Week Four: Day 5 – Saying No

There are so many good opportunities and yet I find the hardest thing is to say no and yet it’s also, I find, the healthy thing I am often called to. We have the delight of welcome guests into our home most days of the week – and yet we also have a Sabbath in which we don’t. We welcome guests and give them many opportunities – and yet we also define spaces where they cannot come. We give them many things – and yet we also find there are things we cannot give. People come needy and wanting things – and it’s hard to remember I have to say, “No,” that there are limits.

The same is true not necessarily with guests but also just my own experience of… well, most humanly, that I need sleep. That I have to stop. There is always more work to be done. I can make my body function on less sleep, but if I do it over and over again, everything suffers. So the boundary of actually going to bed on time or getting back on schedule when I have been off it is an ongoing lesson and challenge and yet it’s that choosing to stop, what must I say no to, that is actually the freeing “yes.” And I find that’s what I struggle with and that’s what people I listen to struggle with. What must I say “no” to so that I can actually be the most healthy?

– Br. Luke Ditewig

Question to Journal
To what will you say ‘no’ in order to say ‘yes’ to what is most important?