Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Allison.

Today's scripture offers us a wiser way of being human as we step into the day.

As we've examined several relational themes this week, there's a tension many of us carry.

We want to be loving, but we also feel overwhelmed, tired, or stretched too thin. And sometimes we've

absorbed the teaching, spoken, or unspoken, that setting limits is selfish, that saying no is a failure

of love, that the more you give, the more Christ-like you are. Today's scripture offers a different

lens. Today's scripture is Proverbs 4 20 through 23.

My son, pay attention to what I say. Turn your ear to my words. Do not let them out of your sight.

Keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them and health to one's whole body.

Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

I want to start with some research here because I think it makes the biblical wisdom land a little

differently. In the 1900s, a researcher coined the term compassion fatigue to describe

something he was observing in caregiving professions, people like therapists, nurse, chaplains,

and social workers. These were people who gave and gave and eventually found that they had

nothing left to give, not because they stopped caring, but because they had depleted the very

resources that make caring possible. Now, most of us are not necessarily professional caregivers in the

clinical sense, but I'd be willing to bet that many of you listening are caring for a lot of people.

A spouse, children, aging parents, friends in crisis, a church, a community, maybe all of the above, all at once.

And you are doing it because you care, because you love them. But love, it turns out, has a biology.

And that biology has limits. The research here is so interesting. Studies have found when people

routinely override their own limits, their energy, their attention,

their emotional bandwidth, the quality of their care actually decreases.

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