Anyone who thinks about it recognizes that church professions place pastors and educators (P/E) under a lot of emotional stress. The problem is that we don’t think about it very much. Those who don’t think about it include the pastors and educators.
Stress comes in many forms. It can certainly come from crisis in our lives or in our churches. It can also come from good experiences, successes, and opportunities. More often than we realize, it comes from the little pressures and irritations that are a regular part of our day and continually gnaw at our nerves. I learned a long time ago that nerve endings that are rubbed raw take longer to heal than what can be accomplished by a good night’s sleep or even an occasional extra day off.
It is important that we develop strategies by which we take care of ourselves emotionally. A key strategy is finding a way to name and own the emotional responses generated by our daily experiences. A simple way of taking your emotional blood pressure is to get a small notepad that you can carry around with you. At least for a couple of weeks, make it a practice of keeping record of how you are feeling at a variety of moments in your day. Don’t over analyze it. Simply record it and if possible what was the incident that generated that feeling. Record both positive and negative, strong and mild responses.
After a couple of weeks, go back and graph your flow of feelings. On the vertical side of the graph put numbers to represent intensity and along the horizontal line list the hours of the day at least from the time you get up till the time you go to bed. Using two colors of pens, graph both your good feelings and your negative feelings.
Now look at the graph and see what occurrs to you. It may be helpful to do this with a friend and let them also reflect on what it looks like. The first thing you are looking for is reocurring patterns. Are their particular times of day or types of incidents that repeatedly stimulate similar responses?
Now take those patterns to God in prayer. Ask what God would like you to do with respect to what you have identified. Whether it is a negative or a positive response that is stimulated, each holds possibilities for redemptive actions. You might want to ask whether there are any bibilical images that are prompted by specific types of response. Feel free to play with possibilities. It may be helpful to write about your responses. Sometimes that can surface new possibilities.
