Do you fight to stay healthy as a parent? Do you make time to recharge your personal health (not just physical, but mental, emotional and spiritual too) so you can give your family your best?
There is a story in the Bible about Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist. In Matthew chapter 14, Herod, the Roman leader for Israel, has John beheaded. John’s disciples immediately go to Jesus and let him know.
In verse 13, it says, “When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.”
Jesus is grieved by John’s sudden and tragic death. All he wants is be by himself and go to his father to recharge and find comfort. At this time, the last thing he wants to do is help others.
But then life happens in the second half of the verse. “Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.” The crowd doesn’t care. All the crowd can think of is their needs. They want to be healed by Jesus.
Get the picture? All you want to do it go to the bathroom and two kids follow you there. You just want to veg out in front of the TV and a kid wakes up. So you do what Jesus did.
In verse 14, we see that “when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
That’s what we do. We go meet the need. We’re parents. It’s what we do. Every day. And it exhausts us.
But what if we also did what Jesus did after he met the need? In verse 22, it says, “Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray.”
See what happens? Jesus fought for his time alone with God so he could get recharged. The timing didn’t work at first, but that didn’t stop him. After he did what parents do by meeting the needs of the people around him, he made the disciples get in the boat.
What if we fought for our time to recharge? Like Jesus, we need our time to go “up on a mountainside to pray.” How do we do that? We have to “make the disciples get in the boat.”
If you are married, maybe you work it out with your spouse so you can cover for each other. It’s also okay to train your kids to not bother you for 10 minutes so you can be refreshed by the Lord. Maybe you get a babysitter for more extended times.
Jesus fought – he fought – for times with His Father so he could refresh Himself, in this case grieve the loss of his friend, and reenergize Himself so He could go out and fight the battles.
If Jesus needs to withdraw, then we desperately need it too. Fight for time to recharge your life and watch that time help you be a better parent.
