The Paradox of Care

This past week I have been on vacation. Or rather I should say I have been settling into vacation. It took me a good day and a half to disconnect fro, taking care of folks back home, through emails, phone calls, and texts. But I found that I truly sank into the fullness of vacation when I let go of the need to care for others and let myself be taken care of.

Full time clergy in my denomination are given 4 weeks of vacation (minimum) a year including 4 Sundays. I am notorious for not using all of my vacation, but it isn't necessarily about guilt, or feeling like I need to be there for the church to function, so much as some of the voices of church folks in the past telling me I haven't earned my vacation. They site the corporate structure where you earn days off for years of service and are not given a set amount simply for working full time. Being a people pleaser I bought into the lie, working harder, more hours, and taking less vacation.

But then my spiritual director pointed out to me, that those in non-profit positions, like the church, have a higher burn out rate then the corporate world. We simply are not compensated like the rest of the world - pay equal to experience and education. Instead we are paid a much smaller amount simply because there isn't money to be offered for salary, but we are given various types of days off that are more plentiful then the corporate world. We need to take them as a measure of self care.

Which brings me to this vacation. Pastors in my denomination who move to s new church are encouraged to take a week of vacation before the fall. Not a week to unpack or week to sort of work, but a week of vacation before the avalanche of fall and advent arrives. So I am on vacation at one of my favorite spots - a beach where I will probably never grace the sand (though I do love the beach itself) but instead relaxing in the home of two wonderful people who go out of there way to take care of others. They know of clergy burnout. They have seen the heavy burden carried in the bodies of those they love. So when I come here they take care - of me, of others. Letting me sleep in. Always having food we like. Simply letting us be. I'm not saying all vacations need to be like this, but for me, it is a way to reconnect with the side of myself that is oft forgot, the side that needs to be taken care of.

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