A 'Mental Health' Day

Trudy and I turned to one another the other morning and said, "Wouldn't it be great to take the day off? In light of what is going on in our lives, don't we deserve a 'mental health' day?"

The day before I had conducted five worship services and attended two meetings. Trudy, who manages a real estate office, was dealing with disgruntled agents. We were both weary from the time and people demands. We wanted a day to decompress.

I know we are not alone. A recent article in USA Today (11/6/98) reported, "Employers are losing millions of dollars as unscheduled absences reach their highest levels in seven years ... Dollars lost to absenteeism have jumped 32% since last year, or nearly $4 million for a large company ... But instead of illness, family issues now are the most often-cited reason for time off. Other non-sickness reasons cited: stress and personal demand."

One executive commented, "Employers are asking people to give 110%. The problem is people can't do that." He's right, and not only is it impossible to keep up the pace but we have forgotten why we are running so fast. It's not just the hours and demands, it is the lack of fulfillment from all we are doing. We wouldn't mind putting in the time and energy if we were making a difference. We wouldn't mind giving so much of ourselves if what we did energized us.

A Radical Decision

Many of us know Millard Fuller as the founder of Habitat for Humanity but don't know the story behind it. Millard Fuller was a millionaire by the age of twenty-nine. He could buy his wife everything he thought she could possibly want, but one day he came home to discover that she had left him.

Millard caught up with her on a Saturday night in a hotel in New York City. They talked into the wee hours of the next morning as she poured out her heart and made him see that she wasn't interested in the things he was buying her. She was dead inside and she wanted to live again. Kneeling at her bedside in that hotel room, Millard and Linda made a radical decision. They decided to sell everything they had and dedicate themselves to serving poor people and to working for justice for the oppressed.

The next Sunday, they found a church and went there to worship and thank God for their new beginning. They got to church early, hunted up the minister, and told him about what had happened to them and the decision they had made. To their surprise, the minister told them that such a radical decision was not necessary. "He just didn't understand that we weren't giving up money and the things money could buy. We were giving up a whole way of life that was killing us," Millard said.

Many of us are living lives that are killing us. And many of us wish we had Millard and Linda's courage to do something about it.

Sage Counsel

Centuries ago the Apostle Paul passed along some sage counsel to the church in Rome: "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern the will of God" (Romans 12:2). I like the way Eugene Peterson translates these Paul's words in The Message - "Do not become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out."
 

Group Exercises.

1. Ask what our society defines as success. That should not be too difficult. Over three hundred times a day we are told: Drink this. Drive this. Wear this. Live here. Travel there. Under such a barrage, it should be easy to come up with a list of things our society would say makes one a success.
2. List what Jesus defines as success. Compare both lists. What's different about the two lists? What's the same? Is there anything on both lists?
3. Susan Smith, a therapist from Omaha, Nebraska, introduced this "Ecogram." Take a piece of paper and draw a circle about three inches in diameter, in the center of the paper. Write your name in the center of the circle. Outside the circle, list all the people, activities, jobs, chores that either draw energy from us (mark with an arrow from you to them) or give energy to us (mark with an arrow from them to you). If the person or activity both draws energy and gives energy, draw an arrow pointing in both directions (<==>). Identify the strength of the connection--the thicker the arrow, the more energy involved. Share your "ecograms" with one another-- not every name or activity, but the major energy drainers and givers.

Dick Meyer is Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Maitland FL and author of two books, One Anothering, Vol 1 & 2.