This is how we do it.
Ok, I’ve got a plan.
There was an amazing parishioner at my last charge. She was a self-starter in pastoral care, though it’s likely she doesn’t know that. Self-starters are amazing. They’re the life source of a functional church (you know…..other than God). Pastors love, love, love them and need them. Churches need them too. Sometimes they don’t know that.
I loved this woman very much and still do. She’d drop by just ‘because.’ She’d sit down and we’d talk. I could talk to her for hours and there were some days that I did. I know her story left and right and she knows mine better than anyone else did in the congregation before I left. I wanted to know her story. She wanted to know mine. Come to find out, our stories over-lap a lot.
There was one thing she did, however (quite frequently), that left me sleepless at night. She (and we’ll just call her Susan from here on out), would look at me and look around my house and look at my tiny people and say, “Sara, I just don’t know how you’re going to do it,” then she’d look at me as though she expected an answer to the open-ended question-like phrase.
The thing is, however, I didn’t have an answer. Somehow, I just “did” and not always well.
The balance of being a full-time parent and a full-time pastor (and a full-time daughter and a full-time friend — because, lets face it, my family and friends don’t just take a back-seat to the rest of my life. They are a part of it), is nonexistent. My schedule is never the same. Church emergencies — death, broken hips, car accidents, and any number of ‘events’ that might require my presence and prayer — don’t know “time.” Fevers, coughs, runny noses, bumps, bruises, needing mommy to hold them, doctor’s appointments, and school events, don’t model themselves around my Google Calendar. There is very little “routine” to my life and quite frankly, Susan, I’m with you. I have no idea……..or maybe I do.
In the last 3 years, I’ve learned a lot about being a real person. Real people can’t, nor should they be expected to, do it all, all the time. They can’t actually be all things to all people AT ALL TIMES. They can’t. Asking for grace has been a skill that I’ve worked to develop quite literally as much as I’ve tried to develop good preaching skills. Delegating has become the greatest gift I have especially when I have a handful of people who will allow me to delegate to them OR self-starters (God love them). A village for my children is one of the most amazing things I could have. The fact that I have a church member that I fully trust to pick up my children in her car and take them, is the biggest blessing I’ve had in a very long time. This is how I have begun to do it.
I’m intentional about nurturing my callings — all of them. I am no more faithful to one than the other. I don’t let the church tell me it’s more important to me than my family or my personal spiritual growth because it’s not. It’s important though and the good thing for me and my calling is that there is such a great value assigned to “church” because I do in fact love the church.
It happened for me not too long ago. It was a paralyzing realization that almost put me in such a place that I could no longer function for the church. I called my spiritual director because I was hurting so deeply when I came to this realization. I realized one day that I’d spent a part of every interaction that I had with one or more people in my current context, apologizing for my children. When I realized that I’d been doing that, and that I’d actually meant it, my heart broke in such a shattering way that splinters may still be there. Susan’s words began to resonate with me and I began to reflect. How am I going to do it all? Not this way. I knew then that it could never be that way again.
This is all a work in progress but as I work I learn more about myself. I learn more about my limitations and needs. I learn better ways to ask for grace and also to give it. I learn more about the gifts of others so that I can commission other people to, alongside me, go ye therefore (other than the self-starters who are likely to already be going ye therefore).
Maybe all of that is, in fact, the balance. Maybe all this is the trick to thriving rather than surviving. Maybe it really is what I’ve been commissioned to do anyway: Engender self-starters. Create good-doers. Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Stop for snuggles. Never miss a doctor’s appointment. Make lunches. Hit the hospitals, homes, and schools. Call on the village. Love the congregation. Love the little guys.
Ok, Susan, ask me again. I might can answer now. This is how we do it.
