HEALTH and Wellness
One pastor’s story
By Barbara Y. Roseberry*
Wellness has become an integral part of my own faith journey. My journey has had its mountains and valleys, its detours and its circuitous routes along the way.
I was born into a family whose own wellness activity was rather passive. Although stories were shared about my father’s tennis playing days in college and my mom’s swimming prowess as a teenager, I mainly recall sunbathing on the beach during vacation and weekly “jumping up and down” in front of the TV as my dad cheered on any team connected to Pittsburgh sports.
As a teenager I went through the typical on-again, off-again diet crazes and my mom, who was a dietician by profession, was constantly telling me what I should not be eating. This only thwarted my own attempts at healthy eating all the more. Although I was a pretty good swimmer, my clumsiness and own ineptness on the playing field did not add to a healthy lifestyle, either. (I was the one always playing “right field.”)
In graduate school, my stress level was “over the top” and I ended up joining my first health club, lifting weights, using the sauna, whirlpool, and steam room, and swimming several times a week. This continued for several years, even into seminary, but wellness was still not a vital part of my overall lifestyle.
And then I fell in love with a fellow seminary student from the East Ohio Conference. Family gatherings included long walks after dinner, pick-up basketball games, pingpong tournaments. My husband was an avid sports fan. He LOVED baseball and golf, was always on some local softball/baseball team and my wedding gift was a set of beginner golf clubs. Add to this, a discipline of fasting during one Lent in seminary, which led to the lifestyle decision to stop eating beef and pork, and I was on the way to making some dramatic lifestyle changes.
For the next 10 years or so, I became more active physically, swimming at the local YMCA, playing golf periodically with my husband, participating in pick-up sports, and sticking to a no beef or pork diet. But the stress of being a pastor, wife, and mother of two small children, one who had multiple health problems, began taking its toll.
I was not as health-conscious as I had once been. And then my husband and oldest son died within months of each other, and I was left as the single parent of a 3-year-old. Journaling helped me with my emotional and spiritual wellness, and keeping up with an active child increased my physical activity, but it was a renewed commitment to a regular regimen of cardio-vascular exercise and a designed weight-lifting program at the local fitness center that has made a difference in my life. It has enabled me to cope with the stress of ministry, parenting, and life in general, as well as take time for myself.
With my father’s major heart attack several years ago and his struggle with diabetes, I was forced to look at my own mortality and how family genetics could play a major role in my own life journey. I changed my eating habits, lost weight, and increased my cardio exercise, and in so doing, hopefully, ensured that I would be around to watch my son marry and have children, to continue to encourage and support my congregation on their own faith journey, to accomplish the goals I have set for my own life, and to celebrate the joys and blessings of life that God has so richly blessed me with.
It has been a struggle, and it continues to be a struggle every day to find the time to live fully and healthy (I love eating out and I love my sleep), but through the grace of God, the journey will be worth it!
* Barbara Y. Roseberry, Pastor, Ashtabula First United Methodist Church
