Physical Triggers: Tired

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by:  Staci Stallings

We transition now from general triggers–those that trigger multiple default responses almost as a whole, to triggers that are a bit more specific to pin-point. First we will look at physical triggers–those things that happen to us physically that cause our default responses to start firing.

The first physical trigger I want to touch on today is being “tired.”

Now before you jump up and down and accuse me of promoting laziness, let me just say that God is the One Who instituted the concept of “rest.”  In fact, He barely gets finished with creation before He commands us to rest.  ”And on the seventh day, God rested.”

Clearly our world today doesn’t grasp this concept.  We run from frantically getting ready in the morning to work.  We eat lunch at our desk, work through lunch so we can get off early and do a little shopping before grabbing the kids and heading off for the activity of the evening.  Rarely are we home before it’s dark, and even then during the school year, there is homework and getting ready for the next day.

The weekend?  Oh, we have great hope for them that somehow never quite materializes.

Saturday is spent on house and yard chores.  Sunday is church, Sunday School, and more family activities (that is, if we didn’t skip church and Sunday school to ATTEND an activity… soccer anyone?)

We race and we run, thinking that if we decide not to participate in something, we are somehow missing out on life.

Those of us who are parents often sign up each child in multiple activities and then have to split up to try to get it all done.

No wonder we are tired!

Tired is a physical phenomenon, but it often results in default responses all up and down the scale.

Physically it becomes more and more difficult to keep up.  Mentally we feel like we’re one mini-crisis from completely losing it.  Emotionally, too often, we DO lose it.  And all this doing and tired pushes spiritual issues (supposedly) right off the radar.

I want you, for a minute, to look at what your defaults are when you get tired.

Do you yell at others?  Do you get frustrated with yourself?  Do you push yourself and push yourself until collapse is a real possibility?

Can you allow yourself to rest, or is “life” more important?

When you rest, can you rest, or does your mind go to work then, spinning through all the things you have to get done?

For me, tired used to result in a default response of guilt.  That’s right.  I felt guilty if I was tired.

If I chose to sleep in on a Saturday, I felt like I was letting everyone down.  Granted, many times I had been up with crying children through the night, but resting was weakness.

Do you ever feel like that?

Do you ever feel like you need to do and get done far more than you are physically or emotionally capable of doing?

One thing I’ve heard many times in the sports area is about pushing past your limits, and I’m sure there is some validity to that.  If when we started to walk, we looked at it and decided doing that would just take too much energy, we’d all still be crawling.

However, please understand that pushing past your limits was never what God had in mind for us.  He knew our need for rest, and He consciously worked it into the “schedule.”

So what are your defaults when it comes to being tired, and are you setting life up so that being tired is not an option and then feeling guilty when you get tired?

Lots of things to consider and think about here.