I ran a store for a while and during the summer months I would constantly run out of pop. I wanted to sell the pop but there was none there to sell. After about 8 weeks of not getting enough to keep my customers happy I once again called my distributor and said, "listen you have one job, keep me supplied with pop...!' That is the only thing he had to do. I liked his product, my customer liked his product, if I had it to sell it would... I just needed pop.
In recent months I have struggled to know what my one job is... the ministries I have worked for for over 21 years, seem to have run at entirely insane pace without down time. Most ministries are asked year after year to do more with less. That means you just get busier and carry more and more, year after year. My current ministry is steady at 40 hours a week and during the summer it is all day every day for 3 months plus. In these 40 hour weeks I find myself a bit lost. I'm so used to going full throttle all the time.
I struggle to feel like a good steward, a reliable employee or that I'm being effective.
It is hard to rest - to just be.
It feels like I'm coming down off of some sort of drug induced flurry.
I don't know what to do with myself.
I used to be an avid reader with 12-20 books going at a time. Now every time I go to read I find it hard to stay in the groove. A page or two let alone a chapter is exhausting and I slip off the track. It is like I have this weird mental block that doesn't allow me to read. I want to read again, I used to love it... but now I find it almost impossible.
My one job lately has been to simply do what I can.
If it is keeping up with my: home, friends, fiances, or my ministry, I find myself just doing what I can.
It is not like I really need anything else to do. Everywhere I go there is ministry. After I leave the office for the day there are people needing to talk, that just drop by or call. I don't have to look for it - it finds me.
Is this the way ministry is supposed to be? Just flowing out of who I am created to be and not a constant pushing of a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down for another Herculean effort?
In some ways it is "to good to be true"- as I sit and think about that possibility I feel lazy. Like I'm some sort of ministry robot capable of accomplishing 600% more then I am, and only running at 10% speed (I know the math is wrong, it is just an illustration).
So my engine feels like it is idling. Like it wants to run in fourth gear. Maybe it is just more comfortable and is more worn in there. So worn that it would be easy to just slip into high gear and go.
It is not healthy to constantly run an engine in the highest gear.
