You check your emotional pulse and realize that you have taxed your emotional reserves but the demands of ministry continue. What do you do to address your situation when you don’t have a lot of time to spare? My first suggestion is that you take advantage of some slot time. Even in the busiest of days, there are brief spaces that you can choose to use.
The context for a brief time of prayer can be helpful. In between several calls at a hospital, you can make use of the hospital chapel for a few minutes. If you are at your church, you can walk into your sanctuary. It might even be useful to carry a small devotional or Bible with you and draw upon it for spiritual sustenance.
Another short term strategy is to write for five minutes in a journal. Not everything written in a journal needs to be serious or devotional. Try writing a satirical parody about the pressures of ministry. You’d be surprised at the healing effect of humor, especially when it can address some feelings of anger, hurt, or self-pity that is building within you. Another possibility is to write for ten or fifteen minutes on a fantasy vacation or trip. If money were not an issue and you had the time for a two week trip anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do when you got there? If you didn’t have to worry about weight or health, describe the perfect self-indulgent meal that you could savor.
Go into a book store or library and go to the humor section and see if you can find a really good humor book. Laughter has healing properties. Or, go to a section of the book store that you would normally never visit, find a book on a subject about which you have never paid much attention, and find at least one new idea about that subject. What it does, for just a few moments, is to remove you from your stressful world.
If a park is nearby, make use of it, but even parking your car and going for a walk for a few blocks can have a positive effect. You’d be surprised what you notice when you are walking that you have missed by always being in a car.
These are just some ideas to get you thinking. Now you make your list.
