Sunday morning.
Jan. 30th, 2011 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaIt's Sunday morning, and I don't want to go to church.
Nine years ago, Michael and I made the decision that we are a family that goes to church whether we feel like it or not. That goes double now that we have kids in Religious Education. Church is the way it is. But I'm not feeling it, and I haven't for a while.
Well, I have a toddler. I haven't been able to sit and listen to an entire service in... yeah, it's been a while. Michael does half the Colin duty, but he does it on the weeks that I am occupied during the service teaching Religious Education. (Which by the way, I have not been enjoying at all.) We could have made a push to get Colin comfortable in the nursery, but we haven't. I confess that I don't feel particularly motivated to do it. I don't feel like I've bonded to our new minister, so I guess I've felt less of a drive to get Colin settled so that I can go hear the sermon.
Michael, of course, is hugely involved in church leadership. Hugely. He's the vice-president of the Board of Trustees and the chair of the Stewardship Committee. We're swinging into stewardship season, so church business is about to start taking even more of his time than it already does. And the Nominating Committee has asked him to stand for presidency of the congregation this coming year. They don't really have any other candidates. It's something he is called to do, and he'll be awesome at it, but I'm dreading it.
I kind of feel like, the more that Michael does at church, the less there is there for me. Church starts to feel like an obligation, something that cuts into our family time and demands that I do a lot of extra solo parenting.
I don't know. It's not like my feelings about Unitarian-Universalism have changed at all. And it's not like I don't respect the value of our church as an institution. But I don't feel like going to church is feeding me. It just feels like work.
I know there are people on my friends list who have been committed to a church or another institution for the long term. How do you handle the down cycles? Or don't you have them?
Nine years ago, Michael and I made the decision that we are a family that goes to church whether we feel like it or not. That goes double now that we have kids in Religious Education. Church is the way it is. But I'm not feeling it, and I haven't for a while.
Well, I have a toddler. I haven't been able to sit and listen to an entire service in... yeah, it's been a while. Michael does half the Colin duty, but he does it on the weeks that I am occupied during the service teaching Religious Education. (Which by the way, I have not been enjoying at all.) We could have made a push to get Colin comfortable in the nursery, but we haven't. I confess that I don't feel particularly motivated to do it. I don't feel like I've bonded to our new minister, so I guess I've felt less of a drive to get Colin settled so that I can go hear the sermon.
Michael, of course, is hugely involved in church leadership. Hugely. He's the vice-president of the Board of Trustees and the chair of the Stewardship Committee. We're swinging into stewardship season, so church business is about to start taking even more of his time than it already does. And the Nominating Committee has asked him to stand for presidency of the congregation this coming year. They don't really have any other candidates. It's something he is called to do, and he'll be awesome at it, but I'm dreading it.
I kind of feel like, the more that Michael does at church, the less there is there for me. Church starts to feel like an obligation, something that cuts into our family time and demands that I do a lot of extra solo parenting.
I don't know. It's not like my feelings about Unitarian-Universalism have changed at all. And it's not like I don't respect the value of our church as an institution. But I don't feel like going to church is feeding me. It just feels like work.
I know there are people on my friends list who have been committed to a church or another institution for the long term. How do you handle the down cycles? Or don't you have them?
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 05:57 pm (UTC)Recently, I learned something about them that might be irrelevant to your situation, but, I'll throw it out.
Sometimes, I would do things because I had to do them. And they would make me ever more miserable, but I'd do them, because I had to, and I wasn't going to let my mental health issues prevent me.
I later realized that I was letting my mental health issues control me just as much by forcing myself to do something I was presently unsuited for, as I would be if I didn't do them because I was mildly depressed or tired. Trying to do something social because I *had* to ended badly, because I was literally too tired and depressed to socialize; I was spending huge gobs of energy, and getting nothing out of it.
I couldn't let normal lethargy keep me from doing something that fed my spirit, or that even kept up the possibility of feeding my spirit later - but I also couldn't try to force something that just wouldn't happen when I was in a really bad state. Because, doing that drained me, and, worse, it taught me bad habits - that trying to socialize was a scary, awful thing.
I finally compromised. If I skipped, say, a party because I was literally too tired and depressed, so I knew that it would hurt, and teach me bad habits, I had to spend at least part of that time thinking about why I am the way I am, and what I can do to get better. To use the time productively, on self healing, to fix the problem. It was a good mix of recognizing what my real limits were, while still acknowledging that I can't let those limits keep me from living the life I want to live.