Well, to be honest, I have a Type-A personality. I come by it naturally since I was raised in a Protestant-Work-Ethic home. It was not permitted to sit around and do nothing. We were expected to be doing something constructive – all the time. “Work never hurt anybody” was heard a hundred times a day. “If it is worth doing it is worth doing well,” was driven into us from day one. I apologize to my two daughters for they heard the same personality driven work centered philosophy growing up. They learned the lessons well … I’m really sorry girls! All of this produced the Type-A … at least that is my story and I am sticking to it.
In most cases the Type-A personality served me well during my active years of ministry. It kind of drove members of my staff crazy since I expected them to follow suit. Unfortunately, for the church’s I served, and me I had too many lazy staff people … especially with associate ministers. It literally drove me crazy (and I didn’t have far to go in the first place) just how lazy these ordained men and women could be. I had one who liked to get to the office around 10 a.m. and then be back home around 1 p.m. … for the rest of the day! Unbelievable!
Now that I am in my retirement years I’m dealing with two issues. Guilt on the one hand when I find myself just sitting around and reading fiction – which was a big no-no growing up. No comic books and no fiction – “Why waste your time reading non-important stuff?” I put together a massive library over the years, but 98% of it was non-fiction. I continue to love to read and when I retired I decided to start enjoying some of the great fiction writers. Guilt is still pursuing me, but most of the time I can outrun it!
The other issue is taking on too much or at least working too long when I start a project … working until I am bone-weary and exhausted, regardless of the heat or the position of the Sun. It drives my loving spouse crazy. “Why do you do it to yourself?” “Come in out of the Sun.” “Learn to pace yourself.” “You try to do too much.” And so it goes.
It is hard for this old leopard to change his spots, but I am working at it. When we first moved over here to Bradenton I got involved, really involved, at a church as their volunteer parish visitor to the point that I was beginning to accept and feel like the pastoral care responsibility was all mine. That wasn’t good for the church, the senior pastor nor me. Thank goodness for a planned 6-week car trip out west. It made me stop. It made me re-evaluate my retirement priorities. It caused me to think through this Type-A personality stuff … and while, the church would love for me to continue to serve at a volunteer level of 20 to 30 hours per week … it isn’t going to happen.
And that is the lesson I think that I am trying to share today. All of us should stop and really evaluate our priorities. Spot-changing is possible, but it will take diligence and constant monitoring. We all have our poison that affects our personality. We learned it well at the knees of our parents and grandparents. And, there isn’t really anything wrong with what they taught us, but we can miss out on so much when we simply get stuck in our old personality types.
I don’t know what Lenten disciplines you might be following this year. Some, I have read, are giving up facebook for Lent, while others are foregoing all computer games. Mine is simply an attempt to put my life and its activities in balance. To stop when I am tired, to read a wider range of books, to spend more time with my spouse and family, to be aware of anything that seems to be “driving” me … in short to take better care of the totality of God’s man … and to focus better on being just that … God’s man!
They say that an individual can either rust-out or burnout … I’m trying to discover the peace in being the person that lives between these two extremes.
Quote for today: There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: Those who are afraid to try themselves, and those who are afraid that you will succeed. ~Ray Goforth
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