Overheating in Houston
Some friends of ours from up north—where there is actually snow in the winter and four distinct seasons throughout the year—visited our home in Houston during the late Spring. They borrowed our car to go sightseeing in Galveston. On the return trip, our SUV was loaded down with passengers on an unseasonably hot day and the car began to overheat. When the red warning light came on, the driver wisely turned off the air conditioning.
Then the car got so hot it just shut itself off.
They were on a busy stretch of road, so the driver opted to let the car sit for a short while, then restarted it and kept driving until the car shut off again. This happened a couple times until he called me and I recommended he just pull over. “We’ll pick you up in our other car,” I said, “and call a tow truck for the vehicle.”
Alas, it was already too late. A blown water pump, pushed just a little too far, became a blown engine. The initial bill of several hundred dollars now stood at several thousand.
Your “psyche” (all elements of your mind and emotional life) is an “engine” that can be pushed too far. Early on, God established a sabbath day of rest for people, lest we work ourselves to death. Admittedly, this probably isn’t a “majority” problem. In fact, we live in a day and age in which probably even most Christians are a little over pleasured. We experience more pleasure and leisure than most of our human forebearers could have dreamed of—from what we eat, to how we recreate, to our general comfort.
But some of you live with such a sense of obligation and an overwhelming burden of responsibility that you’re “overheating” your engine. You almost never take time for yourself. And if you do, you feel so guilty while you’re doing it that you don’t even enjoy it.
This one’s for you.
Lisa and I were away from Houston during the freak Winter storm that hit Texas on Valentine’s Day. I spoke at a church in Louisville that weekend and our flight back to Houston was cancelled. When the agent in Louisville told us that all flights out of the Louisville airport would be shut down the following day, we quickly rented a car and tried to make it into Chicago before the snowstorm hit there (we almost made it before the snow started falling, but not quite).
We spent two days having flights cancelled as we walked around the O’Hare airport (which we now know by heart). Lisa had picked out the five healthiest restaurants she wanted to eat at. All of them were closed due to Covid, which made Lisa especially agitated. “Just when we need to be eating healthy produce more than ever!” she said. I noted that McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts were doing fine, which may mean the virus will be with us for a while longer.
Finally, Lisa came up with the brilliant plan that we fly out to Phoenix for a few days and wait everything out. We stayed in Scottsdale and had a wonderful time, including a great hike up to Tom’s Thumb. I got to run in the sun (not a searing Houston summer sun, but a massaging sixty-degree winter in Scottsdale sun). We went on an art walk. We had a long and fun dinner with some friends of ours who live in the area, laughing about old times and catching up on the new. Lisa went on a 25-mile bike ride.
I was freaking out a bit about how little work I was getting done, but my next week’s writing productivity was off the charts. It wasn’t until then that I realized my “spiritual engine” had probably been over-heating. I was forced to vacation, but in hindsight, man did I need it. It’s been over a dozen years since I wrote Pure Pleasure: Why Do Christians Feel So Bad About Feeling So Good? but I think I need to go back and re-read it.
When I got home I flipped through the book and a few quotes jumped out at me:
“Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10
“[God] makes…wine that gladdens the heart of man; oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart…When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things” (from Psalm 104).
“When God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God…God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart” (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20).
“Contempt for pleasure, so far from arguing superior spirituality, is actually…the sin of pride. Pleasure is divinely designed to raise our sense of God’s goodness, deepen our gratitude to him, and strengthen our hope of richer pleasures to come in the next world.” J.I. Packer
If you’re a single mom whose primary pleasure might be one square of dark chocolate after the kids have finally been put to bed, make that square of chocolate count!
If you’re a young couple with small kids and you can’t remember the last time you laughed together, make those date nights happen; your marriage needs them.
If you’re stuck in a hospital while fighting a disease, let your mind roam to those memories of riding horses in the sun…
If you’re a grieving widow or widower, or a hurting parent, remind yourself that feeling pleasure doesn’t betray the one you’ve lost. You know, deep down in your soul, that punishing yourself for their absence would bring them more pain, not validation.
Maybe you’re so busy in ministry and responsibility that anything other than service or study makes you feel guilty: just be aware that you weren’t made to keep driving in the hot sun. Eventually, your engine is going to overheat (and when it does, you just might end up as a subject in Julie Roys’ blog). The great danger of ignoring pure pleasure is the same thing that happens when we allow ourselves to get too hungry: we crave junk food. In the same way, if we “spiritually overheat” through pure pleasure deprivation we may pursue junk pleasure that deadens our souls or even worse, illicit pleasure that ruins our souls.
Francois Fenelon hits the right balance when he counsels, “What do we need? Not to neglect our own needs while devoting ourselves to those of others, and not to neglect the needs of others while being engrossed in our own.”
A blog post like this and a book like Pure Pleasure can be dangerous in a world that leans far more to being over-pleasured than under-pleasured. But I know many of this blog’s readers are earnest, committed, and zealous believers. You sacrifice, you love, you serve, you give.
Please don’t stop.
But remember, it’s healthy to also play.
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