A week or so ago, I was scrolling through Youtube as I often do, and a video called “I’m
Taking a Break! Here’s Why” by Trixie Mattel, one of my favorite drag queens, popped up. If
you don’t know about Trixie, she’s created something of a drag empire for herself since
competing in Season Six of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s released music as a singer-songwriter (I
listen to her country albums all the time!), she has a podcast and a few different shows, she owns
a makeup company, she frequently goes on tour to perform around the US and internationally,
and of course she’s very active on social media. There’s probably other things I’m forgetting,
since she notoriously always has something going on and is always releasing something new.
In this video that I mentioned, Trixie opens up about how her work ethic over the years
hasn’t always been very healthy. After her childhood growing up in a poor family in rural
Wisconsin, she’s proud of herself for the empire she’s created, for all the financial security (and
then some) she’s been able to get for herself and her mother. But often, her workaholic
tendencies have been at the cost of her well-being. She finds herself doing much more than she
needs to do to live comfortably. In the video, she talks about how, especially in the past year, her
mental and physical health have been suffering as the result of how busy she is. She struggles to
feel happy, and she’s been losing a lot of weight. So she’s taking a sabbatical this summer,
taking a break from drag and getting off social media entirely to rest and make time to see
friends and family.
Self-care has been a big topic of discussion over the past few years, and I’m glad for that.
Self-care, resting, resetting, or whatever you want to call it, is so important—but it’s something
that often goes neglected in our culture. It feels especially meaningful when people like Trixie,
who we admire for what we might see as an entrepreneurial spirit and a solid work ethic, come
out and tell us that actually making ourselves busy all the time is not so good at all.
A couple weeks ago, for another faith community I’m connected with, I preached on 1
Kings 19:2-9, where Elijah is running through the wilderness from an unjust ruler who wants to
kill him. He finds himself exhausted and in absolute despair. And God does not tell him to just
keep running, at least not right away. God calls him to rest, to sleep, to eat some food and drink
some water before he continues on his way. It’s doing this that gives Elijah strength for the rest
of his journey.
I often find in church life that it’s easy to get focused on the work aspects of being a
church, to attend more to our Martha tendencies than our Mary tendencies. And sometimes,
that’s fine. After all, the work we do as a church is so important and so vital to keeping a faith
community alive and growing. But at the same time, if all we do is work without taking time to
rest, we’ll wind up burning ourselves out completely. So I’ll encourage you this week, like Trixie
Mattel on her sabbatical, like Elijah sleeping under a tree in the wilderness, or like Mary
listening at Jesus’s feet, to recognize when you need to rest and reset, because caring for yourself
is holy and sacred too.