It is one of the best things to open my November/December calendar and discover empty weekends this year! It’s still a novelty to have free weekends because I spent several years where every Saturday and Sunday were devoted to Christmas music ministry (praise band, praise team, sound team).
This year, we can make plans and not have to shuffle them
around children’s Christmas musical practices (which were Fridays/Saturdays/some
Sundays), adult cantata practices (some Saturdays/Sunday afternoons), Hanging
of the Greens practices (usually Thanksgiving weekend and all Sunday afternoon
just before performance Sunday night), and praise team practices (which were
held every Saturday morning). It wasn’t uncommon for children’s and adult
practices to be back-to-back meaning we’d be at the church for 4-6 hours a day
plus the time spent with praise team on Saturday/Sundays and church services.
When I look at my empty calendar and then reflect how my
schedule usually plays out in November and December, I feel sweet relief. There
are moments when I really miss my church music friends and the opportunities to
make music with them, but those moments are quickly overshadowed with the
stress that I still feel when I think about those days or the shame over getting so
sucked up into the churchy bubble when 95% of my life happened outside of
church but yet my whole life was for the church.
It’s embarrassing to think of all the festive activities and
parties we turned down because they conflicted with practices. I turned down
friends when they had real needs, but after spending all day at church, I had nothing
to left to give anyone. This is where I hoped that good intentions would be good enough because it was all I had to offer (ouch!). There were weekends when I sacrificed our family
traditions or rushed my family through Christmas activities so I could be back
at church for another practice or to get my own practice time in so I’d be
ready for practice. I dreaded November and December because I knew it would be
one big juggling act that would leave me stressed and frustrated because it’d
be another year of giving up the things I really wanted to do for something I
still wanted to do but somehow, it overtook everything!
What I didn’t know last November and December (and the ones
before that) that I know now is that boundaries are necessary within church
life. It’s okay to say no to good things. All of my life, I was taught that we
need to be there for the church and that God has equipped us with special abilities and talents to use for the church. Growing up, I was taught that it’s our duty as believers
to be there for others and to be there for the church and that often came at the
expense of our home life as children. I grew up thinking it was my calling to sacrifice my
needs and desires as a child and teenager in order to serve others because
their needs were more pressing than mine. We’ve been
given a good life, so we needed to share it with others. But at the same time, I learned that in order to have my
needs met as a child/teen, we needed to meet everyone else’s first.
That line of thinking works when you don’t know anything
different about God, church, and family life. But there comes a point in life
when that mindset no longer works. “Needing” to give becomes a compulsion to
give. And last year, God kept bringing me back to this idea of freedom and a life that He designed for me that goes beyond compulsion. He kept showing me how much I do because I have to do it or
need to do it and He kept bringing me back to 2 Corinthians 9:7 (ESV): “Each one must give as he has decided in his
heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”
It
got to the point where all I felt in ministry was stress, pressure, and
performance and the joy was sucked out with the compulsion. All of that was
reinforced in the fast-paced, high-performance church environment I was in. For
every no I tried to utter, spoken and unspoken messages reminded me that it was
a privilege to serve and that my talents were needed in order to pull it off. I was reminded to pray more and specifically ask God to give
me strength to do what He’s called me to do because we all were juggling busy
lives and struggling with the practice schedules, too. I felt guilty because I couldn’t keep up with everything and everyone
else could (at least it looked that way on the outside).
I often wondered if we
wanted others to experience God at Christmas, why weren’t we given time to
experience Him, too? But God was crammed into prayer before
practices and we all knew we were doing this for God and to reach others
through our performance, so God understood it was for Him (misguided but well-intentioned). But at the same time, the holiday season would end and it would be
then that I'd realize I didn’t even experience God because I didn’t have time to
stop and experience Him with all the practices and getting ready for them. There
were moments that spoke to me as we played/sang through songs, and those moments
combined with rushed devotions before going to practice or exhausted devotions when I got home
from practice somehow had to be enough. But it wasn't...it got to the point where it
wasn’t good enough for me to go to church. I wanted more than church because I
was missing the whole point of church--I was missing God!
This year, the whole point of church has been hashed out one
week at a time as I’ve wrestled through what is church, what does it mean, and
what place does it have in my life. I’ve wrestled with ministry callings
because I’ve experienced what God can do when we are in align with Him and following
Him even in a broken church system but not knowing if I could ever go back to as things were. All of this plus my seminary classes have taught
me that broken systems contain broken people. And broken people usually have
boundary-less lives. Boundary-less lives lead to lives of doing, striving,
proving, or performing in order to help us define who we are as titles,
accolades, attention, or success give us our value.
When I opened my November/December calendar this morning, a wave
of panic hit as I thought of all the practices/performances I would be missing
this year and how it’s not fair that others get all of those opportunities and
I don’t. And then as memories of all the stress hit…yeah, they can have it!!! Panic
turned to excitement because I literally have a blank calendar to offer those I
love!! I’m really excited about that because I get to say “yes” this year. I get
to say yes to enjoying Thanksgiving without a looming weekend practice in order
to get ready for the Hanging of the Greens service (which usually meant leaving the
family that traveled to see us fending for themselves while I’m at practice), to
baking and decorating all the favorite cookies that we rushed through in previous years, to not just
googling but actually completing cool Christmas crafts with my child, to going
on a Christmas date with my husband, to driving around and looking at Christmas
lights without feeling pulled in different directions, and to taking time
to savor the sights and sounds of Thanksgiving and Christmas with my friends and family. It’s as
it should be! (lol, my child brought up last night on the way home from church that he's glad he doesn't have to worry about memorizing songs and lines and can just enjoy his holidays!)
I don’t “need” to do anything for God because He has done it
all for me…all I “need” to do is rest in Him. It’s very freeing! Part of
honoring God is to take care of me and to set those boundaries even within
church life that preserve my time, energy, and health so I can give away what He
wants me to give to the people He wants me to give it to. Boundaries help
define who I am and it gives room to let others be who they are. Boundaries allow
every person to take responsibility for their own lives and for their own
calendars realizing that in the end, we only answer to God, not well-meaning Christians. And when I keep that perspective, there is joy in an empty calendar
because it means God gets to fill it up and keep writing the story that He’s
been writing…and to me, that is the pathway to freedom!
“God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before Him.
When I got my act together, He gave me a fresh start.
Now I’m alert to God’s ways; I don’t take God for granted.
Every day I review the ways He works; I try not to miss a trick.
I feel put back together, and I’m watching my next step.
God rewrote the text of my life
when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes.”
Psalm 18:20-24 (Message)
Five Minute Friday
(#FMFparty) gives writers a word prompt. We are encouraged to write whatever
comes to mind about that word in just five minutes (although, I always go
longer because FMF fuels that spark in me to write). No
editing, no perfection, only writing from the heart. To find out more,
visit http://fiveminutefriday.com/. This week's word is "NEED".
