You are conscious of the drain on your emotional resources, vacation is still a while off, but you can carve out a few hours on a morning or afternoon, what do you do? Like the half-hour strategies of yesterday, it is good to have a few possibilities in mind. Again, different activities will help depending on your nature. I will suggest a few, but you should make your own list.
Before I suggest some specific strategies, let me address the issue of guilt. You cannot wait until everything is caught up before you take a break. There will always be too much to do. Yet it is easy to feel guilty when you have a lot facing you to suddenly pull off and go to a movie or grab a novel and go read for a couple of hours. I suspect one of the reasons that clergy fail to participate in a regular program of exercise is that they are reluctant to take time out of their schedule just to focus on themselves. Yet Jesus repeatedly pulled off by himself or with his disciples while there were still many who needed to be fed, healed, or taught. To have the resources to provide for the people, you must also take time to refresh yourself.
If you were going to take a few hours to pull off by yourself, what would you do? You might call a good friend and go out for coffee, attend a movie, or play golf. You could go to a bookstore and browse and even find a good comfortable chair and read a book. For some a hike in the woods or finding a park bench for a couple of hours for uninterrupted prayer and maybe even allowing Scripture to speak directly to you would be good. Some hobbies, like painting, playing an instrument, wood carving, photography, playing a video game, or writing poetry can be refreshing.
Make your own list and keep it handy for those times when you need to refresh yourself but only have a couple of hours to pause and learn how to breathe again.
