Overcommitted?
In our fast paced society today, I suspect many of us find ourselves stretched thin in both our work and our personal time. Indeed, even the best of us can have way too many things to do. We may find ourselves thinking we just can’t breathe sometimes and feel that we desperately need a break.
Now, let me tell you, I am an expert in the field of “over commitment.†All my life I’ve tried to prove my worth to the world. The place I found it the easiest to do that was at church.
You see, I grew up believing that the more you gave financially, the more you did, the more you prayed and read the Bible, the better your chances of getting into heaven. As a young and impressionable girl, I really soaked that up…and I pretty much lived that from then on because I sure didn’t want to go to hell!
Oh, there were times when I wasn’t as involved in church. College was the time I remember the most not being involved. I had little money and little time. I went to a service on Sunday morning and that was it. I still heard that there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t as involved and I vowed to make sure I took care of that as soon as I had money and graduated.
When I was 26 I married a minister.
Mind you, I loved him deeply and was with him for the rest of his life until he died some 13 years later of leukemia. We had two wonderful boys together. One of those sons died when he was 20 months old.
I continued to be involved at church whenever the doors were open and doing as much as I could as a single parent. I even got my son involved as I wanted to make sure he knew that religion and developing a keen sense of who you were spiritually was an important part of life.
There came a time when he decided he didn’t like all the “hoopla†associated with the church we went to, so he chose to start attending a denomination that was much less “showy†and more introspective.
He was concerned that I would not like that choice. I told him that for a young man of 21 years old to make a responsible decision about his faith was amazing and I supported that change.
So are you overcommitted in various parts of your life to the point that you are off balance? Does religion or work take so much of your time that you are selling yourself short in other areas like family or personal wellbeing?
I found over these 55 years that one of the best things you can do for yourself is to keep that in check on a regular basis. Both work and commitments to religious organizations or volunteer opportunities can be exhausting and take away from your family. It can also impact your personal well-being.
There came a point for me that I said “enough†and I backed totally out of my church “work.†In fact, when volunteering becomes work it’s too much as far as I’m concerned. It’s hard to worship when you are so involved in a church that you feel like staff.
I not only hold myself responsible for that, but I think ministerial staff should be very aware when someone is over committed and do their best to spread the work around among all the people. If more ministers encourage and preach balance in their congregation members’ lives, the world would be a healthier place.
You see, I have come to be a firm believer that if every adult in a church would make a commitment to take on one task at a time, be it a small portion of leadership, teaching, singing, leading a group, taking care of children in the nursery, etc. all the areas would be covered and no one person would be too overwhelmed. The sad thing about this is that, so often, there are just too few who are willing to volunteer even for one task and so they are burned out because of volunteering too much.
Many of us realize that it’s very hard for ministerial leaders not to ask those who have multiple gifts and talents to share their skills by volunteering. It is quite often easier to ask that way instead of both nurturing and seeking out new commitments from non involved parishioners.
I had the pleasure of being with a group of women in a “circle†the other day. They were all so full of energy.
The more I listened, the more tired I got.
I now remember why I didn’t join “circles†at the churches I’ve been involved with in the past.
If they weren’t signing up for one thing, they were signing up for another. I swear I think that group single handedly runs the church from listening to all the things they were doing. It sounded like the only thing they didn’t do was preach…and I believe some of them could have taken that on and done it well!
My wish for you today is that you carefully evaluate your involvement in extra curricular activities on a regular basis and make sure you have a good balance in your life. You can’t work your way into heaven by doing too much of anything, but you sure can get there sooner than you want if your life is too busy and you burn yourself out.
~ Joellen