Crazy Tired.

Howdy and everything!

I hope everyone has had a snazzy week.  My week has been sufficiently not awful(with exceptions), thanks for asking. What did I do all week?

Well let me tell you.

I drove.  

A lot.

Let's start with Wednesday.  I drove to a world wide camp outing in Wisconsin.  It is three hours one way and we drove there and back on the same day.  In between, we walked around the place pretty much the whole time we were there.  Just so you understand what that means, there are 50,000 people there.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Fifty thousand.  It's in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the airfield.  It's basically a small city made of tents and bigger tents.  

We walked back and forth and across and diagonal all over that place.  After doing that for a number of hours, we hopped into the car and drove back home.

That was a relatively long day.

The next day after getting about 5 hours of sleep (I don't do well on low amounts of sleep.  Thank you cancer.  Yes, I'm blaming cancer.  Let me have my moment.) I got up the next morning and drove 1.5 hours to a leadership summit.  It was great, except how I was so tired from the previous day that I was literally emotionally unstable through the whole thing.  No, I am not using "literally" in the figurative sense.  I actually was emotionally unstable the whole day.  Not in any violent sort of way, but in the way that makes you want to curl up on the couch and cry into a pillow while you hold your most sacred stuffed animal sort of way.

Have you ever been so tired that you couldn't actually fall asleep quickly?

Last night was sort of like that.  While I did sleep better than the night before, I laid in bed for quite some time with my mind doing all manner of odd things as my body screamed for sleep while my brain merely screamed gibberish at a thousand miles per hour in return.

Today was day two of the leadership summit.  It was also good.  And, while I was not unstable today (I'm actually not unstable as a rule, there will be a point to all of this other than me telling random people I'm unstable, which as a rule, I'm not, like I said, really, I'm not, stop staring at me...), it was still a long exhausting day.

So, to recap, 6 hours in the car on Wednesday with miles of walking in the hot sun in between, 3 hours of driving yesterday with an exhaustion fueled foray into altered states and sleep deprivation, followed by another 3.5 hours of driving today (traffic is always worse on Friday here), after which my wife and I crammed in an entire session of OCD fueled house cleaning as we are expecting guests this Sunday.

We finished that and dinner shortly before I sat down to write this.

But wait, there is more.

Tomorrow we will be driving back to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for more camp goodies, only to return the same day, again, because of other obligations.  So, another 6 hours of driving with tons of hiking in the middle.

This doesn't even take into account the first half of this past week.

Now... why would I go on and tell you about all of that?

Well, it's not for sympathy in spite of what you may be thinking.  I am aware that many of you may have longer days and weeks every day and every week.  I completely acknowledge up front that my life isn't nearly as hard as many, if not most peoples.

What I do want to point out is what effects exhaustion has on you.

Everyone has been exhausted at some point in their lives.  It's not as if I've just now discovered it.

And, more to the point, many people live with it as a rule.  This brings me to my point.

After just a short period of exhaustion I was starting to experience problems.  What might that be like after a couple weeks of it?  A month?  A year?  10 years?

This may not be overly profound, but I really want to encourage you all to get some rest.  When you are not at your best, you start compromising your ability to do everything.

For me, as a pastor, I'm in the customer service business to a certain extent.  On top of that, I have to be smart and quick 100% of the time because when people want to talk or NEED to talk, I need to be ready right then to go any direction they take me.  I don't get to prepare ahead of time.

All of it requires high levels of patience.  All of those things are gone when the energy is gone.  

Actually, my smartness is pretty much non-existent as a rule, but there is nothing I can do about that.

But consider this in a different context.  

What about your families and relationships?  How often do you think that you have taken their relationship for granted and put it to the test simply because you had nothing left to give?  You were used up.  Out of gas.

If a person doesn't take care of themselves first, they can not see to anyone or anything else.  At least, not with any real success.  Instead, we end up destroying our careers, our health, and our relationships.

Fortunately for me, I was self aware enough that I came home and basically locked myself in a room until I could get enough rest to function again.  It wasn't much, but it was enough.  As soon as I post this, I'll be in bed again.  It's going to be a long road till Sunday.  And, while I can't remember the last time I was so tired I couldn't hold it together, it was a good reminder about how easy it is for something like that to happen.  You don't see it coming.  It sneaks up on you and hits you when you don't even realize you were close.  

I can remember all the times in college and after I would be up till stupid-thirty in the morning, then get 3 hours of sleep and go to work and life would be fine.  I'd be tired, but I'd pull it off.  But eventually it all catches up with you.  I've watched a lot of people slowly let their lives fall apart for no other reason than they weren't taking care of themselves and just used themselves up.

I'm grateful that this is a rare thing for me.  Very rarely do I have this long convergence of activities that messes with my schedule.  I'm blessed that way.  But as I mentioned before, there are many people for whom this is a way of life.

It's not smart and it's not safe.

So, I leave with a very simple and obvious charge.  Stay healthy and rested.  And if you aren't already, make it your mission to get there.  Everything else in your life will benefit.

I guarantee it.

Goodnight, friends.