Notes from the Wayside: Introspection: Unfinished Business

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Unfinished Business

I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9 (NRSV)

The ever present unexpected life is
All that we wanted
And all that we choose to lead
We will rise and fall
And all the chances in between

From "In Between" by The Gathering

If you've been following this blog for the last few years, then you might have noticed that I've been doing some work on myself over the last few years. This is work I did not think I could continue amid the circumstances of the past year. Now that life has started to return to normal, I think that maybe it is time for me to return to it. Recently I took some time to look back over my introspective writing and journal entries to see what brought to where I was before the pandemic and where I was headed at that time.

At the end of 2017, as I was looking back over the past year, I realized that I had been allowing the things in my life that were less than ideal to cloud my eyes to the good things in my life. I was so focused on the pain, frustration, and disappointment in my life that I failed to appreciate my personal growth and the progress I was making. I realized that I needed to do something to change my outlook, so I decided that, in the new year, I needed to focus on cultivating gratitude.

The first and only step I took to cultivate gratitude in 2018 was to regularly record in my journal the things in my life for which I was grateful. My hope was that, by intentionally practicing gratitude, I would become more grateful by default. As one of my pastors likes to say, "Practice makes practice." I learned a number of things during my year of gratitude. I learned that gratitude will not change the things in my life that are less than ideal, but it will keep me mindful of the reality that my life is more than such things. I also learned that if I really want to appreciate the good things in my life, then I need to make it a point to enjoy them.

I have continued my daily practice of gratitude to this day. I suspect that, if I had not been practicing gratitude, I might have fared much worse during the pandemic.

During my year of gratitude, certain things started to bubble up to the surface. Early in the year, I noticed that too many times I noted that I was grateful for reasons to not feel bad about myself. I was also haunted by feelings of not being "enough." I noted that my self-esteem had taken a hit after I gave up my people-pleasing ways, because I felt that I wasn't doing enough to help people. I confessed that, though I knew I was a beloved child of God, I struggled to believe that God could be "well pleased" with me. I remembered that I had given up on going into the ministry because I didn't think that I loved people enough to be a minister.

At the end of 2018, I realized that I needed to work on my sense of self-worth, so I decided to focus on that during 2019. I had hoped that, by the end of the year, I could say, with conviction, "I am enough." In my quest for self worth, I learned a number of things. I learned about changing the proverbial "tapes" that play in my head, by which I mean my toxic inner dialogue. I realized that I needed to stop telling myself a story of loss about my life, to put the pain of the past behind me, and to live in the present. On one Sunday, forgetting to prepare something for a church potluck and then choosing to attend anyway helped me to see that I am worth more than what I can do for people.

Early in 2019, I admitted that I felt stuck because I did not think I had what it takes to get what I want in life. I decided to focus on cultivating self-worth, because I was hoping that, in the process, I might also cultivate the self-confidence I needed to get myself unstuck. Later in the year, after I downloaded a dating app only to delete it soon afterward, I realized that the things I supposedly want most in life are the things that scare me the most. I also realized that by making my life as predictable, comfortable, and easy as possible, I had also made it lonely and pointless.

I think I might have chosen to work on my sense of self-worth because it seemed like a safe alternative to what I really need to get myself unstuck in life, namely courage. Cultivating courage is scary because courage is something that must be practiced, and one cannot be courageous unless one is first afraid. I decided to make courage my focus for 2020.

My first step in my quest for courage was to take The Authenticity Challenge. Written by Sarah Heath, The Authenticity Challenge is a book that contains a three-week series of daily challenges meant to help people to become more authentic and content.¹ The challenge seemed like a good first step, because I thought that subjecting myself to daily challenges I had not previewed ahead of time would require some courage. I found that it didn't really require too much courage on my part, but it did give me a bit of an identity crisis - or, rather, it showed me that I was already going through one. I started to wonder if, over the years, I had been doing things in order to be more than just an introverted computer nerd. If anything, the challenge helped me to see that I had not been doing a good job of accepting myself.

My second step in my quest for courage was to do some homework. To learn more about the courage I sought, I read the book Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I learned about the connections between courage, vulnerability, and self-worth. I learned that the people who get what they want in life are the people who believe they are worthy of it.² I also learned that courage requires self-worth. Without a stable sense of self-worth, I will tie my self-worth to my success in whatever I set out to do, so I will be much less likely to take risks.³

By the end of February, I was considering some potential next steps. They all involved doing things I had been hesitant to do previously. I decided to finally write a series of blog posts about the Letters to the Seven Churches in Revelation. I had wanted to write a series about these letters for a number of years, but I had found them intimidating. Sadly, I didn't have the opportunity to lead Sunday school lessons on each of them, as I had hoped. I also considered teaching a new class for Lay Servant Ministries. I had started contra dancing again during the previous year, so I considered asking someone to dance whom I had been previously hesitant to ask. If she accepted, I might have become more confident. If she refused, I would have had the opportunity to not take rejection personally.

In mid March, life ground to a halt because of the pandemic. I didn't really know how to practice courage when I couldn't go out and do anything. Furthermore, courage didn't really seem like the best virtue to practice at a time that called for caution. Overall, I felt that 2020 left me a bit worse for wear.

I didn't get the opportunity to cultivate courage in 2020 as I had hoped, and, to be honest, I wasn't really confident that I was "enough" at the end of 2019. It would seem that I have some unfinished business when it comes to courage and self-worth, and maybe it is time for me to attend to it. I am still considering my next steps. Whatever they happen to be, I hope to continue sharing this journey with you in the coming months.