After teaching and preaching on Sunday, I come home and usually find myself at one of two extremes.
Either I’m so wired from the day’s events my mind takes forever to “wind down” so I can go to sleep, or I’m so physically exhausted that I don’t feel good and go to bed early.
The latter is what happened last night.
You probably experience something similar on Sunday nights as well.
But no matter how Sunday night goes, I’m always in a kind of “mental fog” on Monday mornings. It’s difficult to focus on doing anything that requires my concentration. My creativity is at its worst on Monday mornings.
Mondays - especially Monday mornings - are a recovery time for preachers.
I usually keep a lighter schedule on Mondays to help me recover.
I do some writing, but nothing too terribly involved.
I review my plan for the week and organize what I hope to do each day.
And that’s usually all I plan to do on Mondays.
How do you approach your Mondays?
Mondays are strange in that we’re still tired from Sunday - and yet Monday is a fresh start to a new week of studying and preparing. And I always look forward to fresh starts.
So my challenge with Mondays is that I love the fresh start it brings - but I’m still trying to recover from teaching and preaching on Sunday.
Maybe you experience something similar - or maybe your experience is totally different.
It has been my habit to take Monday and Tuesday off. Others have two days in a row off, why not me? That means I work every Saturday. Think about this, if the church has a “workday” it falls on Saturday. So I’m already working and can be present. Vacations go from Wednesday through Sunday bookended with my normal days off
Mondays are always foggy for me. A couple extra cups of coffee and mindless activity is all I’m good for usually in the first part of the day. The second part of the day is when i start to think about the upcoming week.