Let’s Take a Break

Etymology was a bad idea, today.  Yet here I sit, wondering how it is that words and phrases are fluid and not having enough self-control to avoid writing about it…

I guess this is #MinistryMonday on Tuesday, because it’s going to be that kind of week.

Webster defines “take a break,” as, “to stop doing something for a short period of time: to rest.”  If you want to use it in a sentence, you might say, “I'm tired. Let's take a break.”

Oh goodness, am I ever tired…

Growing up, taking a break sounded something like that moment when you walked outside for a breath of fresh air or decided to listen to one more song between math problems.  As I got older, it was more like the fifteen minute reprieve in the middle of a work day.  I never really wanted to take a full “lunch,” because then I just got home later.  But somehow, these four little words morphed into a declaration of mammoth relational proportions in the past decade.  Taking a break sounds a little more like breaking up now, except maybe unilateral…

I could be over thinking it, but to “take” is to “get into one's hands or into one's possession, power, or control: such as to seize or capture physically… to get possession of.”

That doesn’t seem very relational.

There are a lot of definitions for break, which include, “to separate into parts with suddenness or violence… to cause an open wound… to rupture… to render inoperable… violate… disrupt the order… crush the spirit… cause a sudden and significant decrease in value…”

Um… also not relational.

Hey, let’s take a break!  Let me control how very deeply I damage you.  But don’t worry.  It’s just temporary.  

Something is not right about this.

Now, before anybody really freaks out about this post, I have to tell you that the whole thing began when I simply said to myself, “I really need to take a break from social media, but I can’t figure out how.”

I admit that sounds at least mildly pitiful, but my problem is that all of my ministry related social media feeds are linked to my personal stuff, so if I take a break from all the drama and debate and crap, I also have to take a break from the blogging and podcasting and editing and vocational interaction, so it legitimately doesn’t work for me… unless I assume a pseudonym or something.  I think this might be the part where even though I preach transparency (or at least translucency), I encourage every person in ministry to create a fake ID, set up a Swiss bank account, and buy a believable mask…

OK, tempting, but not really.

I wonder, though, if taking a break from people also causes us to neglect all of the good, important, life giving pieces we should be embracing.  Ah… there’s the application.

Living uncompartmentalized and holistically is so much harder than I thought it would be…

L.