Getting to Know Yourself

How to keep it real when things are uncomfortable

The nature of ministry work is true to that of any other helping field. The demands are on your person, your life, your well-being. You cannot turn the job “off” and turn it back “on.”

One of the difficulties of this reality is that once you say yes to ministry work, you completely open yourself up to the role. In being open, the human experience deepens and you find yourself grappling with self, life, work-commitments, responsibilities, friendships, hobbies, etc.

How do you keep track of yourself in the midst of this. As you grow? Evolve? As you change into someone else over time?

One way, is to give yourself permission to keep getting to know yourself.

Loyalty is a very interesting virtue. Many of us are in helping fields because we are loyal to a cause. We believe in health. We believe that people deserve a meal. We believe in spreading the gospel message of Jesus. We believe in eliminating suffering in the world. We believe in passing on education. We believe in the work of justice, rewriting policy, serving the poor, ending sex-trafficking, ending systemic racism, etc.

Our loyalty often carries us into places that many people wouldn’t dare to go.

But Our loyalty can often keep us in places that many people wouldn’t dare to stay.

One switch that I have sensed, gets “turned off” to the disservice of ourselves when we are overly loyal to a cause, system, person, or group, is the switch that gives us permission to keep getting to know ourselves.

We hit that switch, and in doing so we stop the curiosity. We stop asking, why do I feel this way? Why did that bother me? Why would I do it differently? How can I show up here? What can I offer within my scope that adds to what we have going here? Each of these questions are an invitation toward self-discovery.

When the curiosity stops, usually the self-silencing begins. Well, I can’t say that because they won’t hear me. I’ll just do my job. I can’t make a difference here. It’s better if I keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to offend. If I share that, I won’t be able to stay here.

The funny thing is, we’ll find a place to say what needs to be said. Either where we are working, even if it gets us fired, outside of that environment, which feels safer to do so, or around people who are safe for us to work our thoughts out.

Here is a key: Having discrepancies between yourself and your environment is normal.

I’ll write that again.

Having discrepancies between yourself and your environment is normal.

• Your family

• Your friends

• Your church

• Your work

• Your teams

It is the consistently never having discrepancies which is not normal at all.

It is the avoidance of open and honest communication with practiced respect and equality that is not normal.

Here is what can help:

1. Draw near a few people who you know are your life-support.

2. Allow yourself to feel and ask questions about your experience without silencing yourself.

3. Press into being your authentic self as best you can; calculate the risks, and decide what you want to lose and what you want to gain. Then go.

Otherwise, you begin to lose yourself instead of getting to know yourself and allowing others to know you. In my opinion losing yourself costs too much. Why?

Because God made you and I believe that God likes who he made.

Consider this?

How much has losing yourself cost you already?

I paid with my joy, creativity, and self-expression. All things I had to spend years reclaiming after I made the major life change of stepping down from a work environment which was toxic for me.

Hope and I were in Miami shortly after leaving ministry, and I burst out laughing about something totally stupid. She looked at me and said, “I haven’t seen you laugh like that in a long time.”

Sometimes we don’t know what we’ve lost until it breaks through the surface of all the death and self-abandonment we’ve been carrying.

A clear way to discover how much losing self has already cost you is this:

Search for the remnants of self which are a part of your personality and temperament. The things that have made you, you.

Where are they?

What has happened to them?

Ask those close to you if you seem like yourself. Believe their answer.

You’re worth continuing a relationship with. Don’t let the parts of yourself which Jesus made in delight die. Jesus will guide you toward the proper deaths that need to take place in your life, and he’ll resurrect those parts too. He is interested in you being alive, remember?

Ps. I’d love to hear from you what you have reclaimed over the years! How did you feel about finding those parts of yourself again? Drop a comment!

Photo by: Alex Lopez on Unsplash.