I am absolutely happy with my new job.
But as it turns out, new jobs are tough. It's frustrating to realize that a simple task that should only take a couple of minutes at most takes three times longer than necessary because you have to learn and relearn all of the micro-steps to the task that will, with time, come without thought. For example, something as simple as checking my voicemail last week required first digging through a desk drawer to find the file containing the paper with the voicemail instructions, reading the instructions to figure out what to dial in order to access the voicemail system, and recalling where I had written down my password for the voicemail system. Or answering a relatively straightforward email requires first reading through several sets of minutes from several different committees in order to figure out the background of the request and what next steps need to be taken, and by whom.
All of these things will get easier with time, and every new job comes with its own learning curve. It's normal.
But as it also turns out, starting a new job doesn't make the hard stuff instantly disappear.
As much as I love doing this work that I believe God has called me to do and has given me the necessary gifts for, as time goes on I am realizing that the voice of the man who told me that I shouldn't pursue pastoral ministry is still echoing around in my head, and wasn't instantly vanquished by the call to serve here. The voices in my head that tell me that any minute now the fact that I'm the wrong gender is bound to pop up haven't gone silent, even though I now serve in a congregation where women have long been affirmed in leadership and pastoral roles. And the hard experiences of the last year, and the irrational fear that another 'congregation' that I love will be taken from me in an untimely manner is persistent in its unwelcome presence.
Add to that the normal introvert fatigue of trying to get to know hundreds of new people all at once, and it's exhausting. Actually, physically, exhausting.
I'm used to pushing my limits hard...to hitting the wall and then pushing just a little harder to see how long I can keep going and how much I can do.
But it's been a tough year, and my capacity to push past my limits just isn't cutting it right now. It seems I've reached the end of my resources.
Which is a gift, in a crazy sort of way.
Because a long while back I read an analogy about ministry that really stuck with me. It compared ministry to learning to swim: When we try to master ministry of our own resources, we can become frightened and defensive, clutch up, and it is then that we sink. When we instead learn to rely on the gifts of God, when we learn to trust in the buoyancy of the water that holds us and just relax into it, it's then that we learn to float. "The buoyancy of water and the possibility it creates for us to be able to float and to swim with confidence provided an apt and lovely metaphor for the buoyancy of God, whose everlasting and omnipresent grace enable us to live and to have life abundantly."
Perhaps the gift in the exhaustion is the invitation to learn to breathe deeply, to relax into the buoyancy of God, to know that not everything depends on me, to practice receiving the grace of God that I invite others to experience. To learn to serve in true partnership with the Spirit of God, instead of simply paying lip service to the idea. To lean into the goodness of God and the trustworthiness of the Spirit.
Hard lessons, friends, especially for those of us who are used to being strong, to achieving what we set out to accomplish, to challenging the limits.
But lessons that I hope I can learn now, in these early weeks of pastoral ministry, and carry forward with me for many years to come, so that I can serve as well as I possibly can these people whom I am rapidly coming to love, in the way that God intended all along.
