Please… Take Care of Yourself
About a week ago I went for an overnight camping trip in the Berkshires (Massachusetts). It was right around that cold snap when Mount Washington was the coldest place on Earth. I have been getting into winter camping more and more and wanted to keep gaining new skills and experiences. My original plan was to spend two nights in the wilderness, to not get too far from my car (just in case it got really cold), and to have a great time hiking and exploring that did not involve frostbite or hypothermia. When I was leaving for this trip my spouse said goodbye, was clearly worried about me, and asked that I please take care of myself. Before going into the wilderness, I had lunch with a good friend who showed me all of the weather warnings about the cold, about how it would only take about 10 minutes to start to get frostbite, and asked that I please take care of myself. The first night the temperature started in the 20s and kept getting colder. By the morning the temperature was in the single digits and progressively dropping. I hiked for a bit, enjoyed the sparse woods, noted the strong winds and increasing cold, and went back to my camp to pack things up. I decided that it was not worth my freezing and worrying about being ok when the temperature was going to drop to about 15 below zero (note: all of these temperatures are in Fahrenheit… sorry Canada). I know others have camped in those kinds of temperatures and much colder, but I was alone, I am still new to the winter camping experience, and I probably did not have the best gear for the night. With all of this in mind, I went home a day early (deciding to leave early is never an easy decision to make). As I made the decision to go back to my car I heard the mantra that both my spouse and my friend had planted. “Take care of yourself.”
Take care of yourself.
This week, a good friend and colleague in ministry died by suicide.
Shit.
It is difficult to even consider what the next appropriate words are to write. A community of clergy, of rabble-rousers, of people who love each other so dearly and who have a deep commitment to their calling as followers of Christ, are hurting and are in pain. It is a community that I am blessed to be a part of and as much as we share joy and fellowship we also share pain and grief. We are all hurting. Shit.
The mantra continues to ring in my mind, a mantra that my spouse says to me every time I go into the wilderness. Take care of yourself.
It has almost been a year since I left being a full-time parish pastor. I have written about this again and again and don’t need to belabor the story (see previous blog posts). Part of what propelled me to make the change was this mantra of how important it is for me to take care of myself. As much as I loved everyone in that church (and I still do), as much as there were moments in the work that were amazing and powerful and life-giving, I was burning out and fading away from my true self. I fear to think of what might have been if I never made a change. I fear where I would have ended up. Take care of yourself.
I now offer wilderness experiences. I take people in the wilderness so that they may have an encounter with the divine in a way that might be different then when one might find in the front-country. But I also do it because time in the wilderness can be life-giving in a way that is different than front-country experiences. One youth said on a trip last year that the moment when he gets at an altitude where he can look over the trees and see the mountains around him is the moment that feeds him and helps him get through the year. People come into the wilderness with wounds and scars, broken hearts and deep pain. I don’t heal people. I don’t offer therapy. I just sit with them in the wilderness and try to be present in the moment. I offer wilderness experiences because they can be life-saving experiences.
Take care of yourself. Because you are precious. Because you are amazing. Because you are loved. Take care of yourself because you are worth it.
This week, a good friend and fellow pastor died by suicide. I tell myself that I could not save my friend, but I wish I could. I tell myself that there was no hike or backpacking trip that might have been the one thing that would have cut through the pain and the darkness that my friend was living with. I wish I could have offered the mantra that I carry with me, and that I am sure others have said to my friend out of places of love – please, for God’s sake, for our sake, for your family’s sake, take care of yourself.
This week so many heart-wrenching words are being shared, and not just in my community. My friend was not the only person to die by suicide this week. Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States, and on average there are 130 suicides a day. Multiply that by 130 families, spouses, children, parents, friends. Multitudes are torn, grieving and wrecked with pain.
Please, for the love of God, take care of yourself!
I go to the wilderness not to take risks, not to hurt myself, but so that I might live. I go to the wilderness because I know that I need those moments of being away from buffered existence of the front-country and to find those places where I can be face-to-face with myself, with God, so that I might live. I go to the wilderness so that I might take care of myself and live.
The wilderness is not what everyone needs, but I know we all need something. My friends, you are all so good and so precious and we need you. Find what you need to do to live and thrive. Find what you can do to help others live and thrive. And please, take care of yourself!
If you or someone you know is struggling with questions and thoughts of suicide, please call or text the suicide hotline: 988
And always, reach out to me if you want to talk about going into the wilderness, or finding your place where you live, or if you just need another traveler in life to connect with.