#122 S4 EP 32: Prioritizing Self-Care in Ministry: Janice McWilliams's Journey to Sustainable Service

We're going to be talking about self-care today , self-care and how important it is for us to be mindful and aware that we matter , you know , individually , because we give so much to the world and to the , the job and this , that and the other , we oftentimes forget about selves . Um , god , god is concerned about ourselves .

Some would might say that's selfish , but no , it's not really . And this is why , you know , people are turning suicide and all these other things , because you know they've neglected themselves , they've given to everybody but themselves . And so we're excited about this conversation .

And Ms McWilliams her first name is Janice she's coming in just as soon as we pray Amen . She's going to come in and talk more about what God has given her to give us today , about this topic at hand . Amen , amen . So she's coming in after we pray . Let's get it .

We pray in the name of Jesus canceling any assignment of the enemy that will be sent back into the pits of hell where it came from . Yes , God we pray in the name of Jesus that the Holy Spirit will just have its way . Have your way , have your way , god Jesus Christ , holy and maximum . Thank you . Thank you , god , we say amen . Amen , amen , amen .

Christian world in many different spaces as well .

Well , one was in my work with in varsity I was the new staff trainer and I had all these young 20 , some things , that would come through the training and as I was working with them and just trying to help them know , here are the skills you need to do the ministry that what we were running into increasingly was also that people needed to know how to live

a ministry life sustainably so that they didn't become overwhelmed , exhausted and burned out . And so we started talking a lot in those trainings just about how to .

How do you practice soul restoring self-care in the , you know , in the function of kind of the busy life of somebody really trying to do kingdom living .

And alongside that then , in the more recent years when I've been working as a therapist and a spiritual director , I've realized that whenever people come to see me , my clients are working with whatever life stressors are happening that have brought them to counseling .

There comes a point in the session where we inevitably pivot towards how are you going to start feeling better tomorrow ? Right , actually support yourself as you're going through this thing . That is really going to help you .

You know the baseline go up as far as how you're feeling inside in your inner world , and so those experiences really started to help me coalesce around some ideas of like what does really eminently doable self-care look like in day-to-day living that enables people to really follow their call pursuing God and kingdom living or vocational ministry without becoming so

overwhelmed , fatigued and burned out , because that's what I kept happening .

And that's the realm of our thoughts , the realm of our emotions , our rhythms in life , and then a sense of fulfillment .

And so I often find , when I'm working with my clients , that we might hit all four of those critical self-care realms and , over time , learn to incorporate different skills related to each one of the realms and , over time , learn to incorporate different skills related to each one of the realms . And so some people do better at the different realms than others .

Sometimes it's clear like , oh , you do well with your inner world of thoughts and emotions , but you really need some better life rhythms .

Or some people are be really deeply fulfilled in their family life and their ministry life and in their vocational life , but their inner world of like , how they handle their thoughts and emotions , is just completely out of whack . So we kind of will start with . What we need is the greatest Right .

I was just open to what God wanted to do , because I'm just that type of person Whatever God wants to do , even if I don't understand it , I understand that it's bigger than me . You know what I mean . And so she introduced this idea .

I had no idea that self-care was really a thing that I was giving myself to everybody else and everything else but leaving not only myself behind , but even my immediate family , like my husband and my children , you know , because I was giving to everything else and I think that that's a big , big problem and , uh , these four realms have everything to do with it .

Amen .

Like one , one thing that just struck me along the way in my , when I was discovering all this , is that I coined a phrase . It's called self-care Barbie , so Barbie style self-care is what we're learning from the world , and that bothers me . Mattel came out with a line of like self-care Barbies .

I don't know if you know this , but we have spa day Barbie , and they're actually , you know , come with little , you know the little brushes for the back and all this kind of stuff . So when I saw that , I was like no way , this is just reinforcing these attitudes that people have .

That self-care means basically , you know , I run myself ragged in my completely unsustainable life . Then I stop , I sign up for a spa day or something really really expensive that probably requires childcare to do , and I pamper myself and then that feels really good and it's really nice , but then I just go back and resume my unsustainable life , right .

So I became really impatient , like that is not working Right . It's definitely not working for people . And what does it look like to kind of understand self-care to be something that's woven into the moments and hours of your life in a way that is that you will actually do and it's not too difficult ?

So that has become something I'm pretty interested in teaching everybody that comes into my office those skills , because at the end of the day , that's what they need . They need to know how to practice self-care integrated into the life they're actually living .

You've got to see yourself the way you want others to see you . That's profound . That's profound .

And then , michael , to your point , if you don't think that you are God's diamond in the rough , then you're just going to stay in that rough . You're not going to see yourself as somebody who's worthy of like , refining and nurture , discovery and care . And so I think you know too many people . The rough is rough . Yeah , absolutely .

We want people to get out of that and to find their way to make a plan that feels really sustainable and doable . One of my early discoveries about this was at the beginning of the pandemic , when everybody's whole life went online and we were and we were having , you know , all my therapy and spiritual direction sessions .

All went online , of course , but and that was tiring and that was hard to adjust to but what was even more difficult was that people were coming to the session dealing with the same thing I was dealing with , you know , in the early . Do you remember the early days of the pandemic ? Everyone was like what's happening next ? What did the CDC say ?

And the report came out and did you hear this ? And and I was worried , so you know they would say , hey , did you ? You know that I'm really stressed about the CDC's new report and I would say inside , what did they say ?

I decided to kind of stretch my body while praying a breath prayer , so like a breath prayer . On the inhale I would say Lord Jesus Christ , son of David , and on the exhale have mercy on me . A sinner . And I would stretch my body and say that breath , prayer and I . So I ended up doing that you know what was it ?

Four or five times a day , cause I did it in between every session and all together it probably only took me five or six minutes to do that five or you know , four or five times , but it made my spirit and my body feel so much better to do that , and so it wasn't like , it wasn't a practice that meant I had to resign my job to do it or go sign up

for a meditation class , and it took an hour a week . Even . It was one intervention that was woven into my life that made a huge difference in how I felt . So , that's what I feel like we understand it that way .

Doing that because I know , know , I think I read . What is that book ?

Oh , I can't remember her name , but she was talking about how , when we think positive and we are intentional about what we're doing , it's like we are able to recreate or reproduce more cells that bring more life to the brain and and it allows you to you know things outside of your body that might be out of order and might be stressed out to be able to

heal on their own without medication and all of that that we run to when something's wrong . Does that make sense ? Y'all know what I'm about . I know you might not know what I'm talking about , but there's a book that I read quite a while back .

And the metaphor came to me when I I was eating some soup that my friend prepared and it was super spicy , and I took the one bite and I was like I don't know how much of this I'm going to be able to eat , you know . And after like two or three bites like my , I'm sweating , my you know mouth's on fire .

And my friend finally said something is wrong with this recipe and we checked it and she had put a tablespoon of cayenne into the soup instead of a teaspoon that it called for . Some people would like that soup , but for me it was like kind of over the top . But people who cook will tell you you don't necessarily have to throw out soup that's too spicy .

You might be able to add some potatoes or yogurt or brown sugar to the soup to mellow it out . And that was when I felt like God gave me this picture of if we consider our bodies to be a vat of soup that we're cooking every day and we're hoping this soup is going to be tasty all day long .

And if we imagine we have ingredients at our disposal so loosely , we have stress hormones and we have happy hormones . So the stress hormones are adrenaline and happy hormones might be oxytocin and endorphins .

And so , in particularly stressful times of life , start your day with soup stock to make this soup that's already got a lot of stress hormone in it , right , Right , okay . And so you don't necessarily have to quit everything and meditate all day , but but maybe you , you can put some doses of happy hormone into your life by intentional effort .

It doesn't have to take that long . And so I coined like the better break and Catherine , you were talking about that just now like it's a reset time . So what do most of us do when we take a break ? Most of us pick up our phones . Now , the phone represents all kinds of blessing , but it also is probably going to give us the influx of stress hormone .

So a better break is figuring out even just three times a day to do something that actually gives you an influx of the better hormones in order to even out that soup . It's like adding brown sugar and potatoes to the soup with too much cayenne .

So when we do that it might look like , you know , I go stand at the window and let the sun hit my face and I recite a psalm that I have memorized . Or it might be when I'm driving home instead of listening to the news on the radio .

Or it might be when I'm driving home instead of listening to the news on the radio , maybe I listen to peppy happy music , or I listen to worship music or something to give me another flux of those good hormones to help the soup taste a little bit better In the middle of the day .

I love it when people adopt a practice of praying , some kind of day prayer that connects them to kind of the bigger hope and the universal church and the timelessness of faith .

That can be so perspective bringing and helpful in the middle of a busy day when we're so dialed in to like the problems of our particular life at this particular time , and so the Better Break is a wonderful way for people to put the self-care into their days in a way that's not so overwhelming and is very doable . Little interventions make a big difference .

That is powerful .

Balance is key because even you take you know riding down the road , like you say , riding down the road listening to music , and sometimes you know stuff on the radio you have to switch it up because it can get overwhelming , and throwing in worship music , throwing in different cultures of music , helps balance it out , because if you don't , you'll find yourself in

a state of mind that there's an old saying faking it to make it there's an old saying faking it to make it .

And if you get stuck in that mindset of faking it to make it , you're putting on a persona that's not real and sometimes that persona can venture off to other people that surround you and you could be walking around with a smile on your face , but on the inside , you're hurting Amen . That's where the balance is key , that you got to realize .

Look , sometimes I go through things in life and , yeah , I'm going through my moments , but I'm not going to let it consume me , me . And if we , if we practice that of not letting it consume us , it lets other people know that . Hey look , it's going to be times where I'm going to go through stuff , but it's going to be times where I can .

I can make it .

I just love what you're saying about balance , because I know in my field the thing that we understand about stress or stressful times is that the the problem with like a busy season or like a revved up season or time of your life is when it is unrelenting and you're up high but it never stops and then you're just in a revved up state constantly .

What's much better for us is when we make , if this is our middle baseline , we go above it because we push up for a busy season but we go down for a slow season too , or we go up and down or in the midst of a busy season .

If we plan better breaks , then we're going to have little slow moments mixed in to that revved up time , because inevitably we're going to have seasons of our life that are really fast seasons . One of my favorite the second half of the chapter . Jesus preaches in the synagogue , then he is kind of interrupted by a demon possessed person . He delivers that person .

Then he goes to Simon's mother-in-law's house and heals her and then while they're there the quote , whole town in quote comes to him asking to be healed and delivered , and so well into the night he's doing this healing and deliverance ministry and and and then then the day ends . I'm like , okay , that was a packed day .

You know , jesus had busy fast days where he allowed lots of corruption and all kinds of um , unexpected things were happening and he was saying yes to it . You know , I love that . That reflects how our life can be . We have busy seasons too , and we have seasons where we probably do well to say yes to interruptions .

Then what he does the next day , that was super interesting because he wakes up before it's light and he goes to a quiet place to pray . And after his prayer time , simon and the others find him and they say , hey , the whole town's over there waiting for day two of this awesome healing and deliverance ministry , let's go .

And Jesus says to them he says no to that obvious thing and he says I'm not going to do that because I'm going to go to the next towns and preach also , for that is why I came . So it's like something happened in that prayer time that helped him know what his no was . That helped him know what his no was .

And my yes is to go to the next towns and preach there also , but that is why I came . And so we see in that that he had a fast day .

He slowed himself down for prayer to find his yes and his nose , and then , presumably , they all gathered up their stuff and they just walked to the next town find his yes and his no's , and then , presumably , they all gathered up their stuff and they just walked to the next town . So he had a slow day right after that really fast day .

And and so he , jesus , moves , fast and slow . We can too , and in prayer , jesus finds his yes and his no , and we can too .

So to be able to follow that model of understanding , life does have fast seasons and busy seasons , but how do we make sure we're dialing in to the Father to know what our purpose is , what's ours to do , so that we can figure out what to say yes to and no to , and also have a slow time that follows that fast time .

So that that's , michael , what you're saying about the balance .

moving . That's the reason why I believe that suicide is so high , because you don't have that moment to breathe . And when you have that , when you stop moving , moving , moving , moving , you have a chance to not only breathe but listen to God .

So you know , I really think that's the reason why suicide is so , I guess , high , at a high rate , because you're always moving so fast that you don't even have that chance to breathe and take time , absolutely .

We have to slow down , you know , and and you know because you might not be doing anything this is encourage somebody that feel like they're not doing anything but , like you know , you had a season where you were just really busy and it seemed like nothing's happening .

You know , we see it in business , we see it in our marriage , we see it in our children , we see it in all kinds of relationships and things that we're doing . It is ordained of God for you to slow down .

You have to slow down and in those seasons that you're slowing down , it is your time to ref , to focus on on yourself and what God wants you to do in the next season . You got to slow down .

You know what I mean Because I know , especially as women and I can speak from a perspective of women we are constantly going and we want to constantly fulfill what it means to be a virtuous woman . We want to do that and we think it's a whole lot of activity .

But you know , even in that day that's described in in the proverbs woman , there is times where she slows down . There are times where she slows down and we , I think as women especially women we're a little bit too hard on ourselves , whereas men , they get it , they don't even think about it , they just get it .

Oh , I'm going to provide and I'm gonna do the things that you can't , that you shouldn't be doing in the house , and I'm going to relax the rest of the time , I'm going to watch TV and I'm going to . You know what I mean ? They get it , they get it and they don't even realize it . You know what I mean , and so intention is so important .

Balance and intention .

These are the kind of things that I want you to be able to figure out , grafting into the days of your life so that your days feel better , because days that feel better translate into weeks that feel better , and weeks that feel better translate into months that feel better . That is how you build mental health better .

That is how you build mental health , positive mental health and just overall wellbeing . It's in the moments and the hours , and so I hope you'll get that resource . And also , my book is a great book for individuals and for groups to read together . It's called Restore my Soul Reimagining Self-Care for a Sustainable Life by Janice McWilliams .

But anyway , catherine and Michael , it was great to be with you . It looks like we kind of cut out there at the end and I wasn't sure .

Yeah , I just gotta say this to every diamond that is listening he does not want you free , he does not want you to change your life , and so got to know that anything that is good is going to come with some kind of resistance . What God wants to give you is good , amen .

And this is just one of those times where spiritual warfare is at hand , where he's trying to keep you from getting what God wants to give you . You got to continue to trust him , no matter what . Amen . Yes , you are important . Amen , you are important . You got to take care of you .

Don't be so religious that you think that is a crime for you to care about yourself . Don't be that , I promise yourself . Don't be that , I promise you . Don't be that religious . I swear that is religion . All day long , legalism is saying well , you ain't supposed to , you got to keep going , you got to keep going .

If you ain't doing this , you ain't doing that . The devil is a liar . You heard me . Come on somebody . So we are so very grateful for you , janice , for being here . Grateful , grateful , grateful . Thank you so much for your words of wisdom . I've had a great time . Yes , powerful Michael , you have anything you want to say yeah , I do .

That means if you're not doing nothing , then he moves in that much quicker . Slow down , but don't halt .

Yes and Lord , protect them from the enemy who comes to steal , kill and destroy . Hallelujah , and we know that you have to give us life to the full , a rich and satisfying life , in Jesus' name , amen .