Source: www,sxc.hu

As we observed in a previous blog about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), many mission workers are prime candidates for suffering from this particularly pernicious illness.  Having said that, while we want to take this opportunity to warn people against it, we must be clear that this is an illness which can strike anyone.  It is a genuine medical condition and it is not a psychosomatic condition or a state of mind.

Nevertheless, it is also clear that while it can attack anybody, many of the people who suffer from it are overworked or highly stressed, and it appears that something about being under stress may weaken the victim’s ability to resist CFS, which typically follows a viral infection when the body’s immune reserves are already low.  So here are some of the steps that we can take to minimise the risk of succumbing to CFS.

Avoid getting ill!  Field health awareness training often forms part of the initial training for mission workers, but after our initial training we all tend to assume we know it all.  That’s when we fall into bad habits.  So it does no harm to review the basics.  Avoiding dehydration and exposure to the sun, maintaining a healthy diet, regular handwashing, taking appropriate prophylactics (particularly for malaria), ensuring our inoculations are up to date, and taking vitamin pills if necessary are all ways of ensuring that we remain generally healthy and avoid infection.

Look after number 1!  Taking care of yourself is not a popular concept among mission workers, who often think in terms of ‘laying down our lives’, but if we have a calling on our lives, surely our primary responsibility is to ensure that we stay well enough to fulfil that calling.  It is futile to work hard at it for a couple of years and then find ourselves invalided out of the field.  Way back in the seventeenth century Vincent de Paul, who himself was a noted charity worker, wrote:

It is a trick of the Devil, which he employs to deceive good souls,

to incite them to do more than they are able,

in order that they may no longer be able to do anything.

Souce: (www.sxc.hu)

Recognise our motivation.  While I’m sure we would all primarily claim to be serving God, what lies behind that motivation?  Despite our common belief that we are unconditionally loved by God, and are assured of our salvation, I find plenty of evidence that many of us are still trying to earn God’s love and pay for our place in heaven.  Or perhaps we are trying to prove to a long-dead grandparent, teacher or pastor that we can actually achieve something with our lives despite what they told us.  Others may be trying to gain significance, or to meet their own personal need to be needed.

Make appropriate lifestyle changes.  Armed with the self-awareness we have gained from above, how can we live more sustainably?  Key factors include learning to say no, recognising that just because something needs to be done it doesn’t mean we have to do it ourselves, cultivating ways of relaxing such as taking up a hobby, making time for regularly times of reflection, prioritising quality time with family or friends, and ensuring that we take our full holiday entitlement.

Hopefully, making such adjustments to our lifestyles will help us to stay healthier, and avoid exposing ourselves to unwanted illnesses like CFS.

For those people in the field, Syzygy delivers a day seminar called Why do we Choose to be Stressed? which deals with why we get stressed in the first place, and how we can manage our lifestyles more sustainably.  Please get in touch with us on info@syzygy.org.uk for further information.