Sitting in the car park next to the school yard, waiting in the car. The rain splashing on my windscreen, and the parking camera has fogged. I have three little people in my back seat. My friends’ precious children and their mum unwell, so I am villaging. I had to drop one of mine at home to fit another in. It was a juggling kind of day. I’m not sure whether it is the impact of the season that has passed, but I am not great at juggling anymore.
It used to be my speciality. Teams messages blinging, new ideas developing, half-formed sentences and achievement was my middle name. Asana tasks flying, Zoom calls open, budgets met, projects managed, and stakeholders listened to.
Until I couldn’t anymore. I didn’t want to. I was tired. So tired from so much change, so much conflict, and so much disagreement. Have you ever felt so tired that you could sleep for months on end?
The car dinged that the battery needed to be turned off.
I messaged my teenager once, twice and three times.
The rain falls more heavily on my windshield. I could see him walking across the yard with his AirPods (let’s be honest, my AirPods) in and chatting with a friend. The news has been talking about cyclones all day, and I have had it in the background, slowly increasing my anxiety. The media escalated small stories into cataclysmic ones. Is another lockdown on the horizon? What is the impact of war? Where is God in the middle of all of this?
I worked in an environment that responded to every request as if it were an emergency. You see, when your passion is to help the vulnerable, every request is urgent. My boundaries were misunderstood, and my achievement meant I was perceived as “saving the world”, “reaching the lost”, helping. Always helping others.
The little people in the backseat broke my silent internal war.
“Aunty, when is he coming?”
I tried to phone him, but I could see him walking past our car as the sound of the rain grew.
My body remembers.
My body started to heave.
Stress
Responsibility
Overwhelm.
People are not listening. Why is he not listening? Why is he not picking up his phone?
Heart beating. Losing Breath. Frustration. Another request.
My nervous system was beating. Another person is unhappy with me. My humanity was not accepted as important, like those we served.
I can’t do anything about it.
Embarrassed.
Unsure.
My body remembers.
Have you ever felt so overwhelmed that it’s those who are closest to you who feel the rise of your emotions, rather than the people you are actually responding to?
I have been learning that if we allow our body to remember the pressure of leadership. The responsibility. Embarrassment. Emotion.
Not being able to rewrite the story and the season’s insight, we get stuck, and our body remembers. We can handle the load of a crisis for a short time, but the human body was not designed to be in crisis every day. A load that cannot be held for more than a short while.
For example, traumatic stress frequently results in lasting imbalances in the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (freeze/shutdown) branches of the autonomic nervous system. Consequently, those who carry chronic stress often experience muscular tension, chronic pain, gastrointestinal issues, and autoimmune disruption.
Psalm 51 describes a broken King David. He is overwhelmed by the stories he carries in his body, heart and life. A sentence that resounded in my heart today is the power of reconciliation and restoration, like that first moment and love you found when you came to know Christ originally.
“Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
—Psalm 51: 12
This psalm is a cry from a place of brokenness and a desire for the story to be rewritten anew.
My body remembers the pressure of leadership. The responsibility and the embarrassment of getting it wrong, and in this season, I am rewriting the pace and brokenness of a season sown.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” — Psalm 51: 1
As my son ran over to the car, remembering he was a little lost in his own world of thoughts, he said, “Sorry, Mum,” and the moment was reset.
How are you processing the stress from week to week?
Each Friday and Sunday at 4 pm Perth time, I am holding space for you to come and write to heal. If you would like to learn more about this, email me at info@amandaviviers.com
This week we worked through these prompts…
