Part 03 - The Need for Validation10/14/2008 7:21:01 AM Everyone appreciates recognition for a job well done. For part of our life, at least, we carry around an internal passport that occasionally needs validated in order for us to enter the state of self-respect. We may say the opinions of others don’t matter, but unless we have consciously resolved this issue, we will ride the waves of highs and lows depending upon how others perceive the quality of our work or contribution (to society, our community, etc.). You’ll see in the journal entries below that I was wrestling with this very issue. At one time in my life, need for approval was the unconscious driving force. I realized what was operating within me now was different. I didn’t like the fact I needed recognition, but I couldn’t seem to let it go. Journal Entry Why, I ask myself over and over, do I have such a need for validation? This confuses me. I no longer need personal approval from people (I want you to like me), but I feel such a need to have my parishioners and colleagues recognize what a good pastor I am. I’m constantly monitoring them to try and understand what they expect of me, and how it is I can meet those expectations. My days are ordered by thoughts of what a pastor is supposed to do. Half the time I can’t tell if others expect these things of me or if I expect them of myself. What image of the ‘perfect’ pastor do I carry in my head that tells me when I’m succeeding and that haunts me when I fail? And where on earth did that image come from? Why don’t I ever ask myself why I have such a need to meet those expectations? What will happen to my world if I stopped trying to meet every one’s expectations—including my own—and just be myself? Do I have any idea what that would even be? Oh, God, I’m so tired. Journal Entry I felt anger when I read ----‘s letter and I had to work through it. Why do I need people to agree with me intellectually? If they don’t, I label them (or ‘it’) stupid—‘I’m amazed they can’t see that.’ Just another form of need for approval, for validation. People must approve my ideas in order for me to feel a connection with them. I’ve asked God to give me discernment and boy, is he ever! I thought he’d sort of fill me with the Holy Spirit, though; nothing this painful. To self-differentiate, to truly be myself, and to see without judgment is a gift, and it brings tremendous freedom. I need to learn to see people not as good or bad, which often means agreeing or disagreeing with me, but as looking at the world differently. I’m trying to find a balance between relinquishing control and yet maintaining oversight/awareness. It means being willing to accept the decisions of the congregation or council that I may not be entirely comfortable with; not seek to control every issue as though I alone have insight. Journal Entry It’s precisely in my weakness, in my lack, that God will work. That doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for continuing to grow, but that God will be with me in my smallness. If God chooses to use me in a certain way, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. My academic credentials are not the issue; God’s call is. I am not my academic credentials. Academic credentials are what I have; they only show I’ve done this work in this area. They don’t identify me nor speak to my whole experience. And I can’t pretend to be ‘wiser’ in order to compensate. Journal Entry I think about my attitude re: the least of these, and how I see some as deserving and some as undeserving (I preached on that last Sunday). I think about people like ----, and ----, and how I’ve tended to pull away from them. Do I really see them as undeserving, or just so demanding that it would be easy to get swallowed up? If the problem/task isn’t putting limits on other people, but on my need of them (for approval, validation that I’m a good pastor—i.e., my reaction to them), then is distancing necessary? (I’m beginning to figure out that the problem isn’t the expectations of others but my need to meet those expectations in order to feel validated in my work. Why am I allowing the expectations of others to drive me or determine how I feel about myself? Good question.)
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