Subscription Lists

I had this hard week at work a few weeks back. It wasn’t hard because of the workload or because of someone else, it was hard because I came in on Monday, was called into my supervisor’s office and called out on not doing my best. I was confronted for shoveling work that I did not want to do onto my subordinates (for lack of a better term). However, these young women are not my subordinates, they are my team mates and I could have tried a little harder before just placing the load before me onto them and then complaining bout not feeling challenged. I spent the rest of that week and every day since trying to reapply myself, to apologize and to thank them for their patience. I could have pointed out their faults when I was confronted, God knows they have them, I could have retaliated on the exaggerations and false statements, but at the root I knew in my heart that I had not set an example worth following.

I left work that week feeling so humbled and humiliated but feeling challenged in the best way possible.

Romans 12:2a(The Message) Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking [such culture] always dragging you down to its level of immaturity…

I felt challenged and relieved because I was able to see that I did not have to respond the way the world would. I did not have to try and save face or protect my pride because all that mattered was how Christ looked to those women and not me. I know that a challenging and yet mundane task will come, oh in fact I think it is brewing even as I type this, and when it comes I will squirm in my seat and want to pass it off instead of risking failing at it. I realized while I battled this fear that somewhere along the way I have begun to let other things define me. I have let my job performance define me which resulted in my poor action described above. I have also let how others treat me define me at times.

After my incredibly long humiliating week I went away for the weekend only to be hurt by people I really respected during my holiday get away. I was so hurt in fact that I didn’t even want to tell them that they had hurt me. Instead I wanted to simply allow myself to get hard but that too wouldn’t have been right. I confronted my offenders, my friends, and was vulnerable expressing my feeling hurt and disrespected. It took everything in me to do that after my workweek but as I did I noticed how God was striping away everything I was allowing to give me any bit of confidence that was not Him.

I have been shifting my focus back onto His words to allow him to define me. I have had to let go of people and position in order to do so. It has hurt and been uncomfortable but it is freeing. I feel a bit raw and I might get hurt by any of the people I have left myself open to, whether coworkers or friends, and yet somehow I am beginning to see a side of Christ’s love through it that I do not think I ever understood before.

Ish 62:4(NIV) No longer will they call you deserted, or name your land desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah {my delight is in her} and your land Beulah {married} for the Lord will take delight in you.

Jer31:4a (NIV) I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt.

Psalm 37:23-24 (NIV) If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumbles, he will not fall for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

"Today's Little Lift" from Jim Bullington

Mercy and not Sacrifice (Sept. 30, 2010)