When To Cease Striving

As a teenager and young adult, I used to lecture my mom.

She was always busy with something: a church service, her children’s ministry, tending to someone in the hospital, sending cards, making zucchini bread, running errands, spending time with lonely congregants.

All noble pursuits, but the end result was one worn-out woman.  I could hear in her voice how tired she was, and how at times the sheer amount of tasks left her feeling resentful and underappreciated.

“You have to let something go,” I chided her.  “You have to take care of yourself.”

Recently, I had the chance to revisit this comment from the other end.  I finished teaching a night class and flew downstairs to throw dinner together.  In the middle of the dinner, a colleague texted, and then a senior colleague—there was a five-alarm fire, and I was the only one who could put it out.  A friend also texted, asking for prayer and venting about her day.  I received a call from a family member and took that too.

When my husband got home, it was to a late dinner and a wife who served up his food overwhelmed with visible frustration. 

He pointed out I’d been so busy lately that I’d burst into tears on more than one occasion.  I was coming apart at the seams.  “You have to let something go,” he said.  “You have to take care of yourself.”

But you know, when you’re a certain sort of believer, it’s hard.

I say this because I witness it among my friends and colleagues—frequently women, frequently women in their thirties and forties—who have come to believe that their willingness to be of perpetual service to everything and everyone is in some way a measure of the sincerity of their Christian walk. 

They make a meal for the potluck because no one else volunteered, and they ran straight from work to the PTA meeting because there’s a real need there for committed parents. They shoulder tasks for colleagues who can’t quite manage a full workload.  They volunteer.  They visit people.  They run Bible studies.   They care for aging parents.  They tend to their children.  They hold up struggling friends.

They’re falling apart.

Whenever I lectured my mother she often responded defensively that Jesus wants us to serve, asked us to put others first and ourselves last.  For a long time I struggled with that response, wondering if not burning the candle at both ends meant I was failing.  But over the years, and as I’ve started exhibiting my mother’s tendencies, four things matter in this conversation:

What is my motive?

Are we doing all the work we serve to glorify God?  Is that why we’re really doing it?  Or are we doing it to please others, or avoid conflict?  Are we doing it to look good, to succeed, to gain approval or satisfaction?  Are we doing it because we’re afraid of what will happen if we don’t?  Are we doing it to try to make ourselves worthy of God’s love? 

That’s not service; that’s fear and desperation. 

What am I missing?

In devoting myself to everything and everyone, what am I losing or missing?  In my desire to do “holy service work” have I lost time with my family, my friends?  Am I able to form the relationships I want to form and love others the way I wish I could?

What is my fruit?

If you feel peaceful, serene, joyful, and gentle in spirit, awesome!  If all your efforts have left you frustrated, grouchy, resentful, angry, or envious, then something has gone wrong somewhere.

What is only for me to do?

There are some things only you can do.  No one else can be a wife to my husband.  No one else can be a parent to your children.  Maybe no one else has a particular gift or talent that you do, that benefits a group or a person or a community.  But there are many things that lots of people can do.  Tend to what belongs uniquely to you, first, and then worry about other things after.

Using this heuristic, I found I wasn’t working for the Lord as much as I thought I was.  In many cases I was working for approval and praise.  And all of this effort that I pretended was Christlike resulted in me missing time with people I loved, left me angry and irritable, and could have been done by just out anyone.  Those things, I gave myself permission to drop.

God asks us to be still, and know that He is; in order to do this, we can’t be running or striving all the time, even for things that appear holy and good.  In our own lives, we’re responsible for allowing Him to do His work.  We can always add project or service back on if we find we need to do so, but adding more to an already-full plate only makes it harder for us to do what He needs us to do.

God allows us to rest. We have to allow ourselves to rest, too.