Fire Hoses and Bon Jovi

Yesterday was one of those days. From the moment you wake up, it feels like there’s a firehose pointed directly at your face.

Someone might ask, “But did the water taste good?”

And you scream back over the stream, “I don’t know! I can’t process it! THERE’S JUST TOO MANY WATER!!!”

The sheer volume of needs, my own, my kids, my friends, work, and church work just blasted me all day and I could never quite catch a breath and I could never quite finish any task before a new one popped to the top of the priority list.

Were there good things in my day? Totally! But I couldn’t process them because THERE WAS TOO MANY WATER!!!

Then as I was driving home from Cub Scouts at 8:30 at night, I turned on the radio and Brother Jon Bon was preaching to me. “Livin’ on a Prayer.” And I thought, besides when I first work up, did I pray at all today?

The answer is nope. It didn’t even occur to me. If it had occurred to me, it’s totally possible I would have decided I didn’t have time. Because the fire hose. And because the exhaustion. But it totally would have helped. Because the fire hose. And because the exhaustion.

This comes back to water for me. I am a huge believer in staying hydrated, but the more dehydrated I get, the less desire I have to drink water. It seems crazy but it’s true.

The hungrier I am, the less I feel like making food.
The lonelier I feel, the harder it is to reach out to a friend.
The dirtier my house is, the less I want to clean it.
The busier my day is tomorrow, the more I dread going to bed, even though I know I’ll need the extra sleep.

When life is overwhelming, when we’ve let things get out of hand, it’s really hard to pull it back together. Sometimes we need to pause and refocus.

Tell ourselves:

You will feel better if you take the time to eat something.
I know it’s hard but the loneliness will dissipate if you have some company.
You can’t clean it ALL at this point but if you empty the dishwasher, you’ll slow the decline into chaos and make tomorrow easier.
Staying up late doesn’t actually make tomorrow come more slowly. It just makes it come with a punch to the face.

Even if prayer isn’t your thing, you know that taking a few minutes to breathe and mediate in the middle of a firehose day will help you refocus and be more effective. If you can’t drink all of the water, take a few minutes to turn off the hose and decide which drops you can actually consume. Then go get it.

This is what I was thinking about as Bon Jovi sang my way home. But I was too tired to write about it.

Today my hose is back down to a manageable stream. I still plan to turn it off for a few minutes and regroup throughout the day.