The holidays are supposed to be a joyous time for family and friends to get together and enjoy one another. While the holidays bring up laughter, love, and thankfulness, they can also bring up troubling feelings both internally and externally. Whether it be grief, financial issues, or strained familial relationships, we came up with a few ideas for you to care for yourself through the middle of it all.
Exercising your “no” muscle when needed
There’s a lot going on in our families and lives around this time of the year. We’re finding ourselves busier and busier with the chaos that the holidays bring which can lead to burnout. Symptoms like extreme stress, stomach problems, anxiety, headaches,
and more are just some of the few things that can lead to you trying to take everything on your shoulders without any help. God's wish for us is to not take on more than is needed of us. If you feel as if you need to hold it all together and that everyone is relying on you, remind yourself that without your own God given peace, we are not able to support and hold the rest of the world on our shoulders. Without his peace, we can't even support our ourselves.
The word "no" can be met with conflict or negative reactions at times. There's also the chance that we might be met with people not wanting to respect our boundaries. Continuing on with the "grin and bear it" mentality isn't helping much either. God will give you the right words to say if you ask him for them. He does not wish for you to be heavily burdened either. This holiday season, let us do as much as we can and set boundaries with our family, friends, and even our workplaces so that we can not only be a help to them but to ourselves.
2 Corinthians 8:13-14 (NIV): Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. 14At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality….
Mark 6:31 (NIV): Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
The bible does say to serve others, yes. However, we are not to help others to the point where we are heavily laden with everyone else's burdens. We still have our own, too. Of course we wish that we could do it all, but we are only human and we need to be kind to ourselves, too. We too deserve kindness.