By about May every year, schoolteachers, ministers, and religious professionals will often talk about feeling “crispy.” What we mean is that we’re less patient, less creative. We know that we are quicker to feel irritable, so we try to give each other more grace. We try to remind ourselves to maybe not trust our brains as much as normal. We consider that maybe we aren’t doing our best thinking – our feelings may be interfering with our thought processes.

A step above that is “crunchy.” It’s a little more so than crispy. Our memory is shot, we don’t have the same optimism and enthusiasm. One of the challenges with feeling crunchy is that it’s hard to believe that this feeling is temporary. Some rest, a little time off, and we’ll be back and raring to go, brimming over with new ideas.

After this year of pandemic … well, how are you? Ya feeling a little crispy, maybe even crunchy?

Now is the time for all of us to look for what renews us. It was an aha moment for me, several years ago, to learn that “rest” and “recovery” are two different things. I guess athletes already knew this. Recovery for most athletic endeavors doesn’t mean that you just stop using your muscles. You also may do some gentle stretch exercises, maybe get a massage, or sit in a whirlpool.

What is it that renews you? Where do you go, or what do you do, that gives you not just rest but replenishment?