How to Practice Better Self-Care

A few months ago, I found myself alone on a plane to Minneapolis. I selected a 7 p.m. flight, which was surprisingly full. An odd combination of strong-smelling foods surrounded me. People in different rows spoke way too loudly, considering the private nature of their conversations, and there was a child who spent much of the flight informing the entire plane that she was up way past her bedtime.

You might imagine this scene caused my stress level to increase, but somehow, in the middle of the chaos, I felt a knot in my chest loosening for the first time in months.

My husband is a football coach, which means fall is usually our busiest time of the calendar year. Of course, it’s been an odd year and a half. With false starts on both a fall and spring season due to COVID-19 infections, the underlying stress in our house has been constant. Add a home purchase and publishing a book and Bible study to the mix, and in hindsight, it seems obvious that I was not staying attentive to avoiding burnout.

But that’s the thing about stress: we often cope by convincing ourselves we can handle much more than we should.

Months earlier, I’d set a Google alert notification for Minneapolis, hoping that the summer would allow for a quick visit to my nieces’ city. Sure enough, just when I needed the time away, I headed out on a long weekend trip alone to Minneapolis.

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve discovered I’m not alone in choosing poor self-care practices. Laura Havlin writes,

…many of us have developed a value system whereby we measure our worth on our productivity, and as a result, many activities where we invest time in ourselves – practices that might be considered self-care, or even more broadly just enjoying free time – are valued according to how they make us more productive. Many of us have learned that the only worthwhile time spent not working is when those activities will ultimately make us perform better at work.

I’ve worked remotely since 2015, and while I love the flexibility, I often find myself having to reestablish personal boundaries. It’s the catch-22 of loving your job and having an office that’s always accessible.

It’s easy for me to disappear for “a few minutes,” only to emerge a few hours later feeling accomplished as well as mentally exhausted.

I’ve also compromised self-care by multitasking when a deadline is approaching. Modern therapy notes that the eight main areas of self-care are physical, psychological, emotional, social, professional, environmental, spiritual, and financial.

I find balance with my focus on physical and spiritual self-care daily. This includes daily Bible reading and prayer as well as exercise, most preferably by getting outside to walk. The challenge comes when I find myself short on time or overloaded with work. Suddenly, my daily Bible reading and prayer are reduced to skimming the daily reading plan.

To justify taking time to exercise, I’ll respond to emails while on the recumbent bike or listening to a work-related podcast or audiobook while on a walk. This may increase my productivity on paper because I’m accomplishing more with my allotted time. However, it’s not something I can categorize as caring for myself. Nor is it the example Jesus set for his disciples.

As Jesus’s ministry became busier, Luke noted that he didn’t allow the crowds to infringe on the time he needed with God. After Jesus healed the leper, we read Luke 5:14-16, which says,

Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (NIV)

We also read about Jesus going away to pray after delivering The Sermon on the Mount and performing the miracle of feeding the five thousand with two loaves of bread and five fish.

Matthew 14:22-23 says:

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. (NIV)

Mark also noted that Jesus was often alone praying. Mark 1:35-38 says:

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” (NIV)

Since Jesus took time for self-care, it makes sense that we should also incorporate this discipline into our lives, doesn’t it?

As we look closely at these passages, it’s important to note that the Gospels record Jesus taking time away to pray at many different times and on many occasions.

Luke notes that as Jesus’s ministry because busier, it didn’t stop him from taking time to remove himself and spend time in prayer. Mark goes further, sharing that Jesus reminded the disciples that he was praying in preparation for his day of ministry.

Jesus’s times of prayer were focused solely on spending time with God. His example is a reminder to us of how we can practice better self-care to prepare for our days by doing likewise.

Beth Walker is a football coach’s wife and mom of two energetic boys. She strives to encourage those around her to pursue their best lives in Jesus whether she is near the game field, in church, or at the local coffee shop. As a writer, Beth has been striving to find her voice through seeing Jesus in the ordinary and extraordinary of daily life. She blogs at Lessons from the Sidelines.

Photograph © Sixteen Miles Out, used with permission