While teaching on As For Me and My Crazy House last weekend, I reminded my peers [as I reminded myself] that the healthiest thing that any of us can do for any relationship is bring the best and healthiest “me” to the table. In other words, if I want my relationships to reflect the character of God, then I should bring the most Godly “Me” possible to the relationships. The truth is, two broken people don’t make a beautiful mosaic, they simply make a mess.
To this end, I told them that if someone asked to meet with me, and I had scheduled in my calendar that I had a meeting with a friend, that I would naturally tell them “NO”, that slot is taken. However, if that same slot had something that was just for me, I would likely bump “me” every time to meet with them, as if “me time” was unnecessary. But, this reflects a practical pattern of my unhealthy life, not a theological reality I believe. I don’t think it’s more Godly to ditch my own soul care to tend to the care of someone else.
This “aha” came for me when I discovered that in the second greatest commandment, Jesus actually called me to “love others as I loved myself” [Mark 12:31]. At which point, I began to realize that “loving others like I loved me” would be a horrible way to love someone. This needed to change.
So, rather off-the-cuff I told them to avoid feeling guilty, they should just “name their soul” and schedule appointments with it in their calendar like they do other people. This way they wouldn’t feel guilty protecting that time as sacred and telling others they were already booked. It sounded so fun to me, that I wrote it down as an impromptu gift from God.
So, when someone says, “Hey Brian, can we meet Wednesday at 4pm?”, I can look at my calendar to see if it is empty. If it is, then YES, we could meet. If however, I have scheduled that slot as a time to go for a run or take a nap or read or spend some time in solitude to shape my soul and remain healthy, then I need to be able to say “NO” and not feel guilty like I’m bumping that which can simply be rescheduled and should be secondary in importance.
Thus, I have decided this is an idea from Jesus. From now on, I will call my soul “Haus”. He and I will be meeting often. 🙂
Husband. Dad to 5. Student Ministry Pastor. Follower of Jesus. Yatta yatta.
As always, great insight! Now to name my soul….