, feeling guilty when i do take time off, and being run down into a puddle of spiritually bereft mush when actual vacation time finally rolls around. In an attempt to work on it, I am scheduling a day or at least a few hours every week or two blocked off for time away. A good piece of advice I received as a new rabbi was to always know when your next vacation is, so you can be planning and looking forward to it.
I’d love to hear other ways that people are carving time out.
Bless your cotton socks for this one. I just got back from 8 days in Florida. It was meant to be a vacation, but I was going down for the marriage of a friend of mine, and ended up officiating. LOTS of work, running around after the bride, which is all good and fine, but not restorative. There were moments of restoration, then the phone rang and it was to tell me I have a funeral, on Saturday.
No soft landing back into ministry for me. So today, after a morning meeting, I had a nap. Because I needed it and wanted it. Tomorrow, my scheduled day off, I’m meeting with the family for Saturday’s funeral. So I will clean my house around this and after the funeral on Saturday, I will take the rest of the day off and rest.
No guilt!