Lord, deliver me from email
In church yesterday morning, we all recited the Lord's prayer together. "Our Father...give us this day our daily bread...deliver us from email." Wait, what? I've been praying this prayer since I was born. Why did I just say email instead of evil? Maybe it was just a slip of my tired mind. But, as I do with most things, I wanted to dig a little deeper and uncover WHY I feel the need to be delivered from email.
My former pastor, Matt Tebbe, once tweeted this: The most neglected and undervalued spiritual discipline: sleep. Easy to forget how vital it is to surrender to how God made me. This really hit home for me. My whole life, sleep has been a struggle for me. Partially because I am naturally a night owl. But I'm never really tired. Naps are not in my vocabulary. I physically can't do it. It is almost impossible for my head to hit the pillow and for me to instantly fall asleep. Even more rare is getting into bed before 11:00 - regardless of how early I got up that morning, or how early I'm expected to wake up the next morning. The only cure I've found was training for the half marathon. So, if I run 6 miles after working a full day, I will finally surrender to sleep. Now that training is over, I'm back to sleepless nights.
It's always been hard for me to surrender to the limits of my body. In my quest to achieve and keep up, I've learned to ignore my body. Am I hungry? Doesn't matter - there is work to be done. Eat later. This is how I lived for so long, that I'm no longer able to recognize warning signals my body sends - hunger, fatigue, thirst, even pain. This is not a good way to live, and I've done some serious work in the past year to rectify this. Little did I know how much my training for the half would help in this. I felt hunger, fatigue, thirst and pain daily!
The root, however, is that I often ignore such things - i.e. human survival needs - in order to keep up. To get things done. To respond to emails. Lord, deliver me from email! We are a society that values productivity and efficiency. Get the most done in the least amount of time. Fast food. Text messages. Multi-tasking. I am the worst offender. I have bought into the lie that this is what life is supposed to be like. Well...it's not. I was created with limits. I can't fly. I can't actually create more hours in the day. Despite what I may think, I cannot survive without sleep. My body was designed to warn me when I'm being unhealthy. I need to heed those warnings.
It's fitting that I have to time to reflect on this on a Monday morning. Shouldn't I be at work? Yes. I am at a Starbucks down the street from my office. Our computer systems are being upgraded this morning and we thought we would be able to work remotely. Turns out we can't log into our system until noon. So I find myself with 3 unexpected hours on my hands. SO MUCH WORK TO DO. And I physically can't do it. I can't respond to emails. So perhaps the Lord has answered my prayers.
My former pastor, Matt Tebbe, once tweeted this: The most neglected and undervalued spiritual discipline: sleep. Easy to forget how vital it is to surrender to how God made me. This really hit home for me. My whole life, sleep has been a struggle for me. Partially because I am naturally a night owl. But I'm never really tired. Naps are not in my vocabulary. I physically can't do it. It is almost impossible for my head to hit the pillow and for me to instantly fall asleep. Even more rare is getting into bed before 11:00 - regardless of how early I got up that morning, or how early I'm expected to wake up the next morning. The only cure I've found was training for the half marathon. So, if I run 6 miles after working a full day, I will finally surrender to sleep. Now that training is over, I'm back to sleepless nights.
It's always been hard for me to surrender to the limits of my body. In my quest to achieve and keep up, I've learned to ignore my body. Am I hungry? Doesn't matter - there is work to be done. Eat later. This is how I lived for so long, that I'm no longer able to recognize warning signals my body sends - hunger, fatigue, thirst, even pain. This is not a good way to live, and I've done some serious work in the past year to rectify this. Little did I know how much my training for the half would help in this. I felt hunger, fatigue, thirst and pain daily!
The root, however, is that I often ignore such things - i.e. human survival needs - in order to keep up. To get things done. To respond to emails. Lord, deliver me from email! We are a society that values productivity and efficiency. Get the most done in the least amount of time. Fast food. Text messages. Multi-tasking. I am the worst offender. I have bought into the lie that this is what life is supposed to be like. Well...it's not. I was created with limits. I can't fly. I can't actually create more hours in the day. Despite what I may think, I cannot survive without sleep. My body was designed to warn me when I'm being unhealthy. I need to heed those warnings.It's fitting that I have to time to reflect on this on a Monday morning. Shouldn't I be at work? Yes. I am at a Starbucks down the street from my office. Our computer systems are being upgraded this morning and we thought we would be able to work remotely. Turns out we can't log into our system until noon. So I find myself with 3 unexpected hours on my hands. SO MUCH WORK TO DO. And I physically can't do it. I can't respond to emails. So perhaps the Lord has answered my prayers.
Annie, this is really good. Loved reading it. Learning to listen to our bodies...so important. they tell us a lot when we listen. bless you dear friend.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Carol!
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