Do you just have those days…weeks…months when you can absorb no more information? I find myself in that place at the moment. I was sick for a solid week which may account for the way I’m feeling, but I feel I’ve hit a wall. We all have thresholds, and because I tend to be a perfectionist I constantly find myself operating at near or top of my threshold. Sometime in the last week I went over the edge.
Like most of us my plate is too full, and it’s mostly my fault. I try to please everyone all the time…a big personality flaw I’m coming to realize. When you have a history of doing this it’s really hard to stop. When you start telling people “no” they tend to think something is wrong with you, because you’re were always there for them and suddenly you’re not. They get offended and hurt. At this point whether or not this turns into a unhealthy thing is totally up to you because you can respond in a couple of different ways. You can stand behind your decisions and deal with the uncomfortable-ness of it all (which is usually only short-term) or you can back down and continue down your previous path of appeasement and ultimately self-destruction.
I type this as sort of a declaration to the folks around me that for my mental and physical well-being things have got to change for me. Some of these changes may be drastic, but I feel safe in saying that 98 to 99% of them will be minor adjustments; however, they won’t go unnoticed by those who demand the most from me.
I think most of us become overwhelmed not by accepting large challenges which are beyond our coping skills but accepting too many small challenges which eventually become one big undefeatable monster challenge. That’s where I find myself right now.
I feel this all around me…personally and professionally. I see it happening to folks around me too. I work in ministry, and sometimes that’s harder than working for the secular world in that there is some kind of unwritten, over-reaching expectation that you must give more to your job because “you’re working for God.” Then they wonder why people burn out early, leave the ministry, or they simply fall ill…or dead. Yes, physically dead.
There’s also the pervasive fear about the economy which I believe has reached mass hysteria levels and has been over-fueled by politicians and the media. We are being fed information everyday which, I believe, is to make us falsely believe that there are situations out there that cannot be fixed by anyone but government. This is dangerous…very dangerous, and it really enrages me. Yes, there are truly problems in our country. There has been gross mismanagement in corporations, but I believe more mismanagement has gone in our government than in the private sector….another post for another day.
Anyway, to get back to the point it’s time I tune all that out, quit trying to please everyone all the time, and focus on the Truth. Everyday realities have zapped my relationship with God, and that’s got to change. All that will matter in the end is not did I please so and so here on Earth, but did I please God. When I stand before him all that will matter is hearing Him say, “Well done good and faithful servant.”
Right now, I don’t know if He could say that, and that rocks my world much more than any impending financial collapse.
That has to change…
1 Comment
February 18, 2009 at 9:46 PM
Ps. 127:1-2
It may well be that you saying “no” to people will be a means of sanctification for them.