6. Fit for purpose

ONE DAY AT A TIME
Meditations for Carers
 
6. Fit for purpose
 
1 Corinthians 3.16

When travelling by plane, does anyone pay attention any more to those in-flight demonstrations of where the emergency exits are and where the life-jackets are kept? Flying has become so commonplace that few people really read the instruction card or even watch the flight attendant carefully pointing out exit doors and showing how to pull down the oxygen mask. Just so with our own lives. We carers are just as heedless about safety measures and escape routes for ourselves. We keep going, often without enough sleep, existing on snatched meals and far too much coffee or tea. Until we hit the wall, as marathon runners would say. Because what we’re doing as carers is the equivalent of a marathon. We’re in it for the long haul and we need to learn to look after ourselves and pace ourselves.

We’re like the panicked mother in an aeroplane that is losing pressure rapidly. We struggle to get the oxygen mask on our child – but we haven’t got ours on so we haven’t got enough oxygen to do the task . . . so we both suffer. Instead, we need to fit our own mask first, then we can attend to our child. The moral is clear: if we’re not fit and healthy we won’t be able to look after our loved ones...


Taken from One Day at a Time: Meditations for Carers by Dorothy M.Stewart