Refresh

Refresh, Shona and David Murray

“Over many years, and through many struggles, the Lord has … taught me, and is teaching me, how to live a grace-paced life in a world of overwhelming demands.”

Are you overwhelmed? Are you close to, or at, burnout? Is everything just too much? Many women find there is a time in their life where they ask these questions. Shona and David Murray experienced their own burnout, and found refreshment and healing through trust in God’s sovereignty, care and love, and by facing the reality of their over-paced lives and the limits of their physical bodies. This volume for women is a companion to David’s Reset, which husband found very helpful and shared with the men on his staff team. Shona’s own story is one of burnout with young home-schooled children while working as a doctor and with a husband in ministry. Her experience may be unique, but she speaks situations that many of us are familiar with. Refresh includes single women and those without children, but the main focus feels as though it is for married mothers.

I have read this book twice in recent years. Once a few years ago on long-service leave, and now in the middle of Covid-19 isolation. I am not on the brink of burnout, nor am I currently overwhelmed by demands. For me, in many ways this current season has been one of lower output and fewer deadlines. However, it’s been a time to allow for reassessment and reflection. Where might cracks be appearing? How close are we running to the edge? What level of busyness do we want to return to? We watch others around us take stress leave and need professional help, and consider our own frailties at the same time. So, whether you are currently struggling with the pace of your life, or just want to be aware of what the warning signs might be, this book is worth reading.

It is structured around the concept of ten stations at a gym, the first being Reality Check. Murray provides a process for readers to assess their own state, asking questions to flag warning signs in physical, mental, emotional, relational, vocational, moral and spiritual areas. Then you consider how wide, deep and long you have had symptoms in each area. Her analysis is that if you have warning signs in a couple of areas, and particularly in spiritual or moral areas, you need to address things straight away.

She encourages women to analyse their situation and the effects of their lifestyle, noting the main areas of danger which include idolatry, materialism, debt, indiscipline, diet and perfectionism. She starts with a helpful reminder of God as creator, and who he has made us to be as wonderfully amazing, complex and limited humans, who are affected by sin in all areas.

Then comes an exploration of the value of sleep, noting that sleep proves our trust that God is sovereign and that we are finite. I appreciated this chapter for I am increasingly convicted of the theological importance of sleep, and it is something that can often be ignored. Another chapter examines resting, stopping and relaxing, encouraging time out in each day, the week (a day of rest) and the year (vacation). As she notes: “Every Christian wants to know God more; few Christians fight for the silence required to know him”. For those who want to explore rest (but not sleep) in more detail, you might be interested in the recent secular offering: The Art of Rest.

She expounds the need for regular exercise, and also a healthy diet. There is detailed consideration about medication for depression and other mental health issues. Murray is a GP and I found her to be balanced and wise, she concludes it is a blessing of God for those who need it. She encourages women to consider what fills up their tanks and what empties them and to wisely manage both, so that we can find purposely find refreshment and be aware of depletion.

There is time spent thinking about our identity. Both in Christ and as a forgiven sinner; as well as in our relationships, and the unhelpful identities we may give ourselves that may need tweaking. Part of our identity includes acknowledging our weaknesses as well as our strengths and how they are redefined through Christ.

One gym station reflects on the weights we carry through life:

“By the time we are 40, we are carrying mortgage and credit card debt, work problems, husband and children worries, healthy issues, church conflicts, car repairs, and healthcare premiums, and on and on it goes… The weights accumulated imperceptibly; they multiplied a little every year until life slowly yet inexorably crushed us. Now, our minds are frazzled, our hearts are pounding, our bodies are breaking down, our relationships are straining, our sleep is declining, our quality of work is suffering, and our happiness is a distant memory.”

She considers the idea that there are two ways of operating: the well-planned life and the summoned life, challenging women to see that planning, having a purpose and making appropriate decisions are preferable to living entirely in response to circumstances. But we still need to be able to respond to situations, and so we seek balance. To figure out what this might looks like she considers purpose, planning, and pruning, and how purpose is particularly needed in five areas: our spiritual, family, vocational, church and family lives.

Towards the end, there is encouragement for women to prioritise their relationships: with God, our husbands, our children, friends and older women, noting all are important and probably should operate in that order.

I appreciated Murray’s wisdom, grace and honesty throughout. You can tell that she has lived the overwhelmed life and has experienced major burnout and depression. Yet she has learnt from it and found a better way forward. That better way is multifaceted. It is spiritual refreshment and a willingness to sit at our Lord’s feet. It is a recognition that sin plays a part in all aspects of our lives. It is acceptance that we have limited bodies that need care and maintenance. It is allowing our community to come alongside us and be with us in our struggles.

“The key is to grasp that pacing ourselves is biblical, whereas living the fast, frantic life is not. It takes faith to believe that and to follow through with it. To live it is in fact a dying to self – a dying to our self-will, our self-sufficiency, and our self-image. Have you understood frantic living versus grace paced living in that way before?”

Murray offers wise words and advice we would do well to heed.

“God’s calling to each of us is unique, and he takes great delight in us when we serve him in it … He does not demand burnout. He rejoices to see us taking biblical care of the bodily temple he has gifted to us and is delighted when we live conscious of our weakness and in total dependence on his daily refreshing grace.“

A slightly edited version of this was first published on TGCA.

Time for Everything

Time for Everything, Matt Fuller

“Wouldn’t it be lovely to wake each day with the thought: God has given me time to enjoy and serve him with today and I’m looking forward to that?”

From the first chapter Fuller has us thinking about the time we have, how we use it and the relentless feel of weariness and burden in our lives. Whether it’s because we try to follow religious rules, we feel the need to prove ourselves, we try to meet other’s expectations and needs, or we are trying to be secure; most of us feel the burden of a lack of time and a busyness that pervades life.

Then he takes us through some ideas about time – how we are made to rest and how we must take time to trust God. He points out the two easiest ways to waste time – in idleness or distraction, and in focussing on the wrong things.

He then develops his framework – essentially that we can operate in freedom so long as we stay within two boundaries. The low boundary (the floor to obedience), which we don’t want to drop below – leads to neglect – not doing what we should be doing. The high boundary (the celling to obedience) leads to idolatry, when we start valuing the thing itself rather than the gift that God has given. Before he gets to the specifics of work, family, church and leisure and how all might operate within his framework, he gives some guiding points:

1. We are to serve the Lord in every area of life
2. The ‘ideal diary’ doesn’t exist – life exists in different ages and stages where different commitments are required
3. Christians have more commitments that their peers. This is really helpful to acknowledge and accept.
4. We need to choose our role models carefully. You might be better not choosing to follow the person who seems to be able to do it all.
5. You can’t do everything you want.
6. We need to pray for wisdom.

Some comments that I found helpful throughout:

• Busyness has (wrongly) become a mark of success both in secular and church circles.
• All our work must be neither ‘eye-pleasing’ (obedience only when being watched) or ‘people-pleasing’ but ‘Lord-pleasing’.
• Work idolatry can sometimes be seen in the desire to find meaning in our work. But, this is something only a very small, privileged part of society can even consider. Most people just have to work a job, whatever job they have. It could be a warning to those who really love their jobs (especially those in the caring and serving professions that consider their jobs ‘noble’) that it could become an idol if you find your meaning in your work.
• When we consider ‘leisure’ time there are numerous categories that are different for different people. For many households, housework and home management has to come out of ‘leisure time’. But that is different to reading for pleasure or going to a sports game. Similarly, the person who cooks for enjoyment will see that as leisure time, much more so that the person who regularly caters for large groups, but does not find it refreshing. He concludes there is a lot of freedom in how we should view leisure time, as long as we are being neither negligent or idolatrous.

This book contains many of the same ideas that were in Tim Chester’s The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness, which was much more detailed, and the shorter Crazy Busy, by Kevin DeYoung. If you read either of those, there is not much new here, but the regular reminder of these truths every few years is well worth it. For me, the most helpful part was his framework of freedom lying between neglect and idolatry and how we can think about applying that to our lives.

So, all in all, a helpful, wise book with sound principles and some good examples of how it could look in real life. We know many people who have made major changes to their lives as a result of reading this book.

Crazy Busy

It’s hard to believe it’s over 4 years ago that I read The Busy Christian Guide to Busyness and blogged through it in such detail. I know at the time I learnt a lot and was challenged in a number of ways.

We are in a less intense life stage at the moment, and I am feel I am less ‘crazy busy’. Even so, I really enjoyed the chance to stop and think about it all again. The reality is that we do live in a crazy busy world and even if at various points it is manageable, it can quickly fall apart, and there are many around us who are struggling.

This is a shorter book that The Busy Christian’s Guide. Obviously that means less can be covered in detail, but it is a very helpful read and one that will challenge you on many levels.

DeYoung’s outline has 3 dangers to avoid, 7 diagnoses to consider and 1 thing you must do.

His theory is that the 3 main dangers we face are spiritual:

• Busyness can ruin our joy – we are crushed by the daily grind of life
• Busyness can rob our hearts – we are consumed by the cares of this world
• Busyness can cover up the rot in our souls – there will be sins we never have time to consider

The bulk of the book is the 7 diagnoses of busyness to consider. All of these are very helpful and some will be more relevant that others at various life stages. All I found challenging in various ways.

1.  We are beset with many manifestations of pride that come out in busyness. There were many ideas here: people pleasing, performance evaluation, proving myself, pity, poor planning, power, perfectionism (yes, they were all ‘p’s!). A helpful analysis of many of our motivations or excuses for busyness.

2. We are trying to do what God does not expect. This is a useful idea for those who think they have to do everything, respond to every request, and be all things to all people.

3. We can’t serve others without setting priorities. This was the most helpful chapter for me personally. Both the idea that you have to set priorities to serve effectively because you cannot do it all, which includes setting posteriorities (the things you should not do! This guided me to think about some things I really should not be putting time into). And secondly, the idea that you must allow others to set their own priorities, and that is up to them to manage and for you to respect.

4. We need to stop freaking about the kids. The idea that much crazy busyness comes from either worrying about the kids or running ragged trying to give them everything.

5. We are letting the screen strangle our soul. We are never alone, we don’t set boundaries with technology and have time away from technology. How’s this for a comparison: the digital age is like a giant room, where everything is happening around us, we can see it and experience it. For a while, we love it. After a while, we may want to take a break from it, but no-one else is leaving and they all want us to stay.

“Like Tolkien’s ring, we love the room and hate the room. We want to breathe the undistracted air of digital independence, but increasingly the room is all we know. How can we walk out when everyone else is staying in? How will we pass our time and occupy our thoughts without the unceasing tap, tap, tap? For many of us, the Web is like the Eagles’ Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never leave.” (p84)

6. We need to rest before we wreck ourselves. Here he addresses the need for leisure, holidays, days off and sleep.

7. We find busyness hard because we don’t want life to be hard. Here he says we are actually supposed to be busy, and if we struggle we that, it’s possibly because that it’s a small part of the cross we have to bear. Life is messy, people take time, serving comes at a cost. Surely busyness is part of life.

His conclusion – the one thing we must do – is devote time to Jesus. Spend time in bible reading and prayer. Make it an absolute priority.

“If you are sick and tired of feeling so dreadfully busy and are looking for a one-point plan to help restore order to your life, this is the best advice I know: devote yourself to the word of God and prayer… no single practice brings more discipline and peace to life than sitting at the feet of Jesus. “ (p113)

I'll leave DeYoung with the final word on this very helpful book:

“It’s not wrong to be tired. It’s not wrong to feel overwhelmed. It’s not wrong to go through seasons of complete chaos. What is wrong – and heartbreakingly foolish and wonderfully avoidable – is to live a life with more craziness that we want because we have less Jesus than we need.” (p118)

Book review series on Busyness

This series was originally posted on In Tandem, a blog for ministry wives

The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness, Tim Chester

Welcome to our first book review series of the year. This term we are going to be looking at The Busy Christian’s Guide to Busyness, by Tim Chester.

I read this late last year, and I was struck by its relevance –for Christians (especially in the west), but particularly for those in Christian ministry. How many of us are chronically busy, but feel we are busy doing ‘good things’?

This books cuts at the core of our busyness, the reasons behind it and the false ideas that prop them up.

Interested?

We’ll be posting this series on Mondays. Next week – Chapter 1.