J.O.Y. or putting myself first
This is not super spiritual, it’s actually about how I am learning to go against a deeply ingrained spiritual concept that was not serving me well.
J.O.Y.
When I was small I learnt the acronym J.O.Y. I was taught that Jesus must come first in my life, others must come second and I should come last.
Jesus
Others
Yourself
As a child I took this lesson to heart but as an adult I now question it.
I have no quibble with the concept of putting Jesus first in my life but I do wonder what that should actually look like.
I have seen too many church employees burn out; thinking that they were putting Jesus first, pushing their own needs aside until they broke down. While it may seem spiritual to ignore your “fleshy” needs it is counter-productive. The time taken to recover from burn out is far greater than the time taken to relax and restore oneself earlier.
In my life
Somehow I got the unhelpful idea that I should ignore my physical needs and try harder to do good things for Jesus and for others. But if the past year has taught me anything, it’s that my health refuses to participate in this idea.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t do anything terrible for my health, I sleep as much as the next person or drink as much coffee as the next person. Unfortunately it seems the next person is an overworked executive surviving on caffeine and adrenaline, or an exhausted parent surviving on the hope her child will soon sleep through the night.
I have discovered that the modern day normal just does not work for me.
I’m in a battle for my health and the only way forward is to drop the J.O.Y. teaching and to put my health firmly in first place.
Learning that this is ok was hard but logically if my health is gone then my ability to serve Jesus or others is significantly reduced.
Clean eating, gym bunnies are weird…
There seems to be an online preoccupation with “clean eating” and sweaty gym selfies on my facebook feed at the moment.
I’ve always thought those people were a little bit weird. However with the realisation that my health must be my priority comes the realisation that in my own way I am joining these weirdo’s in their quest for health.
I like to think I’m doing it for the right reasons; I want to be healthy, not look like a model. I don’t want to be image obsessed, I just want to be able to have the energy to catch up with friends after work. I want my joints to heal so I can twist a door knob without wincing in pain.
I do resent the fact that I’m not “normal”.
I can’t function on less than 8 hours sleep per night (ideally 9). I can’t go to the gym and sweat it out for an intense hour right now.
But I need to stop looking at what I can’t do and start looking at all the things I can do to help myself be the healthiest I can be.
Progress
It’s also been hard to spend money on things to help me. I had a psychological block about spending money on something with no benefit to anyone except myself.
I’ve joined the 10 Week Challenge which is a primal type eating plan, which is based on minimally processed food. It’s all fruit, veges and meat and is basically eating a lot more naturally or in the old fashioned way of actual food from your garden etc.
We have also got a wonderful cleaner to do some of the more heavy stuff at home. This has saved our weekends from being a misery of arguments about whose fault it is that the house is so messy.
The last two weekends we even spent a morning gently hiking around a local lake, enjoying the fresh air, exercising our muscles and spending quality time together. All because someone else spent Friday morning scrubbing our house so we didn’t have to.
This is a work in progress; every day I will have to remember my health comes first and make difficult choices about what I participate in and what I do in life, but it will be worth it and I don’t think God has a problem with that.
KG
PS - Pic is of the lake we hiked around
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