Daily Prayer, 21 February

When I served as an enlisted sailor on submarines, once we got underway we set our clocks to Greenwich Mean Time and left them there until we pulled into port somewhere. I found that on a surface ship you couldn’t do that, because the sun remains a factor for their operation. So we often had to change time zones, and if you think changing your clocks twice a year is a pain, just think about adding the complications of watch stander rotations—who gets the extra time on watch? When do we eat?—to the effort of changing all of the clocks. Fortunately, such changes only come frequently when transiting to or from our deployment waters, mostly crossing the Atlantic. It was during one of those transits that I wrote this daily prayer.

Well, as you can tell from the fact that last night we had to change time zones, we are well on our way across the Atlantic. In preparation for the trip, just as we would before a long road trip back home, we topped off our fuel tanks (refueled at sea) before we set out. After all, there are not a whole lot of places to stop for gas across the Atlantic. It reminds me of a road trip I once took through southern Utah into Arizona. I doubted that there would be another open gas station until I got closer to Flagstaff, and so I stopped to top off the tank at what I feared was the last station on that road. Gas cost me more than $5 per gallon (though this may not seem as bad now, it was more than twice as much as I’d paid up until then.). This indicated to me that either this was the last stop, or I wasn’t the only fool who thought so.

One of the surprising contradictions of Navy Sailors is that we will often treat our gear with more care and concern than we give to ourselves.

However long or short this deployment will be, it will feel even longer if we don’t take care of ourselves. We have to keep gas in the tank and not wait until we’re coasting on fumes—or run out of gas altogether—before making self-care a priority. Waiting until the last possible moment is always more costly, too.

Someone once wrote that you should “treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping.” It’s amazing how often we forget that. In the Navy we might change the wording a little and say to “treat yourself like you would treat your gear.” You do preventive maintenance on your gear, keep the preventive maintenance up to date on yourself: Care for your mind by reading and learning new things. Care for your spirit with prayer and meditation. Care for your body with exercise and a good diet. We’ve got to keep gas in the tank or we will find ourselves powerless and adrift. Trust me, you don’t want to be stranded in southern Utah.

LET US PRAY

Lord, help us remember that we are responsible to ourselves and our shipmates for our own care and well-being. Give us the wisdom to keep gas in our mental, spiritual, and physical tanks throughout the coming months, so that we will be strong enough to face all of the challenges that come our way and will endure long enough to outlast the most tenacious foe. For You are a God of strength and power and to You we give glory, now and forever, and to the ages of ages

AMEN