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Part 08: Performance Issues Continued

10/14/2008 7:21:57 AM

Journal Entry (after surgery)

I’m having a difficult time feeling weak.  Right now I wish I had a month ahead of me instead of two weeks—but you know what?  I really do.  I’m the one putting pressure on myself to return in four weeks.  I’m the one who thinks I should be able to do it.  No wonder I’m depressed.

Journal Entry

If what I do in my doctoral project is my construct of reality, then if someone disagrees, it just means their construct isn’t the same as my own.  I realized today that this is what was bothering me.  If I am my standards (e.g., of perfection), etc., then I’ll never live up to what I should be.  No wonder I’ve felt scared.  If you are your standards, then you’ll always fear failure, because your failure will say something about who you are.

Same with teaching.  My passion can come through but not in a way that insists people see and accept my point of view.  If I am my standards, then when someone disagrees, it’s an attack on me.  But if my work is my construct, then they’re just seeing differently.  It’s not a mark against them or me.  When I see this, I don’t feel the need to put people down when they don’t agree with me.

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I think one of my fears has been that my mind won’t work (in the doctoral project), that I won’t be able to wrap around/absorb/understand the concepts and how they fit together with leadership.  I think my reaction to the surgery scared me; it felt an awful lot like clinical depression again.

But you know, none of what I think originates or comes solely from me.  When I have the thoughts I do that are of value, it is clearly only the dance with the Holy Spirit that makes them possible.  Without God, they fall hollow, and empty and incomplete.

Journal Entry

I get very impatient with myself when I focus on someone’s reaction to me in the congregation, when I can’t be perfectly self-differentiated and let go completely of my need for approval (notice the absolutes).  I must be more compassionate with myself or I’ll be impatient and irritable with others.  I remember reading somewhere that the things that irritate us in others are the things we can least accept in ourselves.

Journal Entry

 I think what I want to know more than anything, is that I haven’t failed God.  I don’t think it’s the old need for approval, or maybe so.  I remember the dream where I was following Jesus, and the tortoises came up out of deep water and got me, and I allowed them to.  We can’t both follow and stay focused on the past, or what we did wrong or what might have been.  We allow God to teach us, we learn, and get on with life.  And we don’t allow others to hold us to the past either, by their inability to forgive, resentment, etc.

If in fact I’ve made so many mistakes here it’s not recoverable, that says something about certain people, too.  About their inability to forgive.  I must continually keep my eyes on Christ, because if I don’t, if I focus on possible or real mistakes, etc., Christ will be so far out in front of me, I’ll get lost.

Journal Entry

I haven’t written, or wanted to, for several days.  I thought I had nothing to write but that in itself should be a clue that I’m shut down in some way, or troubled.

I’m really focusing on a few anxious people in the congregation—viruses—who are finding host cells.  I know I must address this situation, but I don’t think that’s mainly what’s bothering me.  It’s a touchy subject but it’s also an opportunity to teach.

What makes it hard and perhaps why I’ve been avoiding addressing it, is that I believe what they’re saying.  Or, at least it’s a question in my mind.  I do feel like the congregation is falling apart (they’d say it’s not the same place) and that I haven’t been a particularly good pastor.

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I still tend to get caught up in feelings of failure and would God have called me to stay at the congregation had I responded differently?

Life is not that simple, and can’t be divided that easily into categories of failures and successes; there are few straight lines of cause and effect, for we are the living body of Jesus Christ.

It’s not a matter of failure or success; it’s a matter of faithfulness, so maybe that’s why it troubles me so deeply.  And then I frame my question: have I failed God?

What matters, what really matters, is that God has brought me to this time and place—we’ve been in a dance of life, my God and I, which continues.  God is leading and I follow the best I am able.  Sometimes I step on his toes, sometimes I try to push him in another direction.  But ultimately, I yield my life to you, Lord.  I can’t be happy any other way.

Journal Entry

Those old feelings of distance and separation, because I believe I have nothing to offer.  At what point will I believe I have?

Whatever it is that’s bothering me is also causing me to distance myself from God.  I don’t feel close, even when he is with me.  I feel cold, lonely, unreachable.  I feel inadequate, and wonder how God can ever use me.  Am I focused on performance again, or is it mainly disequilibrium?  Probably both.

Journal Entry

As I think back over the last weeks of preparation—getting ready to move, yes, there have been times when I’ve been compulsively pushing myself beyond the limits, but that doesn’t make the whole thing compulsive.  I look at times when I do that and feel shame, and then all those old feelings of failure and being driven return.  I guess I’m pretty hard on myself sometimes.

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