Community Combats Fatigue

When I first started dating my husband, he told me his greatest asset was his family.

I was confused. My husband is a brilliant, kind, loving man and an incredible father. He has so many qualities that he should tout as assets, yet he lauded his family as his greatest. How could that be?

I grew up with parents who love me deeply and who have seen me through the good and bad, always there to listen or to lend a helping hand when they are able, no matter how far away I lived. I am incredibly grateful for my parents and love them dearly. But when it came to the larger family unit – brother, sister, aunts, uncle, cousins, grandmothers – I had little experience in living in a tribe or clan the way my husband grew up.

Jason’s parents divorced when he was young. His mother spent much of his life living away from him because her new husband was in the Air Force, and that necessitated them living in faraway states. Jason’s father was responsible for both Jason and his sister during most of their child-rearing years, not an easy job for a single parent and an unusual situation for a single dad. Luckily, he had plenty of help from the family clan.

Jason, his sister, and his dad lived on family land, a long stone’s throw from his dad’s parents. Jason often fondly reminisces how much time he spent with his grandparents, eating supper most nights at their house, helping with farm chores, being put to bed by them on nights his dad worked or umpired late. Many weekends were spent either at their house or at his maternal grandparents’. Furthermore, the extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins often spent time together. Jason once joked that he never understood why people had family reunions once a year – he always thought most of the family just came together every other weekend to eat, share, and celebrate because that was what he experienced growing up.

Bruce Perry, a neuroscientist and child psychiatrist who has devoted his life to studying and helping people overcome childhood traumas, emphasizes the importance of being surrounded by a loving clan in developing resilience in the face of adversity. In his book What Happened to You?, he notes how historically and in modern-day indigenous tribes, a child has between 4-7 close role models, caregivers, and confidants and shares how those of his young clients surrounded by such a clan develop resilience and adapt to life after trauma at incredible speeds compared to those who are more isolated and alone. He scientifically confirms what we as Christians already know – we are social beings, meant to draw together as one body, one church. We are one in the Holy Spirit, one family as God’s children.

Thus, we are naturally better together. I am reminded of this constantly in watching and being assimilated into Jason’s family. When someone in the family is sick or in need, everyone acts. They bring food, transport children, lend a hand, car, or house. When we cannot get every kid to their events, someone always volunteers to transport. There is always someone available to ask for help, provide comfort, offer advice, say it how it is, prepare a meal, cheer at the game, give a hug, smile with, cry on – the list goes on.

I do not want to downplay the role my parents play in my life or my love for them. But being a part of Jason’s family has really opened my eyes to family, a collective, close-knit unit that meets together, celebrates together, and loves together. Being folded into their clan has been as instrumental to my healing as changing my diet and calming my parasympathetic nervous system because they constantly surround me with love, joy, and care, attributes that are needed to facilitate healing.

Who has God put in your life to help fill the need for companionship and solace? When you are exhausted or low on energy it can be difficult to even imagine taking the time to meet with or travel even a short distance to spend time with others. At my weakest, I mustered the will to travel a town over for church each Sunday, but I did not have the social energy for more than this, so God provided me with people willing to come to my home instead.

Being surrounded by people to love you, care for you, cry with you, encourage you, uplift you, and help you is a need and a want God has placed into your heart. He will provide you with the people and the opportunities, but you need to keep your eyes open and be willing to take some initiative to allow them in. It is the Enemy’s hope that you will shut everyone out and isolate yourself because he knows it is an easy way to increase the ways he can attack you and wear you down mentally.

Every person has been given a unique gift to contribute to the body of Christ. Do not be afraid to let others use their gifts for you, just as you should not be afraid to use your gifts for others. Seek, and ye shall find.

Prayer

Lord, I know that it is important to be surrounded by community. I realize that I am only one part of the church body and that I cannot exist without my fellow members, for how can an eye exist apart from a brain, or a brain apart from a body? Sometimes it seems difficult to be with other people. It is tiring, exhausting even. Sometimes it gives me anxiety. Sometimes it irritates me to be around others. Lord, I realize now that these are just side effects of my fatigue, ways the Enemy works to keep me apart from others. I pray that you bring others into my life that I need at this moment as I strengthen my temple for you who can help motivate, encourage, and lead me. I pray for a strong fellowship with fellow believers. Lord, I pray you surround me with so much light there is no room to cast a shadow so that I may soak it up and live fully in the light as well. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.