Things As They Really Are: Self-Care
By Bethany Tolley
A few months ago, a dear friend of mine sent me a message on FB Messenger. This friend has been battling pancreatic cancer—one of the most monstrous cancers, not only in how it ravages the body, but mostly because it is so hard to treat. So, the topic of her message really hit home: self-care. In her message she shared with me a profound thought. Why do we wait to do self-care until we are falling apart? Why isn’t self-care part of our daily routine? Why do we wait to take care of ourselves until life, or our brain which is teetering on insanity, tells us that it’s our last resort?
Being who I am, a seeker of doctrinal truth, my first thoughts after reading this message had my fingers chasing madly through the scriptures. I had been given an epic quest to a discover and share the doctrine in the scriptures on self-care. I would never have labeled the verses I sought as “self-care” scriptures, before. But the Spirit whispered to me that this was a correct identification for these scripture verses. God is all about self-care, and He has given us guidance on it in the scriptures.
If you Google “self-care”, here is the definition: the practice of taking an active role in protecting one’s own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress. But interestingly, God would have us draw a line through “in particular during periods of stress”. He doesn’t want us to wait until we are worn out and “past feeling” before we take a break (1 Nephi 17:45). Doing “all that we can do” is not about running ourselves ragged (2 Nephi 25:23). In fact, He knows that in order for us to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, to feelings from Him, and to be able to serve Him and our families faithfully without becoming “weary in well-doing”, that we need to be in good spiritual and physical health (Doctrine & Covenants 64:33, 89:19-21).
God wants us to be able “hear Him” and become like Him. In order to do that, we should not “run faster or labor more than we have strength or means provided” on a daily basis (Doctrine & Covenants 10:4, Mosiah 4:27). In fact, God counsels very specifically and repeatedly—probably because we don’t listen—that all things need to be done “in wisdom and order” (Ibid.). The Sabbath Day is not for God. We are taught that it is for man (Mark 2:27). Why is the Sabbath for us? Because if God did not command us to take a day of rest, a day to focus on Him, a day for spiritual and physical self-care, we might wait until we were spiritually broken before turning to Him. Yet, isn’t that usually what we do?
I was reading in my scriptures, recently, when I came across the word “expedient”. I’ve seen that word in the scriptures many times. For some reason, this time the word “expedient” stopped me. I felt the Spirit like a speed bump in a car. I jerked to a stop and noticed the word “expedient” sticking out at me from the page. God wanted me to stop and take a look at that word. Hmmm. What does that really mean? I wondered. I knew what I thought it meant, i.e., God’s will. But I decided to look up the definition. What I learned stunned me. The definition of the term has become more pejorative over time. However, its fundamental Latin root means “to extricate or put in order.” To “extricate” means to free something from constraint or difficulty. Wait a minute?! I thought. So, something is expedient if it’s “in wisdom and order” for our lives? Yes. Something might also be expedient if it will keep our lives from getting tangled up. Sounds a lot like self-care to me.
Expediency is about our lives not getting tangled up. It’s about keeping our lives in order. I sat there feeling speechless and excited. I mean, it’s not every day that you have a golden moment in your scripture study, right? Then, after taking my handy red pencil and filling up the margins of the current page in my scriptures with my discovery, I called my husband. We discussed the word a bit, and then I hung up. I realized, my prayers for my life were going to change drastically. Because now, I suddenly understood how to pray for things that are “in order” for my life. I understood how to ask for help “untangling” my life. I understood how to begin to respond to a higher law for self-care than day-spas, mini-makeover, pedicures, and bingeing Netflix and my husband’s homemade chocolate bars. The world gives us lesser laws that we keep when we’ve worn ourselves out—that’s the worldly version of self-care. But God has a higher law that will help us to thrive, and be at peace, on a day-to-day basis. As we live the higher law of God’s self-care, we will come to understand what is “expedient”, we will “renew [our] strength; [we] shall mount up with wings as eagles; [we] shall run, and not be weary’ and [we] shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
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