Chronic Illness in the Body of Christ

Post Author: Rev. Elizabeth Davidson

As a chronically ill clergywoman, sometimes I’m afraid the Great Physician is just another dismissive doctor waiving off my debilitating symptoms as normal and it’s up to me to manage on my own time. A bit more communion and intentional daily prayer so easily becomes the sacred equivalent to diet, exercise, and better stress management, the holy trinity of advice for any condition that is not readily apparent in the standard bloodwork and the observations of an annual wellness check-up. 

The problem is, many maladies – particularly those that disproportionately impact women – don’t show up in these tests that have been designed and implemented based on research that centers white men. Instead, they show up in our bodies. They rely on us to pay attention, to bear witness to and honor them, which is tricky business in a society deeply invested in dissociating us from our bodies and their needs so long as we keep working. Though the central story of Christianity revolves around the experience of the incarnation – of the very embodiment of the Divine – we still tend to hold the actual humans in our midst to more capitalistic standards of performance and productivity. We prioritize the deadlines of church newsletters, worship planning calendars, local and denominational traditions, and the liturgical year over the rhythms of the bodies and spirits of those within our particular communities. Ironically, the church year and Sunday services once drawn from the changing seasons and our God-given commandment of weekly Sabbath have lost their connection to creation. Now they require tremendous amounts of artificial energy to sustain a pace that is anything but natural for most, if not all, of us. No wonder attendance, volunteership, membership, and giving fluctuate so wildly in many of our contexts; it is not only understandable but essential for survival that people pull back where they can in order to continue showing up to their mandatory obligations, like work and family life, for example. 

But what of us “professional Christians,” as my family jokingly refers to me? All clergy share the burden of navigating the challenging position of being both a leader of the faith community and a follower of Christ, but the dominant social narratives of women as sacrificial caretakers create unique challenges for women in these roles.   

Years of relationship with fellow clergywomen and numerous research studies by experts in the fields of vocation and wellbeing confirm the alarmingly high rates of physical, emotional, and spiritual burnout among clergywomen – even higher among clergywomen of color, queer and trans clergywomen, and others with multiple marginalized identities. I fear we have cultivated a sort of autoimmune disorder of the body of Christ when we force the very people we entrust with the care and leadership of our faith communities to overfunction with inadequate rest and resources. And sadly, when burnout inevitably disrupts faith leaders’ performance, we blame those suffering for not taking better care of themselves, setting better boundaries, or asking for help sooner. 

Dear ones, what if, instead of placing the burden on the individual to keep going at all costs, instead we reimagined the very structures of our community to better reflect the scarred and sore and sanctified body of the resurrected Christ? What would it look like to attune our work and worship to the cycles of God’s creation, accommodating the inevitable ebbs and flows in energy and ability that are common to us all? When faced with an acute mass disabling event like the COVID-19 pandemic, out of necessity the Church dove head first into creatively reimagining community through online engagement and leaning into shared rituals of our faith that could be practiced independently while reinforcing the bonds of community. Many of these practices have remained even as more traditional in-person gatherings resumed, a case study in the ways accommodations to the most vulnerable among us benefit the whole body.

How might we as clergywomen creatively come together to nurture not only one another but also those in our congregations and communities as whole human beings worthy of the same tender care and reverence we praise in the women of the Gospel who lovingly tended to the body of Christ long after their brothers were ready to bury the body and move on? Wherever it may lead, it begins when we are courageous enough to tell one another the truth about all that we are carrying in our minds, bodies, and spirits, allowing our sisters to meet us, believe us, and hold us in our pain and support us in our healing.