Adapted from Common Sense for Men and Women in Ministry by Donna Schaper (Alban Institute, 1990).
As a pastor and a parent, I work two shifts, one at church and the second at home. At the church, I minister and administer, marry and bury, preach and pray, and in a thousand other ways, “do church.” At home I get cards to in-laws, groceries to refrigerators, children to birthday parties, and garments to and from the dry cleaner.
Like most pastors (and parents), I have been charged with the job of caring. It’s a never-ending task.
This job description joins my authority as pastor in requiring me to shoot the next person who tells me to “take care of myself.” I know I can’t continue forever to do dishes and talk on the phone simultaneously. The day will come when I won’t have the energy to do my correspondence in the evening while watching television. I don’t plan to go on like this forever, not wasting a moment. But until my three children are raised and/or the millennium arrives, I don’t plan to take care of myself. I plan to take care of my children and my promises to God and the church.
Some people accuse me of doing too much. My mother does, as do my friends who read too many magazines on the fine art of self-care. “Oh, my,” they all say about my three children, my fulltime job, and my full calendar, “I just don’t know how you do it.”
“That’s the whole point,” I reply. “I don’t do it.”
My vocation is caring, and every day I fail to fully realize it. You can’t succeed in caring; you simply do as much as you can and try to stretch your capacity.
I don’t finish everything I start. For every call I make, I can think of two more I should have made. I leave the phone answering machine on for extensive periods when I am home. I cut corners. I keep sewing projects in plastic bags for years just so I can remember that I would enjoy an evening with busy hands and an empty mind.
I triage my desk every few months and throw out piles of unanswered mail. Every week I do the same with the telephone list. If the stack of calls to return goes over thirty by Friday, I declare an emergency. Then I pick the five or so who really need a reply and lose the rest of the pink slips. Then I forgive myself for not “doing it.”
Am I proud of my tendency to overextend? You bet. I don’t think being overextended is the sin the self-care movement purports it to be. Rather I am inclined to locate sin in self-care, in being careful not to get tired, in focusing on the limits rather than the possibilities in my energy.
Do I get tired? Yes. Frequently. Worse-and this really makes my New Age friends cluck-I even get sick. Colds, the flu, minor aches, and once a serious illness. Yet even after that illness, once I learned I wasn’t going to die tomorrow (a fear I indulged quite thoroughly), I went back to my old bad habit of filling up the appointment book and trying to have fun at the same time.
The ability to care does not mean that you don’t have fun or that you don’t relax. I find time to be quiet and prayerful each day. I find time to write almost as often. I get to my garden for several good sessions of earth a week. And I have an active social life. People seem to fear caring for others because it threatens these things. The threat is mental not actual.
So why am I going to shoot the next person who advises me to take care of myself? Why this long, defensive description of my lifestyle? The reason is simple. I feel like I am under attack, being shot at by some new and sinister enemy, whose cover is “Take Care of Yourself.” But his real purpose is to stifle my ministry, to keep me from having the fun of making my own contributions to the world, and to keep me from making other people uncomfortable.
Rather than backing off our full schedules, I think we should invite other people to join us in full-throttle caring. Caring goes wrong when I carry all the responsibility for it. It safely expands if I do it publicly, freely inviting others to join me in caring. Choosing a full life means being busy.
Caring, by its very nature, grows. Try to care well for a few, and if you succeed, you will find more people calling your name. Welcome one homeless person to your congregation and see what happens.
I remember the head of a local welfare agency saying that he didn’t want to provide good service to his clients because that would only increase the demand. What a complex excuse for not caring.
Being busy is not all that bad. Right now I actively choose ministry and children and friends and quiet. That’s how I take care of myself.
I tell people: “If the chaos of my overbooked life is getting to you, or if you think my contribution has become haggard, by all means ask me to rest. I will appreciate your concern, deeply. I don’t want to look like an overdeveloped suburb any more than you want to look at one. I want the plantings around my house to look mature; I want space left over. I need margins as much as anyone.
“If you think I’m looking crowded, say so. But don’t ask me to do less, and don’t accuse me of ‘not taking care of myself.’ That I simply don’t plan to do.”
-Donna Schaper
First Congregational Church
Riverhead, New York
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
