I don’t know about you, but I have been suffering from a lack of meaningful conversations and relationships over the last few months. I have two close friends I can talk to about anything, but I only see them a few times a year and our relationship is mainly over the phone. When I was studying counseling I really valued engaging with others about fears, beliefs, and topics that were never openly discussed in social environments.
During the workweek, I have some basic surface-level conversations with my next-door (classroom) neighbor, and perhaps with others at work. Most of my days are spent with just myself and my students, and any interactions with other adults are primarily transactional. I’m not sure if this would bother me so much if I felt more supported and like I belong at work and in my regular life. I have had a shift in my sense of community, and I am looking for a renewed sense of belonging. To be honest, I think I might be in a transitional period where I am detaching from my current environment so that I can be prepared for what is to come. Even though I am hopeful for potential changes coming in the next several months, surviving in the meantime is still hard.
Things have been hard since winter break. January was the first time I felt intense dread and emptiness about going to work. The dread has subsided to levels of routine, but the emptiness has continued. On Friday, I had a unique kind of panic attack, partly fueled by a medication reaction but I think also so much of the guilt and the pressure I have put on myself. Sure, I am struggling with work anxiety and burnout, and motivation, but I also am making it worse by thinking that I am failing somehow.
I was talking with my best friend last night about some of the changes that have happened since I left an unhealthy church environment. The short version is that the gospel stopped being proclaimed, the focus was drawn away from the bible and it become more of a place for judgment and criticism than the grace of God. I had not realized how much this environment had affected me. I had pushed through struggle and lack of support for many long months, always with the promise that things would be better in the future, but the future never happened. I felt increasingly unwelcome, judged, and more of a workhorse than a valued member of the body. I told my friend “Yes, we are all members of the body and we all have different roles and jobs. But we also can’t neglect a body party and be healthy. All of the parts of the body work together and need to be supported or else it falls apart.” Trying to do things on my own strength wasn’t working, and was actually making me more resentful, more prideful, and less loving to others and to myself.
In the two months since I left that environment, I began to notice how much it had affected me, but also God began to remediate in me important lessons about His grace and salvation. How could I extend grace to others if I could not accept His grace to myself? I realized I couldn’t accept God’s grace with my own set of terms and conditions; it isn’t contractual.
I’m recognizing that I am still in a different environment that is affecting me, however, it only changes me in the ways I allow it to change me. It might require me to stand out a lot from others, to not be a part of the group. I also believe that when God asks us to be different from other people, there are always people who notice. People He is asking us to reach. The belief that I am invisible, that my work goes unnoticed is something the enemy uses to take away the message that God is using in me. What sorts of messages is God sending through me?
I have no idea. I don’t want to erase God’s words by focusing on my own works. My perceived failures might be part of the truth He is speaking in my life and into the lives of others. The refreshing thing about not feeling like I can do it in my own strength is that I no longer HAVE to do it in my own strength.
Every morning, I have it on my prayer list to ask God “in what areas of my life do I need to give you permission?” Lately, that permission looks like letting God be in control and giving myself permission to rest. Allowing God permission to create avenues of healing, and to keep the door open to whatever He continues to do.
Degrees and Acronyms 