When the rhythm disappears...

You know, after months of realizing that I was feeling far less stressed and far more at peace because I'd managed to develop a bit of a rhythm to living out my life, it can all fall apart in an enormous hurry.

I was so stressed this week that I became ill, because I ignored tendencies about myself and overcommitted myself in a number of ways. Some examples?

I know that I need to watch the balance of relational input/output in my life. I have come to realize that the various relationships in my life affect me one of three ways. They are either draining, neutral, or lifegiving. I have to work to make sure the time spent in draining relationships doesn't outweigh the life-giving relationships. I did a terrible job at this this week.

I also know that I need to make sure that I get a decent amount of sleep or my outlook on life becomes fairly dramatically skewed. Far too many late nights in a row caught up with me and took their toll this week.

I know that in order to recharge my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual reserves, I need to spend time by myself - away from all other people. This week I was with people for almost every moment of every day, waking to sleeping, and it drained the very life out of me.

When the rhythm disappears, my body tolerates it for the first little while, sending me warning messages that in this case the busyness of my schedule forced me to ignore. When I ignored them for two long, and made a major decision that will introduce a great deal of new freedom to my life, but is also rife with a minefield of unexplored fears, my body shut down. It woke me in the middle of the night, sick to my stomach, denied me the sleep I so desperately needed, and forced me to spend a day flat on my back, doing absolutely nothing.

You'd almost think a rhythm of rest had been input into the very design of the world and humans, at creation or something!