Month after month, I push through list after list. The day job bleeds into the second job. Activity blocks in different colors fill every minute in my Outlook work calendar. Full work weeks flow into fuller weekends. On Sunday nights, despair creeps in because it’s almost Monday, and I’ll have to do it all over again. Zero downtime. The mental load is heavy, the proverbial plate heaping.
Rest.
Yeah, yeah, my mind says to the still small voice, I will. But I don’t.
“When I’m not at work,” I say to a new friend, “you’ll find me at work.”
Truth—from everywhere—pings into the inbox of my life.
“Your caseload is heavy,” my supervisor says, looking at my schedule. “Watch for burnout. It can happen fast.”
“Mom, you should just rest for one whole day,” Ricka says, noticing my entries on the family calendar.
“I wish you didn’t have to work,” Husband says, seeing me scurry everywhere always.
“The idea is you take your rest into the week,” Flicka says when we talk about the Sabbath.
“Oof,” Dicka says when she hears what time I wake up to start my day.
Rest.
How can I? I say back to the voice. And when?
But as I rush to the car on Sunday morning, July 14, and misstep, landing on the cement driveway on my arm, I might see how and when. I sit there for a beat, my water bottle glugging out its contents, and I’m angry at my platform sandals for hitting a loose stone I didn’t notice over my frenetic thoughts. Now I have to heal, and who knows how long that’ll take?
I go to church anyway, my arm throbbing, and whisper to Husband during the sermon to please schedule an appointment at MedExpress for me. I would do it myself, but my right arm—my writing arm—hurts too much.
“Pickleball?” the nurse says when I take a seat in the exam room.
“Dumb shoes,” I reply.
“No broken bones,” the doctor later tells me after the radiologist reads the x-rays.
“Oh, good,” I say, but it’s not. It still feels like a fractured radius. And it still feels like life will need to slow down.
I sit here this morning at 4:30 a.m., writing this blog entry for you, still unable to open a jar, and wishing I could end my story with a tidy takeaway from my skirmish with the concrete. I'd like to say I’ve learned my lesson, I always heed my loved ones’ advice, and I obey the still small voice whenever it comes. Well, I'm trying.
In the past two weeks, I've looked up the difference between burnout and compassion fatigue, studied more on the Sabbath, watched I Can Only Imagine and two episodes of Virgin River with the family, and canceled social plans twice.
And I'm healing.
How are you?
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*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.