A clergy friend of mine recently went through one of those periods in his pastorate when he had had 5 funerals in a month. Because he was a good pastor and many of these funerals were for strong members of his church, the emotions of responding to not only the families but the impact of these deaths on the whole church was taking its toll. A staff member came into his office to tell him that her father was gravely ill and near death. In the privacy of his office with the staff member, the pastor broke down and began to cry. Part of his tears were for his staff member but part of them were a accumulation of the emotional energy he had spent in being strong for others.
I tell that story to remind us of the emotional toll of good ministry. We are frequently called upon to be strong for others. We need to recognize that we expend our own emotional energy in the process. It is important that we occasionally pause to take our own emotional pulse. We also need to have both short time and long long term strategies that we can employ to address those situation when our emotional pulse rate has risen too high.
What works for us will be different for each of us but it is important that we have identified what helps. If you were going to stop for five minutes and help yourself, what would you do? What if you had an hour, an evening, or a day. Over the next couple of days, I want to suggest some strategies that have worked for people, but I also encourage you to also think back on what has worked for you.
