Tag: teaching

Caught Up

Sometimes, I think I am ticking things off my “to do” list and begin to believe I am “caught up.”  In reality, I am “caught up” all right, but not in the sense I am deluding myself into believing. I am “caught up” IN something much more than I am “caught up” WITH something.

As I have shared with you, these past few months have been very busy. I was designing and teaching a spiritual formation course at my church, continuing with my normal volunteer duties, establishing and nurturing new relationships with some very special people, finding ways to keep connected in important existing relationships, continuing to publish the blog, coming to some realizations about my own personal growth that are just beginning to manifest themselves, completing all the necessary tasks of  normal life, and planning a trip with Max in May. I recently calculated that I have been involved in teaching at my church for 23 of the past 36 weeks. It has been wonderful.  I seem to be experiencing an expansion of joy in my life right now. The time, work, and challenges that are hallmarks of this growth spurt are paying off big time.

The problem, if there is one, is that I do feel like I am constantly running and jumping and stretching and changing, all the time trying to remember to breathe in the random pauses in the self-constructed chaos.  I do not want to do anything to risk the momentum of this exciting time, but I do think it is necessary to find a balance where “breathing” does not end up as priority C-24 in the Franklin Planner. Call me crazy but doesn’t “breathing” have to be an A-1 priority?

I’ve noticed a few wobbles lately that I think regular oxygen in my lungs might help resolve. For one thing, I am having a tough time finishing the housework that I usually easily complete in the course of a week- even while still engaging in my normal activities. I find myself trying to do a task that is most efficiently completed in one 45-minute time slot in 10–12-minute spurts. There are a number of problems with that. First, I often have trouble remembering where I left off after each spurt. I am sure I repeat or miss steps.  Another problem is that I can never capitalize on the momentum of a job well-done. Instead of basking in the satisfaction that I have finished a big task, it is time to start it over again by the time I finally finish it. I feel like I am chasing my tail instead of making progress. Many of you were probably troubled to learn that my Christmas wreath was still on the door and Duffy the Disney Bear was still wearing his Santa suit.  That is the kind of thing that taunts me when I am feeling breathless.

Another problem is that I tend to prioritize “to do” list items over sleep. It is not unusual for me to go to bed at 10:00pm but juggle, stew, and cram undone tasks into another two hours so that I don’t actually try to sleep until midnight. This is clearly singularly pathological. Obviously, sleep is important. Going without a few hours of sleep is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. If I try to make it a permanent solution, I will soon find out that any time I gain by skipping sleep is likely to be lost the next day or days when I try to do tasks in a sleep-deprived, irritable state.

I have also noticed an insidious resurrection of my natural shyness. Most people do not know how shy I am by nature. I seem friendly, warm, and outgoing. I like to think I am friendly, warm, and outgoing. I want to be friendly, warm, and outgoing. In fact, I have worked extremely hard and very intentionally to liberate the part of me that has the potential to be friendly, warm, and outgoing because I value it so highly. It would make me incredibly sad to return to the me who was too afraid to break through the shyness. I would miss so much beauty and richness if I reverted to that person. Having said that, I recognize that there is a rope of shyness that threatens to tighten around me nearly every time interact with people- even people with whom I have a long-term close relationship. I didn’t get to liberate the friendly, warm, outgoing me once and have an end to it. I must do it repeatedly if I want to live lusciously. It is worth it.

Recently, I’ve seen signs of allowing shyness to bind my life. I’ve avoided anything requiring a phone call, even things I want to do- like checking in with old friends who have moved away. I am finding that I am tempted to skip fellowship activities that I typically look forward to. I find myself worrying about how to keep everyone’s needs balanced and forgetting about my own. I find myself feeling guilty that I am spread too thin to cover everything in a way that feels satisfying to me and to others. I know I am starting to get into the danger zone when I hear myself bargaining with myself about “taking my turn” when I put off something for myself so that I can do something for/with someone else.

I find all this disconcerting. As I said, I have been walking in a wonderful garden of growth these past months, and I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to say “no, not now” because I am afraid it will be heard as or come to mean “no, not ever.”  I don’t want to say “I need a break” without having a comprehensive plan about how long that break will be and what I will tackle next. I am afraid that, if I give up tight control on my scheduling, the joy and fulfillment I’ve enjoyed over the past few months will disappear forever. Of course, such an outcome is not likely to be real, although my fear that it will feels very real.  I believe in a God who leads me and does not forsake me. I believe it is my responsibility to lay my life before Him to use as He wishes. That doesn’t mean He does not expect me to be a good steward of the life He has given me. It also doesn’t mean that His plan is to always involve me in His work…. Or always involve me in His work in the exact same way. My biggest struggle with faith is trusting that God is flying the plane. He doesn’t even expect me to file the flight plan. That’s His job. All he expects of me is to sit with Him, keep Him company, and respond willingly when He asks me to do something. That feels like it should be relatively easy to do, but I have the hardest time with it. Why would God want to do all this for me? For us? It feels like I am letting Him down if I let Him work harder than I do.

So, you can see, despite my spiritual growth spurt, God still has work to do in me. And I am trying to be patient. Maybe the problem is not as big as I fear. After all, this week, I did manage to replace the winter wreath on the door with the summer one and changed Duffy out of his Santa costume back into his sailor suit.

Have an oxygen-enhanced day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

What do you do when you feel like you can’t get caught up with everything that needs doing? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirment@gmail.com.

The Energizer Bunny Lies

I am discovering that everything you see on television and everything you read on the internet is not always correct. My latest revelation is that the Energizer Bunny lies.

I have spent my life believing that emotional energy is an infinite resource. If I wore down, it was because I was obviously doing something wrong. If I only had the right motivation. If I only was not so lazy. If only it didn’t take me so long to complete tasks. If only I had the right batteries. If only something, I could keep on running endlessly, beating my bass drum, and bopping across surfaces.  If only something, I would never halt suddenly and flop over on my side. Unfortunately, in the real world… at least in my real world…. I seem to flop over on my side with an alarming degree of regularity.

This Lent, I have been teaching a course at my church. Several years ago, I adapted some material I learned in my working days and that I have picked up along the way on my spiritual journey to create a class on stewardship and ministry. That course focused on stewardship and ministry, but it also covered other subjects such as prayer and working together as a church. My church offered the course as the world was just cautiously emerging from our COVID cocoon. As you may recall, that was a gradual process. It took a lot of people longer to feel safe enough to occupy public spaces than others. The class consisted of four weekly sessions. I taught each class twice each week, to allow for different schedules and to create opportunities to allow for some social distancing. Between the two offerings, I hosted about thirty people.  The feedback from the class was highly positive, suggesting that it might be worth trying again when breathing the same air as our neighbor began to feel a little safer. Since the course was much broader than simply stewardship, the pastor and I toyed with the idea of making it a more foundational class for people who were new to our congregation. Time passed and stuff happened. The timing just wasn’t right to hold the class again. Last summer, I began working on an expansion and adaptation of that course. Finally, we launched the new St. James Spiritual Formation Course the Tuesday after Ash Wednesday. We are again presenting the classes twice each week, on Tuesday evening and Thursday midday, plus one Saturday session.  This represents 33 hours of teaching time between March 11 and April 10, plus prep time. It also represents exposure and focused interaction with 50-65 people each week. For someone as introverted as I am, that is very peopley.

I will share more of my observations about this experience in another post once I’ve finished the course and have time to reflect on it. For now, let me say that it has been immensely satisfying, rewarding, nourishing, and growth-creating  It has also been exhausting.

Knowing that the journey was going to require all my energy for the duration, I purposely tried to structure the rest of my life to minimize competition for my emotional energy. I intentionally “protected my introversion” by limiting any other people-focused activities in my schedule. I once had a colleague tell me that I am a “closet extrovert.”  Most people see me interacting with others, especially when teaching a class, and assume I must be extroverted because of the way I present myself. They don’t realize two significant factors. One factor is that much of my success in teaching has to do more with listening intently and mindfully, not talking. I can connect and help people towards discovery because I notice signals and listen to everything everyone says to steer the presentation in the direction the students most need to go. The other thing is that, when I finish, I am exhausted. Actually, it is even more than exhausted. I am almost catatonic. I stagger around the room in a trance, unable to hold a thought or frame a sentence. I understand, on some primitive level, that I should be packing up and helping to clean up the debris from the learning party over which I have just presided. However, I can’t seem to figure out specifically what to do. The idea of simply unplugging my computer and putting it in its case is overwhelmingly difficult. I have no judgment about how much I can carry at one time. I forget things as basic as remembering to retrieve my purse from the seat where I left it before leaving the premises. I have a little team of keepers who have made it their personal mission to keep me away from sharp objects after a session. They have taken over the mental load of food wrangling, kitchen duty, and general maintenance to protect me from myself. I am very grateful.

Even with this emotional safety net, it is a marathon. We are more than halfway through now and I may be winning. It is, however, requiring me to carbohydrate load. I fear the beat of my little bass drum is well and truly out of rhythm. I get depleted. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. The huge rewards I am reaping are more than worth a little depletion. Besides, creative energy is a renewable resource, and God is a great recycler. Still, I don’t think it matters which brand of batteries I have installed in me. The Energizer Bunny is a fraud.

Have an energetic day!

Terri/Dorru 😊

Do you have experiences that deplete your energy in the short term but create energy in the long term?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.