Word of the Week Wednesday

enervate (verb)

to cause someone to feel drained of energy or vitality; weaken

How many can identify with this word's meaning? It is, after all, Wednesday. Humpday. As in, "If I can just get over this hump I might somehow make it to the weekend." We know what it means to feel drained of energy or vitality.

We know what it means to be weak.

Today I am thinking about what enervates me. And how I can cut it out of my life. Or at least, reduce it. There are some things that drain us that we can't help. Tending to the endless needs of children, making money, keeping up with job duties, and certain relationships come to mind. These things enervate us, to be sure, but do they have to?

Yes we have to tend to our kids-- but do we have to do it with a sense of drudgery and dullness?

Yes we have to make money-- but are we making money with the awareness of how blessed we are to be able to do so?

We have duties and responsibilities within our jobs-- whatever our jobs may be-- but have we forgotten what it is to have that position? Why we accepted it in the first place? Have we lost sight of our calling in life?

Has what used to energize begun to enervate?

Sure there are those people in our lives-- people we can't avoid due to blood or proximity or position-- that drain us on sight. But can we try to love them with newness, with intention, with God's grace flowing through us because our own is just so inadequate?

I'm preaching to myself here, sounding off in my morning pages regularly about how I've lost sight of so much lately-- sucked into the vortex of busyness and stress and pressure and this needless sense of hurry that defines so much of my day. The other day I was racing along, fuming at stoplights, frustrated with other drivers, and a little part of me woke up and asked the bigger part of me, "Why exactly are you in a hurry? You have nowhere you absolutely have to be right now. Slow down."

Rushing enervates. Stress enervates. Anxiety and worry enervate.

Joy energizes. Gratitude energizes. Noticing and savoring the little things energizes. Pausing, resting, stopping, breathing energizes.

I think it might be as simple as choosing the thing that energizes over the thing that enervates-- but first taking the time-- making the effort-- to notice the difference.