I’ve only been severely dehydrated once in my life. I was living for a few years in the Old City of Delhi in India, and the day before had been waiting for a bus in the 110 F degree heat for a couple hours without any covering on my bald head. Smart, right? The next morning I woke up on the floor (which was my bed) with the room spinning as if a ceiling fan had been hot-wired into my brain. But while waiting the day before I had no awareness of the growing danger in my body of dehydration.

When life becomes too much for us, too draining and exhausting without enough nutrients of rest and hope and exercise and close relationships, we can slowly or very rapidly become dehydrated in our inner person. But with both physical dehydration or an inner life version, we often don’t notice how depleted we have become until too late.

A few months ago when we were in India again on one of our frequent trips, my wife learned this lesson about dehydration in a more stark manner than ever before. We had been at meetings in the eastern part of India just as a heat wave had begun. We lived in the nation for almost 30 years, including several episodes of heat waves, so we were not strangers to the effects. Both of us in this visit had been aware of our need to drink lots of water. Even with that awareness, my wife had somehow become dehydrated to an alarming degree. When she was in Kolkata briefly overnight on her way to join me in another part of the country, the effects hit.

As she exercised in the morning in her room, everything began to spin in the worst dizziness she had ever experienced. She fell to the ground, staying barely conscious enough to call the reception and get help. After being taken to the hospital and getting IV fluids, she recovered quickly but it was a scary experience. (A humorous aside to the story was that the city newspaper had been doing features on how people were experiencing the heatwave, and my wife’s story appeared with her photo in the paper with editions in several cities! Several of our friends and colleagues in these cities saw her story and texted us of their concern yet relief she was ok.)

Physical dehydration can be a killer if it goes on too long. Emotional and spiritual dehydration can also kill our soul and inner life in just as deadly a way. Having an awareness of our depletion is crucial whether experiencing the outward or inward version. But in my wife’s case, it was not only a need to be aware of her own need to drink plenty of water, but also she needed to know the intensity of the context she was in at the time. Sometimes we are physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually in such a draining outward context that it overwhelms our inner resources and leaves us gasping for vital nutrients.

In a positive sense, being dehydrated reveals our very longing and need for water or vital nutrients. In a similar way in our inner life, our longings and desires should be taken seriously and can lead us to places of fulfillment. But at times, we are so dehydrated emotionally and spiritually that we do not even realize that we have lost our desires and longings. In recent months, with wars continuing in Ukraine and Gaza and Israel and Lebanon and Ethiopia and Sudan (and more), and election partisanship in various nations like the USA and Britain, as well as a myriad of concerns more local in our lives, perhaps we have become even more drained than normal.

How do we get in touch with those longings, those thirsts and hungers? How do we know if we are dehydrated and not even aware of it? Here are some simple practices that can help us both physically and spiritually to stay hydrated and also deepen our thirsts:

1. Have a consistent intake of resources no matter what season of life or location we are in. In a physical sense of course this is water or nutrients as well as enough exercise and sleep. But in some settings that are extra dry or in a heat wave, there may need to be extra intake to meet the body’s needs. In our spiritual and emotional lives, this would involve enough rest and retreat times, and for me as a follower of Christ times of prayer and stillness and listening to and reading God’s Word in the Bible.
2. Periodically, do a ‘body scan’ of where you at overall in your health. This should involve at the very least having a yearly visit to the doctor for a physical exam. But it can also happen throughout the year, as we take time to listen to our body for a lack of resource, extra tiredness, continued pain. A regular body scan can also alert us to the need for more sleep, more or varied exercise, the impact of chronic anxiety or stress. Spiritually it can be helpful to do regularly the ancient Christian practice of the ‘Examen’, where we ask ourselves questions either at the beginning or end of the day. These questions are like a body scan of the soul and spirit. They can alert us to where we are comparing ourselves to others, feeling inadequate, out of touch with the grace and love of God, where God is at work in our lives sometimes in surprising ways, places in our day we can be specifically grateful, and more.
3. Build self-awareness in our. lives both in our physical lives but also in our emotions and spiritual life. We do that by paying attention to the little things around us each day, and making that a habit. And also by paying attention to our desires and longings. Sometimes our greatest areas of dehydration can be around those very desires that are most important to us. If we have a great love and desire to create beauty as an artist, perhaps we will feel even more dehydrated when we are in a season of a lack of thirst to create. Or if we are a writer, perhaps it is a season when we experience the drought of ‘writer’s block’. Those are not times to quit or give up, but to become aware of that dehydration and to keep feeding our soul or spirit even in small ways. At times that may mean reading poetry or the creative writing of others, or experiencing the beauty of nature.

These are just a few ways to be in touch with our need for hydration both in our outer and inner lives. I’m sure you can come up with a list of your own. Maybe even now you want to drink another glass of water, or another precious resource for your thirsty soul.