TCOYS: Take Care of Yourself

For a while I haven’t allowed my fingers to dance around the keyboard. I was breathing just a little. A little was just fine, for now (then), because during the pandemic, many had stopped breathing; and no one knew when their turn to stop breathing would come. I really don’t remember seeing beyond the moment; we at our workplace were among the few that rarely worked from home, and that served somewhat as a destruction from the reality that the world had been brought to its knees.

For the past few years, breathing was considered a luxury. To conquer the anxiety of life required a dedication to a lifestyle we called social-distancing; it worked for a season, until I found myself wondering, “I want me back, this isn’t me”. The volume knob of life had been turned down low. We could now hear people’s fear, doubts and anxieties equally as loud as we heard their dreams-at least for the number whose ambitions were not snuffed out by doubt. The pandemic made way for a lot of doubt. Even the most faith-filled of us rehearsed the duet of fear and faith having their talent moment.

It is said that the earth got to breathe better for the first time in a long time; I just didn’t know humanity and nature had to take turns being alive. Maybe not, maybe we just needed to accept that we are actually interconnected and we do need each other.

It was during the pandemic that I valued real people. The ones that dispelled the notion that they are “too blessed to be stressed”. I realised that my blessings do not make me immune to stressing. Admitting my stress did not mean I was ignoring the ways I am blessed. And it was better than keeping it all together. Faith doesn’t prevent fatigue. It just gives me a place to sit and admit my humanity with a reminder that this is not the end. Praying was draining, and encouragement without changed situations was exhausting. I saw it with my family, I saw it with my friends- the depletion of energy exerted getting your hopes up only to find yourself in the same spot day after day after day. With overthinking as an available companion, it wasn’t easy eliminating the “over” to just “think” so that we do only what needed to be done. We dissected uncertainty trying to predict every possible outcome that could spare us any more unrest. We had been thrust into an endurance boot camp to learn how to turn our already wild wilderness of homes into sanctuaries; what they essentially were made to be for us.

I am not 'outdoorsy' but 'indoorsy 'almost drove me insane because now humanity was all up in our spaces. But you know what, it was better to let my guard down and express everything instead of bottling it up inside. To learn to feel the feeling but not become the emotion. So the emotion at the moment is this, I am tired-and I think I speak for many who really need permission to admit, they are tired. And we are in need of rejuvenation. Some of us, like Jesus at the well before he met the samaritan woman, need hydration of the soul. We’ve become more fragmented and less whole that we’ve lost our authenticity in the process. We feel lost; grown folks feel lost too; traversing this life as hollow as a shell. We no longer feel anymore, or if we do, we feel nothing at all. Perhaps the truth is this, we use people as distractions to avoid tending to ourselves only to have the repercussions of this manifest in our behaviour. The possible solution is to stop where we are and retrace our steps back to the time we forgot about ourselves. The misplaced energy needs a refocus.

I have various versions of myself, some yet to be discovered, a couple are my favourite-because these versions have experienced grace in the moment. I’ve been raggedy on some days and fly on others-but everyday I slay. Not in the form of an outfit, but in the form of showing up and doing what needs to be done even when my feelings betray me. I’m trying to project confidence through it all. Though, I have given myself permission to be afraid-to be scared and not know what to say in the moment and then later on be confused because even what makes sense feels different. And to this day, it’s amazing to look back and see how I found my way back to myself. God handles my truth, and He can handle yours too. He is neither insecure nor fragile. He is simply God. God wants to bless, but sometimes He will build us first before he blesses us. And that building may require you to sit it out for a while. Take the while, at least you have the while to take. Even a work in progress needs down time to be a work in progress.

So I’m here, not to announce any faith cliches, but for starters, to validate the exhaustion.

Moving forward, I’ll be ending with this, “TCOYS”, which means, ‘Take Care of Yourself.’ I chose this as a reminder that a healthy me is the greatest asset those around me can have. So for sake of the your well being and those you are called to, for the longevity of your body & your soul,