The Necessity of Adequate R & R

February 25, 2002

Hello everyone,

After devoting three e-mails to the topic of simplicity, I thought I would share some of my observations in trying to implement this element into my own life. One of the first obstacles I noticed—and one of the first I expected—was my own tendency toward spiritual pride: that sickening “Look at me; see how spiritual I am” attitude that struts about in pompous, self-righteous “splendor.” A moment of careful reflection should easily persuade us (if we not already quite certain) that there is nothing spiritual about this characteristic; in fact, it constitutes the most deadly sin of them all—that of pride.

But is it not possible to live a victorious spiritual life and to take pleasure in that fact? Must we always go about with a “woe is me” mindset? Of course not. The key, as with virtually everything in life, is balance. No matter what it is—take any good thing you can find—and when it is practiced outside the balance of a disciplined life, it soon develops into a problem. A case in point is when motives are left out of the equation, such as when we do the right thing for the wrong reason. The right thing is a good thing, the wrong reason suggests there is something out of balance. It is also possible to be so cautious of trying to keep everything perfectly balanced, that one overbalances in one’s obsession with balance, which is another pitfall that I believe I have, I fear, more than “mastered” in my lifetime. :(

Ultimately, at the heart of simplicity is balance. In essence, that is what true simplicity is, and the only way to truly achieve it is with Christ—through Whom and for Whom all things were created—at the center. But there seem to be times that no matter how much we desire to center down and focus on God, no matter how much we resolve to do better, and no matter how much we strive for balance, we just seem to keep right on stumbling into habits we know don’t reflect the true spirituality we seek. If this is where you often find yourself, you are not alone. Based on the tone of my e-mails, I may sometimes sound like I have some kind of extra special spiritual edge on life, but trying and failing describes my life more accurately in any given week than I would really like to admit. So what is the answer? Well, I’m working on that one, but I have come to some personal insights that I’ll pass along in case they speak to you.

The first one seems so obvious I am hesitant to even mention it. Striving is a part of life and that fact that I do strive suggests that I care, that I desire to improve, and suggests that I keep getting back up to stagger out into the rink yet again, even though so far my track record isn’t as great as I would like. As with anything worthwhile in life, the old proverb “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again,” rings powerful and true. Therefore I say to you: “So you lost your temper? So you broke your promise to God—again. Try, try, try again. Never give up and never stop trying.”

Even though you are reading this on Monday, I am actually typing this up right now on Friday night. I thought I would share my day with you; I think perhaps you will see yourself in its description. Perhaps you will relate to the total lack of spiritual fervor? Yes, today was a total fiasco! I woke up with remnants of an erotic dream of one of my college classmates stuck in my head. I told myself to loosen up: it was only a dream after all, and I didn’t choose to dream it. Yet, knowing what I do about dreams, I felt it was a reflection of what was going on in my life in some way. So then, being me, I had to try and analyze it. Were my thoughts toward this girl lustful? Was that what intially caused her impression to stick in my head so? Did I perceive a subtle, unconscious receptiveness on her part that drew me to her, my “radar” finely tuned? Was I feeling more lonely lately than usual? Had I allowed my thoughts to get carried away with me as we sat and talked in our groups the day before?

All of what I just described took place in the first five minutes of going through the motions of climbing out of bed, a ritual, it seems, that has been getting harder and harder each morning. Even before my aching eyeballs opened, I did what I have really been striving to do each and every day for the past several months: I prayed. It was one of those kinds of prayers, like usual, where I would likely have better success trying to force cold molasses through a saltshaker. But nonetheless, I prayed that my day would go well and that I would be all that God would have me to be, trusting he would honor my will and resolve in spite of my emotional mutiny.

A Christian friend and prison inmate at work had given me an article he had snuck in written by a renowned pastor based out of the inner city (David Wilkerson of Times Square Church, NYC), and I decided since I was running just a little early, I would try reading that to clear my thoughts. So I read “Feeding Christ”—for that was the name of the piece—and I felt unmoved and almost cynical about it, so I prayed that God would show me what he wanted to show me. Still I felt highly skeptical about the words I was reading and visions of the classmate I mentioned were still crowding out my thoughts, begging me to entertain them, for they seemed far more interesting than Wilkerson’s revelations. In fact, it wasn’t until I had showered and toweled dry that my mind finally rid itself of this dream and the ultra-vivid impression of the girl it left in its wake.

It was then I realized I was nearly late but I wanted to get the week’s e-mails printed last minute for a nonInternet-savvy friend at work who enjoys reading them. No matter what I do, it seems I am almost always late. This past week I finally got up and around on time for the first time in months only to suddenly find out on my way in that a fuel truck had crashed, announced by myriads of flashing lights: both lanes were blocked off, and traffic was rerouted through Pleasant Hope, a small town nearly eight miles northeast of my destination. By the time I followed the curvy roads winding their way around, into, and out of Pleasant Hope to the opposite end of Springfield from where I needed to be, I was late again—even later than usual! I had a good excuse that morning, and I was calm, enjoying the change in scenery of the more rural atmosphere, and finding myself bemused, wondering how many people’s blood pressures were going through the roof as I watched the long line of cars piling up behind me. Pleasant Hope probably hasn’t seen that much traffic in years. :)

No, being perpetually late doesn’t do anything to improve one’s mental attitude. I am always scrambling and anxious in the mornings it seems, my foot to the floor, thinking this will be the day I will surely get pulled over by a less than sympathetic cop (and I can personally attest to the fact that sometimes even the most sympathetic ones write tickets), knowing that my professor always starts class early on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and realizing that my supervisor’s humor is bound to be wearing mighty thin on the other three counter days I go to work in the morning before my afternoon classes. And yet, try as I might—and I really do try, believe it or not—I can never seem to get organized in the morning. I am a night person all the way; my e-mails are almost always typed up late at night, often spilling over into the wee morning hours. I guess I’m a morning person after all: an early morning person.

Fortunately, since I knew I had a math test, I made it to school on time today. I think I did well and I wasn’t anxious about the test itself, just about being late on the day of. School as a whole went pretty well, but then again, except for sometimes feeling overwhelmed by it all and often a little depressed, class usually goes pretty well. At work, however, my prayers about giving this day to God seemed anything but answered. I didn’t feel like being there, so to compensate, because I didn’t want to be a crab, I was a little overly pesky and obnoxious, soon giving way to slinging meat with abandon. Now that wasn’t too spiritual, and certainly isn’t the best reflection of the life of a person who is striving toward spiritual simplicity, entertaining though it may be. :)

But that wasn’t the half of it. I began to get very tired and drained and settled into a state of severe irritability and overall bad humor. There was nothing loving or caring about my attitude at all, and I would try to pray, only to feel like the effort was overwhelming, so I just caved in and stopped trying. Then I walled myself off in hopes of centering down with solitude. This only led to negative, destructive feelings: those times when you entertain dark, morbid fantasies about seeing people who have managed to get on your bad side tortured and humiliated in the most grotesque of fashions. Again, my frame of mind wasn’t even remotely close to the spiritual vantage point of the past several e-mails I have sent out!

I barely made it home in one piece, feeling angry, rebellious, empty, hollow, tempted, and uncaring as to whether I caved in—in short, I felt anything but a child of God. I soon settled into a nap and upon waking just moments ago, I realized something. Part of my spiritual defeat comes from a lack of sleep. In fact, the answer to the dream and the impressionability toward the girl, the answer to the lateness, the answer to the depression and lonliness I feel at college, the answer to my lackluster spirituality, more so than my own remaining pettiness, selfishness, and pride, can be summarized as the chronic lack of sleep. God did honor my morning’s strained, albeit sincere prayer: he gave me this epiphany which I am now passing along to you.

As the accompanying articles bears out, chronic sleep-deprivation can mimic the symptoms of clinical depression. And I guarantee that much of my irritability and lethargy today stemmed from my failure to get enough sleep last night, just as this failure contributes much to my feelings of emptiness, lonliness, and depression. It is a proven fact that the body requires a certain amount of REM sleep (“dream time”) to reset itself. Studies have shown that when a person is deprived of their dreams, not only do they feel less rested and more irritable, but their bodies tend to revert back to the dream stage sooner and sooner each occasion they are given time to sleep. (Of course, in the study this did them no good, as a scientist was on hand, ready and waiting to wake them up the minute their bodies tried engaging in REM sleep.) Apparently, dreams are a vital part of sleep; we have to dream to be mentally alert and emotionally stable.

I think that part of the reason the “girl of my dreams” was so stuck there had much to do with the fact that when I was in class with her, I was not running on enough sleep and was “off-center,” leaving me much more impressionable and vulnerable. Perhaps sleep-deprivation does indeed heighten one’s intuitive awareness—I am certain it does in fact, making one more susceptable to the realm of the demonic, among other things—but at what expense, particurlarly to conscious alertness and an overall sense of well-being? Then, I was woken from the dream before it was complete, which I believe, if you will, left me in a dream-like state all day, my body trying to compensate for that of which it was deprived. If you will, it was literally trying to dream while I was forcing it to work math problems, comprehend certain ramifications of the conservation of angular momentum in physics, and worst of all, to stand and carve turkeys for several hours straight. It was saying, in effect, “Buster, you’re running on fumes. You need more sleep. I didn’t have time to totally reset you last night (or the night before that, or . . .), so I’m trying to do that now; I’m not giving up until you go down!”

I once read somewhere that a rather unromantic but very vital part to the highly effective spiritual life is a bare minimum of eight hours of sleep a night. I believe this is very true, though you likely won’t hear too many sermons on the subject. And while my testiness could well be showing me the remaining selfishness and ugliness inside, I am not doing myself or anyone else any favors in the process by engaging in behavior that brings out the worst in me—which obviously includes not getting enough sleep. Of course, there are bound to be times in life where getting enough sleep is next to impossible, like when the first rays dawn on the proud new mother and father of a newborn that they just might have “gotten in over their heads.” But there are no newborns in my life keeping me awake at all hours of the night or demanding my attention at all waking hours of the day. (I suppose, however, one could make a case for working and attending school full time, but that is another matter altogether.)

I could easily cut out a large portion of the “nothing” I do and still have plenty of time for sleep. But before I chide myself for wasting time (as I often do), perhaps I should also consider that these things are a sign that I need more recreation, or “re-creation” as the ancients perceived it. Allen tells me this too was a lesson John Michael Talbot had to learn the hard way. If there is not a certain amount of time in a day for leisure, if life is all work and no play, that is not healthy either; again, there has to be balance.

Perhaps one of the greatest tendencies I have is to neglect this recreation time, which, when denied for a certain length of time, begins to manifest in non-productive or destructive ways, staying up half the night doing “nothing,” like rereading something I have written for the nine-hundredth time weeks after I have sent it out, sleep-induced boredom giving me no rest. Another big “nothing” is mindlessly surfing the Internet with no real purpose, but not wishing to leave either because of the escape it promises. Perhaps my lack of budgeting in enough leisure time is part of what cuts into my sleep time, because I fill my day so full of activity that my body tries to reclaim my evenings to regenerate and renew before the lights go out on yet another page in my personal history. But, for the time, we’ll leave leisure aside.

Because sleep is such a vital part of a balanced spiritual life and the topic is often overlooked from the desk of the clergy, I have decided to send “How to Turn Back the Clock,” an article that first appeared in the August 1st, 2000 issue of Woman’s Day. Its truth is very universal and practical and heeding its advice will improve the whole of one’s life for the better. I hope that you enjoy this article and can adapt and implement some of these strategies into your daily routine. Trust me, we will all—not least of which yourself—thank you for it.

God bless,
Eric

P.S. I recently uploaded Help! I’m Battling An Alcohol Addiction, a very candid and personal letter that I wrote nearly four years ago to a teenage girl struggling with chemical dependency. Though the topic is a pertinent one, I decided against sending it out as an e-mail; the newsletters are the only writings I have added to the site in recent months, and, as you are my faithful readers, I always try to keep you abreast of any new developments. I believe you will find it a “sobering” read.

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