“Sara, I feel overwhelmed. I’m struggling to keep up with everything.” My heart hurt for the girl on the other side of the screen. I know how difficult it can be to feel like you’re drowning. I know how easy it can be to ignore health issues, brushing them off, even if you know you’re going to pay for it later. I know how hard it is to prioritize.
During church this week, the speaker said that we are a culture obsessed with sensation, and they were right. We focus so much on what feels good right now. Which is why we tend to be so bad with diets and exercise and procrastination. I’ve felt the pull to “take my supplements later” or rationalize “one bite won’t do much harm, will it?”
When life gets stressful or busy, prioritizing health can be even more difficult unless it’s screaming at us. As chronically ill warriors, our pain tolerance levels tend to be on the high side anyway, so we might even push it to the side longer than most people.
There is a place for pushing through the pain and functioning anyway. Otherwise, a lot of us spoonies wouldn’t do anything at all. But still, it’s amazing how much we brush off because we’re too busy or we’ll do it later or even because we’re in too much pain. We get overwhelmed.
Often, what has helped me most in this area is accountability — but that’s another blog post. The question today is — when we’re so overwhelmed — should our priority even be our health? Aren’t there things that are more important like our relationships with our family and especially our relationship with God?
We’re told so often to prioritize our health, but how much of a priority should it be? When do we draw the line and when is health worth sacrificing or ignoring for other important priorities?
It’s somewhat of a paradox. The truth is, health is not our ultimate priority. Our ultimate priority should be glorifying God and seeking Him. Our priority should be loving Him and loving others. On the other hand, sometimes to do those things to the best of our ability, we have to prioritize our health.
To serve God to the best of our ability, we might not be able to go to church, and instead have to find fellowship and teaching in different formats. To be present with our family to the best of our ability we might have to miss out on the family outing so that we have the energy to engage in an intentional conversation with them.
If you’re overwhelmed to the max and you can only handle one thing right now, focus on God. Open your Bible, sit still, and pray. If that’s all you can handle right now, that’s enough. That in itself tends to help center you so that you are less overwhelmed — even if nothing has changed. At least, for me that seems to be how it works.
But once you’ve taken some time to sit before God and let His peace wash over you, then remember that taking care of your health is often important in the big picture to being able to handle all your other responsibilities as a daughter, son, parent, spouse, student, co-worker, and child of God well.
So true! I love the examples you give on how to put faith and relationships first. So helpful!
Glad you enjoyed this post! 🙂 Thanks for reading!
Wow Sara, thank you so much for having the courage to write about difficult issues like this! I’ve struggled with this tension so much and reading your balanced perspective and seeing that I’m not the only one who wrestles with this has encouraged me. I love how you bring it back to Jesus and our need to sit with Him in the middle of the overwhelm. Bless you. <3
I’m both glad and sorry that you relate to this. But you’re definitely not the only one! <3