Does the craziness of life ever get you down? Do you find yourself going from fire to rain at the speed of light? Have you forgotten important engagements because your mind is full?
These are all symptoms of a busy life, and I don’t mean busy in a good way. We tend to over-schedule and be overwhelmed. This is something I know a lot about. I tend to do it a lot.
Before Mike’s illnesses, I was serving on several community and/or state committees and we had kids in school with their activities.
The day he was first admitted to the hospital in January 2013 I was writing a cover letter for the tourism job that I had for almost 3 years. I sent the application from his hospital room. I don’t even know what was in the letter. I had given up all but three of my community/state commitments prior to that and with taking the tourism job I gave up sitting on that board. Now I was being paid for that.
“All was right with the world” when Mike was fishing.
It’s a good thing I had given up those committees. I was overwhelmed the way it was I can’t imagine how it would have felt to be pulled by those meetings. I imagine I would have scheduled over them and excused myself from them.
There were times when we left John’s activities to make an appointment at KU Med Center. For one early morning procedure, we got to Kansas City around 1:00 am and had to be at the hospital by 5:45 am. It made for a short night, and I probably had to stop and rest on the drive home.
Another time my brothers were in Oakley for a special school event. Mike had been an inpatient at KU Med Center for over two weeks. Three times they said they would discharge him in the morning, and he had woken up with a fever just high enough that they didn’t. That morning was the same however they decided the fevers were caused by his auto-immune disease, so they let us go home.
We were almost home around 8:00 pm and my brothers were calling and texting to see if I was going to make it. I dropped Mike off at home and went to the event. I was exhausted. I spent a lot of that time caring for Mike overwhelmed and emotionally dehydrated.
When your life gets too busy what do you do to take care of yourself? I’m running a self-care challenge in the next two weeks take the pledge below.
When you take care of yourself everything is Just Fine.
Make a Connection in the comments below.
Onward!
