Sorry if the left-hand picture is a bit sqeamy. These are my son’s fingers on Saturday night
How often do we think we are too busy for self-care? How often are we too busy doing something to just spend time out to look after ourselves?
This on Saturday evening was a classic example. We were visiting my son and his wife, had just watched the rugby and son was cooking us beef nachos. I love my son’s cooking so was looking forward to it. Anyway whilst cooking his hand got splashed with hot fat. Instead of stopping cooking, running it under cold water for 10-20 mins and then taking stock of whether he needed to do anything he kept on cooking. It was only when we were all eating that he put his hand into a bowl of cold water. He carried on doing this on and off as we all ate and watched Crufts on TV. We then went back to our Airbnb. We’d just got in when my husband’s phone ran and it was daughter-in-law asking if husband could run son to A&E as he was in tears with his hand. The reason it was my husband who had to go was because he was the only one who had not had a couple of drinks whilst eating so was most definitely under the legal alcohol limit.
Turns out it was a pretty substantial burn and the fingers are still bandaged today!
But it got me thinking on how many times we feel like we need to keep going when we should stop. When there is that pain in chest or knee or headache or niggle and we just needed to stop, to breath, to rest a while but we keep going and have a fall, a heart attack, are rushed to hospital? Or we can feel something getting under our skins and know that if we stay in that environment much longer we will explode but we stay, have a huge row, say words we can’t unsay?
It would have been much better with my son, even if he had had to go to hospital anyway to have gone at 7pm rather than midnight. But I think we all do it. We all feel that we need to push through.
Why is it so hard to stop? Why is it so hard to put ourselves first? What are we afraid we’ll miss out on if we say Yes to the boss when we should say No? Or if self-employed keep ploughing on when time out to walk and ponder, to ask God/The Universe what needs to come next? Or if we do we have to justify it. We struggle to just rest, just to say “I’m ‘running my burn under the cold tap’“ [metaphor for so much there I think]
So I think I am going to challenge both myself and you, my reader, to have a look at what our ‘burn’ is, that thing that really hurts but we think we shouldn’t make a fuss about, and then what would our ‘cold tap’ be that would soothe so we don’t have to be rushed to A&E.
Before Christmas I shared my thoughts on encouraging each other. This is an ongoing thing for all of us. I am a natural encourager but as another encourager friend said “who encourages the encouragers?” Well we encouragers do all have to learn that not everyone is an encourager. Some people have other skills and gifting which we all need. You notice here as an encourager I find it hard to list them 🙂
qualifiable tasks to begin with – planning and advertising writing workshops, and cleaning. Yes those were the only ones on my list I got to. I have a great writing project in my head that I need to plan out but I am struggling with it. I have reached a point where I know I am rubbish and it will not get off the ground!! See need of encouragement.
I wonder when I will ever learn? Yesterday four of us ran the Sunday service at our church. It was a very high energy morning because we are drama group and we have lots of ideas. The service was great and we got some amazing feedback. But then I crashed. I’ve just had an email from one of the others involved and she crashed too. We were both exhausted from it all. It was not just the morning doing but all the prep beforehand. I should know by now that this happens. That adrenaline high followed by the anti-climaxed crash. It happened to me in the summer after I had finished the WWI project with Gwrych Castle. Both things were amazing but both things left me afterwards exhausted and with the “never again” feeling.
This has always been my way of self-care; a hot bubble bath, a good book and early to bed. I resisted the chocolates and the glass of wine because even though they hit the spot at the time they cause problems with my stomach and I don’t sleep so well. Again I wanted long self-care not an instant hit.
There is a lot of talk about self-care at the moment and yes it is very important, but what struck me yesterday was how you actually need a level of confidence to be able to care for yourself. I was made aware of this because when I mentioned that I was going to start kick-boxing the response I had hoped for, and needed for my confidence, was “well gone. Good on you” but the response I did get was “what do you want to do that for? It’s violent and dangerous.” Now if I had got that response a couple of years ago I would have not gone to my classes because my confidence would have been knocked, but I am still going to go because my confidence isn’t that fragile now. I am able to step out and do things without the need of full approval. The comments, once I was able to challenge that person, were all valid and made sense but they were not encouraging.
can’t they get out of there?” “Why don’t they care for themselves?” But they can’t. They need someone to say encouraging things to them. I have a friend who works in a women’s support group and one of the things she says they try to do is to make the atmosphere as loving and accepting of the women as they are as possible. This is something we should do for all people – accept them as they are not as they should be. Even if we think as they should be would be a much better place. We need to give people encouragement so they can have the self-confidence to look after themselves.
think, giving and giving to someone else. But, I think, it means saying “if I’m an ok person then my neighbour is an ok person, if I can be kind and have self-care for me then I can be kind and care for my neighbour.” Or to look at another often misunderstood Bible verse about turning the other cheek. That again wasn’t about being abused and downtrodden but was about saying “the law says it is ok to slap my right cheek but I give you my other cheek which by law you are not allowed to slap. Will you do that too?” It is about being strong enough to stand up to justice not to lay down and be beaten. It is about self-care not humiliation. It is about self-care and humility rather than putting yourself last and being humiliated.
what other people approve of.
Aspirational Adventures 
