Lost Weekends and Rage in the World

I've gone a long stretch--since before Christmas, really--of missing weekend time off. When I say "time off," I, the classic introvert, mean "time when I don't have to be with people or go to any appointments or events." I enjoy the holidays in spite of their lack of solitude because my family is easy to be with and I can almost completely relax on those visits. Just almost.

The holidays fill all spare time with preparation for the cooking and the eating and the shopping and gifting, and I have learned to do so much but no more. I expect those lost weekends and evenings.

But someone close to us was in the hospital over the holiday, and I will write more about this at another time. But after the New Year, matters worsened. During the last weekend of January, she died, and the first weekend of February we buried her. Of course I would not have been any place else in the world than at the hospital and the church and the cemetery.

Then freelance projects ran late; if you are a freelance writer or freelance anything, perhaps you understand that it is impossible to relax completely when deadlines are looming and especially when they are past due.

Then speaking engagements, it seems they came every other weekend. I enjoy those events and hope to keep helping others do their writing workshops or their prayer retreats. But to fly to another state and be on task and surrounded by people for one or two days, and then have to deal with flights and connecting flights to arrive home Sunday afternoon or evening . . .

Suddenly it is spring, and this past weekend was the first that felt like a weekend in a long time. I allowed myself to sleep a bit longer. The pets and I went outdoors for awhile because the sun was out and the temperature not warm but getting warmer.

Still I face lists of undone tasks and at least half of them should have been accomplished but aren't. The weekend zipped by and left me feeling pitiful and a bit resentful.

Then I remembered that so many people never have weekends. They work two or three jobs or they live in a country or situation that never lets up on its demands. They don't get weekends, and their weekdays are a lot longer than mine. They go months without feeling rested; some of them probably go years without feeling rested and relaxed.

When I consider how cranky I become when I miss a weekend, when I think of how, lacking that rest, I go into the workday without my best energy and go into my problems and trials with depleted resources, when I consider how the absence of rest and true relaxation compromise me on so many levels, it helps me understand a little bit better why there is so much rage in the world.

When people are weary and see no end in sight, they find it easy to despair, to resent those who have what they do not, to drag through their days half-heartedly and anxiously. When people are weary, the whole world changes for them, and not in a good way.

God, please help us give to one another the means to sit down, be quiet, take some deep breaths, feel relief, sleep an hour longer, do less, and hope more.