balance – Salvaged Faith

What are you even doing here?

Posted on January 27, 2020Leave a comment

I am exactly nine days into my renewal leave and I had a dream last night about an Administrative Council meeting.

I was back at church with all of those familiar faces, reconnecting and catching up and it was wonderful… only something was terribly wrong.

I wasn’t supposed to be there.

Last night, in reality, there was an Ad Council meeting at church and I didn’t actually go. We have great capable leaders and they are awesome without me.

But in my dream… I was there.

In my dream, I had stopped by for some reason or another. And I kept talking with people. I kept answering questions. And before I knew it, I looked at the clock and it was 10:15 pm!

I remembering a feeling of intense panic. I was on renewal leave. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be home with my spouse and I had completely blown him off. I turned to a colleague who was sitting next to me with terror all over my face. He looked at me, partly with pity and partly with frustration. “What are you even doing here?” he asked.

One of the things that I find incredibly difficult is disconnecting from work. Because I love it. Because I’m good at it. Because it feels good, even when it is stressful, to help other people and make things work the way they should.

So far, I confess, on this renewal leave I have checked my email once.

I was looking quickly for responses to a very last minute proposal I had about changing a meeting date when I returned. I wanted to see what the responses were so I could communicate the date change with my family.

But I also glanced and saw a notification from the hospital about a church member who had been admitted. The feelings of guilt started to creep in. What if they need me? What if no one shows up? What if, heaven forbid, someone dies while I’m gone? I had to pray to God for peace and talk myself down for about an hour. “This is why you left them in the absolutely capable hands of an amazing colleague… Even Jesus took breaks… You are not the be-all and end-all of the care system at that church… Even if you miss a funeral while you are away, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still provide care when you get back...”

But there was also that pesky internal critic: “See, this is why you shouldn’t check your email when you are supposed to be on break. It sets you on a tailspin of wanting to be there and respond and make it all better. And that’s not what this time is about.”

And you know what… that internal critic is right. There do need to be boundaries between my church life and my home life. I need to be able to have some dedicated space carved out for sabbath and family and renewal – not just during these four weeks, but every week. Every day, really.

For years I have had a signature line on my email that reads, “Fridays and Saturdays are my Sabbath days. I look forward to responding when I am back in the office on Monday.”

But in the past year, have I actually stopped checking my email on the weekends? Have I been holding firmly to that boundary?

The week before I left, I sent a pretty important email to my SPRC chair. Before bed, I checked my email, saw he had responded, and shot off a reply.

And immediately I got another back. He said something to the effect of: Are you on call 24/7?

It was a reminder that the expectations I have been putting on myself are not the same as what the congregation actually needs or expects.

Or maybe it should have been heard more like that colleague in my dream, with pity and frustration: “What are you even doing here?”

There have been legitimate emergencies and exceptions in the course of my ministry that have called me away from my Sabbath and home time. The panicked texting of a teenager in the middle of the night who feels unsafe. The early morning trips to the hospital before a surgery to pray. The call on a Saturday afternoon that someone has died. Two entire weeks spent out of state for General Conference.

But an email is not an emergency.

A meeting I am not responsible for is not an excuse for breaking boundaries.

A text or voicemail that can wait until the next day is not a sufficient reason to give up time with friends or family.

And maybe in those spaces and those moments when I am tempted to show up or respond or engage I need to keep that voice in the back of my mind:

“What are you even doing here?“

That voice comes along with other questions like:

Why have you given this energy when it can wait?
Why are you sacrificing this time you have set aside for family?
Is this really about them? Or is it about you and your own need to feel needed?
What are you avoiding by choosing to spend your time this way?
Who else can help/support/respond?

I woke up from that dream with my heart in my throat. I’m anxious that this time of renewal and rejuvenation will simply result in a return to old patterns and behaviors.

I mean, I’ve never been five hours late home, like I was in this dream… but I have spent an entire evening only partially present: checking emails, responding to texts, thinking and pondering something that needed to be done the next day.

And when I’m in that space, the truth is, I’m not really home. Not fully, anyways.

So if nothing else, one of the things I want to carry back into the real world with me is the avoidance of that little voice: “What are you even doing here?”

And I think that I can prevent that question from needing to be asked by utilizing some tools that have been really helpful during this time away. Things like changing my notification settings on my phone so that emails don’t show up during evening hours. Or, putting my phone with my wallet instead of carrying it around all the time. Or removing the Facebook app from my phone. Honestly, its randomly coming across a pastoral care concern or a church polity question on facebook that often prompts me reaching out with an email or a text or response when it could legitimately wait until the next day.

I think remembering that little voice will hold me accountable to my boundaries. I think it will remind me that I don’t have to be “on” 24/7. I think it help me think of those who are impacted by where I choose to spend my energy – for good or for bad. There is a whole lot of truth jam-packed in that little question: “What are you even doing here?”

Turning It Off

Posted on November 11, 2013Leave a comment

The balance of self-care, Sabbath, and work is sometimes a tenuous one in my life so I try to set boundaries and guidelines for myself.

They are:

never work more than two blocks in a day (morning, afternoon, evening)
take two days off every week
take all of the vacation time allotted to me

The easiest to follow probably has to do with vacation time. My family has planned some vacations together and setting aside those weeks to go and be with them has made it easy to take full advantage of the time given.

One of the ways that I try to honor my commitment to take two days off every weeks it to be flexible about which days those are. With my work as a state-wide coordinator, my schedule varies greatly. Sometimes those days off are a full Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I move them around and take time in the middle of the week instead.

The same goes with the two blocks in a day. To allow for the chaos of ministry, focusing on those two blocks means I can sleep in after late evening meetings, or take an afternoon off to play disc golf if I know I’m going to be working the rest of the day. If in a particular day, it is not possible, then I steal a block from another day and make space for two blocks of rest then. At least, that’s the idea.

Lately, however, I’ve been struggling.

It is a blessing and a curse to do work that you love, because while it is incredibly fulfilling, it is also very hard to put down. I have been fed by and energized by this work and there is always so much to do. It is never-ending work and while I trust in God’s working even when I take time to rest, I really don’t want to stop! And I’ve been discovering that there are a few particular things that make this idea of rest even more difficult. It’s hard to turn off your brain. It’s hard to turn off the phone. It’s hard to turn off the computer.

Imagine No Malaria has provided an outlet for a lot of creativity in my life. I’m doing graphics, website design, social media, writing – all sorts of things I love. And I could tinker with graphics and websites eternally. I’ll wake up with an idea about how to sell an idea or a plan to present something and those ideas don’t stop when I’m baking or hanging out with friends. I have scraps of paper littering my desk with ideas and to-dos of things I have thought up at random moments. More often than not, I’ve been in my office, working hard and forget to stop for lunch or lose track of time and need to be reminded by my husband it’s dinner time. When you love what you do, it’s hard to turn off the brain and let go of the work.

I’ve also noticed that working from home, the technology I use day in and day out makes it harder to find balance. When I hop on the computer on a day off to check my personal facebook account, I also find myself glancing at the project page or responding to a question someone posted. When I left something open on the desktop and come downstairs in the morning (even if I’m taking that morning off), I find my eyes drifting to it and starting to work on it even when I didn’t intend to. My office is also the place where I play video games and listen to music and practice guitar. It is not some separate place I can close the door on and leave behind. My car takes me to speaking events and to the grocery store… and glancing in the back seat on a day off I’ll notice that thing that I had forgotten and will go home and pick up the piece of work instead of letting it rest.

And then there is my phone. I’m typically okay at screening phone calls and letting them go to voice mail on days off… at least when I was in the local church. But it’s a lot harder to do that when it’s the Bishop who is dialing your number. It’s hard to ignore the blinking blue light on my phone that indicates a new email. I’m not getting emergency phone calls in the middle of the night, but that quick text back to someone who asked you a question about a document seems so easy to do when you are in the middle of watching a football game with your husband.

I guess one of the things that is a common thread, one of the reasons it is hard to turn off the work is that it doesn’t feel like work. It is a joy. It is fulfilling. It is making a difference. But the truth is, I’m not very good at keeping it from impinging on sacred time of rest.

So I’m going to work harder at turning things off… turning off the wi-fi that picks up new emails… turning off the ringer on game day… closing documents… closing the door to the office if I have to. I think that also means allowing myself to turn off the brain and let a few ideas go instead of pursuing them immediately.

Yesterday, I re-installed a game on my computer and played for two hours. I ignored the documents. I let the ideas rest. It was nice to turn off for a bit.

truth and repentance #gc2012

Posted on April 28, 2012Leave a comment

Last night, our General Conference participated in an act of repentance toward healing relationships with Indigenous Peoples. I’m not entirely sure what I expected from the service of worship, but it was more somber and prophetic than I had imagined. There was less imagery and pageantry and more thoughtfulness and truth-telling. And the language used was much more radical than I had expected.

As people of this world, we have perpetuated crimes against our brothers and sisters. We have taken land, forced our perspectives, and destroyed cultures. We have not only committed sins of omission for not helping, but we have actively resisted the peace process and we have have gone into places as a violent force. We heard stories about the role of Methodists in slaughter in the Phillippines, in the Sand Creek Massacre, in the Trail of Tears, in Africa, in Norway, in places all across this globe where we have done damage in the name of Jesus Christ for our own personal and corporate benefit.

It was hard to hear. It was hard to relive. It was hard to dream that reconciliation is ever even possible, that damage could be reversed, that wounds could be healed.

And it was a powerful witness by our leadership that this was not a time OF reconciliation. This is merely the first step. We have to know what we have done and we have to feel pain about it. That pain leads us to repentance. That pain leads us to weep at what we have done.

In the service of worship, there were not celebrations or even folks there who we could apologize to. Rev. Tinker made it very clear that others are not at the table because we cannot just say we are sorry and move on. We are not at a point of reconciliation yet… but he is walking with us because he knows how difficult it is to repent and he is walking beside us in the process. That point was driven home again and again and it was important to hear.

Our call now is to be in repentance. To be continually repentant. To take a step forward every day. To work for harmony and balance in all that we do.

One step forward.

May we not take two steps back…

What tires you?

Posted on October 4, 20112 Comments

I recently had my annual interview with my conference superintendent. We talked about what was going on in the church, the joys and the struggles of ministry in a small town like Marengo, and I had a chance to talk about what I feel is a calling to revitalize small to medium sized churches like the one I am currently serving.

But about three fourths of the way through our conversation, he stopped me and said: A few times now you have used phrases like “in a rut,” “tired,” and “wears me out.” What is going on with that?

I had not even realized that I had been doing it. And as I sat there and thought, my work had very little to do with why I was feeling that way.

My ministry was feeling some of the side effects of what was going on in other parts of my life.

So I’ve been thinking really hard this week about what exactly it is that is wearing me out. Stress, conflict, exhaustion in some areas of our lives bleed through to the ones that are going well. So you can’t ignore it. You have to figure it out and work on dealing with it.

What is wearing me out?

To have a baby or not

It seems like everyone around me is pregnant or just had a baby. I’m twenty-nine years old and I was convinced that I would have babies (yes, plural) by this point. But my husband doesn’t want children. He can’t imagine how they would fit into our crazy, busy lives. And he’s right. Our lives as they are right now don’t work for children. They would have to change. I am okay with that, he’s not.

So, for months now, we have been avoiding the conversation. And not having a conversation is as hard as having it. I mean, how do you compromise on something like that? Either we have kids or we don’t… One of us is going to not get our way. And that reality in itself is hard for someone like me, who wants it to be fair for everyone, to deal with.

But, we finally did it. We had the conversation. A big, long conversation. As I thought about all of the things that I am asking my husband to compromise on in this life as a pastor’s spouse (where we live, when we move, what kind of community we live in, potentially asking his own work to take a back seat at some point), I want to try to let him have this one. And in the end, I promised that I would live into the reality and sit with the idea that we aren’t going to have kids. As I have done this these past few weeks, it has been easier. The craziness that is teenage life expressed among my youth group kids helps (yikes! I pity you parents!). Having adorable nephews and a niece to pour out all of my love on makes a huge difference (I can spoil them and wind them up and then leave!). And considering the fact that I have not had a weekend free since the middle of August, our lives really are just too crazy to stick a baby into the middle of it right now.

That doesn’t mean that every time I see a baby I don’t get a twinge in my heart. It doesn’t mean that I’m 100% okay with not having kids. But I love my husband. And to be honest, I love my crazy and busy life, too. And so we are going to try to make this decision work. But, please, for now, stop asking when we are going to have kids!

Family stress

There is a lot going on in my extended family right now that also adds stress and conflict and emotional burdens to my life right now. So much so that as I sat in a funeral for a friend’s grandparents this past weekend, the tears just would not stop. I’m mourning the loss of what was and it feels like we can never go back… the relationships are so damaged that I really cannot see a way forward. Carrying that pain is exhausting, but letting it go means that I have given up.

That conflict seems to also affect other relationships that are experiencing conflict… ones that would not have been so burdensome otherwise. When I see firsthand what happens when problems are not addressed, and then watch other people in my life make similar choices to sweep things under the rug, I cringe, imagining the worst of what might happen.

I am so grateful for my brothers who are right there beside me walking this hard road and I can already see the ways that my family has been brought closer together as we protect and love and support one another… and as we commit ourselves to talking about what is going on in our lives, instead of pretending.

Exercise? What’s that?
The hard part about really loving your work is that it takes over your life if you let it. And I have. It has been so flexible lately that I don’t have a routine for my home life. And so I’m doing good things and come home tired and instead of taking care of myself (especially my body), I sit in front of the television and let my brain turn into a pile of goo. Exercise gives endorphins and makes you feel good and I just have not been keeping up with it lately. But my mom and I are going to start holding one another accountable and that should help. =)

Our lives need balance and they need support. When one area of our relationships or work or health is not functioning fully, the whole system can fall apart. So take a good hard look… what is tiring you out? And what can you do to take that seriously?