I've had a long week or more of a particularly gnarly pain siege. Much of it is blacked out of memory; but yesterday was the difficult aspect of knowing I needed to get up and working again as the pain was not going to lessen past a certain point, and at that point one must simply get up and get going!
Yet, there is the knowing that a pain siege will come again, and again, and again. I couple this reality with that of having extreme manual labor, or work, burnout. It got rather severe; quite a task it is to motivate.
This morning I knew it was time to do something--anything! Any work here is progress, no matter how small the task in the mountain of tasks remaining in order to finish and sell. This hermit is financially broke. All has gone into the renovation of what was a bad-deal, old farmhouse. Yet, the Lord did allow this experience of which I recently changed terminology to call it an "adventure."
So I decided to begin painting the second color coat on the pole barn, and I chose the most difficult side because it seems if I tackle the hardest first, then I have conquered my temptation to save the worst for last.
Yesterday in the throes of work burnout, I called the lumber yard. I was going to ask Craig to please pray and ask his church group to pray, that I get back into work mode. (Consecrated Catholic hermits are responsible for our own finances, our own housing, medical and all other costs involved in living in the contemporary world. Thus, I have about six months to finish and sell, and that is that!)
Craig was not in, as I also wanted to explain why I'd not been in to pick up the stair banister and balusters this past week. But David answered, and when he asked how I was doing, I said I'd had quite the pain siege but was better, yet the worst plaint I had was the work burn out! Not good! He laughed and said he has that every morning as he is walking in the door to work....
I asked him how he deals with work burnout. He said it is in one word: Vacation.
So, that is why I pondered his antidote to work burnout affliction, and this morning what popped to mind was the thought that Jesus never took vacations.
Well, as a child, age twelve, he went with his parents and others to Jerusalem. It was for a purpose other than relaxation and entertainment, for sure. They walked miles and miles, had to carry their water and food with them, camped out along the way, or whatever. Heat, cold, winds--we'd not likely consider it at all a vacation by our current standards--and many nowadays would consider it an obligation rather than vacation.
I also considered that I have no vacations, either. Then the thought struck that my pain sieges are about as close to a vacation as I come: I'm laid out on a mattress, the mind has black-out conditions, the devil enjoys trying to get me to despair with the pain and incapacitation, and I tend to distract myself with YouTube diversions of a pleasant but easily forgettable sort. I read the Scriptures but cannot retain much, so re-read and yet the mind scatters.
However, it is a break from the manual labor, and thus the pain siege is worthwhile in that aspect as well as for all the prayer that suffering contains, for I always offer my suffering as prayer. I avowed myself thus, years ago, to offer my sufferings for the sufferings of Holy Mother Church. And toward the end of this most recent pain siege, the Lord reminded me of that offering at the time I was beginning to really be fed up with such pain.
Regardless, I spent time while painting one end of the pole barn, pondering how Jesus did not take a vacation, and my spiritual father, a priest, did not take vacations and does not, of course, now. Not the type of vacations did Jesus take, that we consider as "vacations"; not the type of vacation that David of the lumberyard looked forward to as a release from work burnout.
Jesus took a vacation of sorts when he went off to the mountain to pray in solitude. That is what I figured were mostly His vacations. But He never took a vacation from the needs and sufferings and upsets of people, and He does not yet, to this day. Our issues and flaws and sufferings and ignoring of Him and not listening to Him are with Jesus all the time. He is always concerned and loving and desiring us to buck up and do right, to put forth good fruit as a result of listening to His teachings and emulating his Life.
"Follow Me!" Jesus said and says yet today, now, in this present moment...if we but listen and heed.
Well, I do not listen well nor do I heed spontaneously, not always and not even mostly, I suppose. But today I was listening and now I am heeding in small and meager ways, for I am tethered with the temporal aspects of this place that I got into and now must get out of, and the stripping to learn more detachment and the lessons and work to learn to build greater faith--these are my tasks. And thus work burnout is not going to fit into the program.
The best way to get rid of work burnout is to work it out. And part of my working it out is to ponder and pray and to especially praise! Praise God in all things and in Himself--akin to loving God above all things and to love God in Himself! And, to make myself get back to work--action work for me, as that is what is best for the body to do after enforced rest time for several days.
I also considered other people who did not seem to take vacations. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Padre Pio, Mother Teresa, and as I mentioned, my venerable spiritual father.
I know that God has asked us to rest on the seventh day, on the Sabbath. And that can be also interpreted as resting in His love, remaining in His Sacred Heart, and thus resting off and on in mystical manner, throughout the days and nights. We do need balance in our lives, and rest is part of it. Jesus slept, and He made sure He had quiet time in solitude for prayer, for those times He wanted to talk One-on-One with God, His Father.
So must we. These are the best vacations possible, and for a hermit, we don't even have to go off to a deserted place to pray. We are in the deserted place, thus the desert; and we pray while physically at rest or in pain or at work or in sleep or awake, while eating and while not eating. We pray and we praise God.
I suppose if Jesus did take vacations, these would be considered His vacations--the sleeping on the boat while the storms raged about him; the heading off in the boat alone to the other side of the lake; the going up into the mountains alone to pray; the hour he spent in the Garden of Gethsemane; and even perhaps the hours He was dying on the Cross, for that was a time of great unification in His dire and tragic suffering, nailed in front of throngs yet very much in the silence of solitude, calling out to His Father and also forgiving all mankind our sins against Him--the God Man.
I'd best now get under the house and finally give the sump pump more permanent plumbing. I have some PVC pipe and a new back-flow valve, and I watched a good YouTube video to refresh me in just exactly the best way to cut and fit the pipes and location of back-flow valve.
Writing and sharing these thoughts with God (from Him as I am nothing in myself) and with you has been a type of vacation!
God bless His Real Presence in us! Love, love, love!
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