I have been thrashing and gnashing over my job. I love it. And I'm driving myself crazy. I want to do well, I want to do it right and I've been convinced that I have to keep working harder in order to be adequate. I've believed that the heap of "failures" I have piled up are evidence that I am not good at this and that I need to work harder. But I couldn't figure out what that "work harder" looked like. I would get an idea about what that looked like, send my boss a verbose email and he would discuss that idea with me. I would make a new plan, follow it for days and then quit because it wasn't hitting the mark. I would hang my head, tuck my tail and mentally whip myself for being such a failure. And then I would get a new idea and it would start all over again.
Oh, my patient boss. What an angel. He's this 6 ft+ kind hearted bear of a guy and I'm this 5'3 little spitfire. This has been going on for almost a year at this point. A few days ago, he laid it out. He said, "You seem so stressed about this job. It's just a job. And it's my job to help you not be so stressed about it". And it struck me. It's just a job. In saying so, he cracked open for me a Cadbury Cream Egg oozing with truth. What spilled out was sugary sweet permission to put my job in its place. It belongs at the top of the list on days when I have committed to work, and off my list on days I am not. Like today, Labor Day. I was going to give up this gift of an extra day off so I could get a little more prepared for the class I am teaching that begins on Tuesday.
Instead, I woke up this morning determined to be gracious with this gift of a day and cherish it. I woke up knowing that my boss was right, I stress out way too much about my job and I make myself miserable by pushing so hard. On top of it all, I realized that I have been operating under the context that I had to do this all on my own and show God how good I could be. Pssht. He wants to be in charge of everything, not just the genie in the bottle kinds of help. I can give Him my job, too. Duh.