Capacity

Capacity is a funny thing. My entire life I've been praised for my capacity. As early as I can remember I was doing more than my peers. I learned to eat in the car, cram vocab words at stop-lights, transition from school to sports to dinner while studying and often staying up too late to finish projects. Competitive gymnastics produced in me an uncanny ability to do more than flip, balance, and hold the pull-up record (for boys AND girls)...it taught me how to keep going and never stop.

I've heard this from a lot of athletes through the years. Early on we translated "pushing through the pain" to mean more than walking off a rolled ankle. It meant taking on fear, anxiety, and stress, in superhuman quantities. Honestly, it's served me well over the years. I am not intimidated by a challenge. I believe (for better or worse) I can do anything put in front of me. If there's an obstacle in my way, a heavy burden to lift, or a challenge to overcome I approach it like the crashmats I used to manhandle in the gym. Get around it and MOVE it. Lift. Throw. Drag. To get that thing where it needs to be.

But, as anyone who's been praised for their high capacity will tell you, there's a dark side to this super-human strength. It dresses up like tenacious leadership, but internally it can live more like a parasite, happily hosted in the body of team-player. It craves long nights and overthinking all the while stealing the very nutrients of rest and joy that produce life. It can be kinda gross.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in hard work and sleepless nights from time to time. Putting in 110% can be an admirable quality, especially when appropriate rhythms of quiet, stillness, and connection are also present. These day, though, I'm asking myself, what about my tendency to take on multiple projects and plow through tasks is healthy, and what is not?

Enter Debrief.

I first heard about a formal debrief process in the context of ministry. Several of my peers were getting trained and learning how to help walk pastors and leaders through loss, grief, transition, and healing. It is a week-long intensive that requires travel and therefore time away from work and family. But it promised an opportunity to reflect, pray, and process events from the past season, to stop and say, 'Hey I've been working out on a bad ankle'. Maybe I should get that fixed.

For a solid year I held on to the idea of booking one of these experiences knowing it would be a challenge to make space. 5 days away from the kids would require a lot of support. As a mom of littles it doesn't matter if you're driving down the road or catching a plane to Paris. Gone is gone, and the effort back home is the same regardless. I knew sabbatical would be my best shot at having the help I needed to get away.

The days leading up to my Debrief I tried to prepare myself for whatever would come. I knew it was going to be intense, thorough, with teaching, timelining, and homework. I knew I needed to give myself to the process fully for it to be effective. And I wanted to. When would I ever get a change like this again?

Having now completed the process I will say it was indeed as intense as I imagined. It was more thorough and detailed than I could have prepared myself for. I was glad I came in with realistic expectations that this could and should require all of my emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. For four days I walked through every loss, grief, transition, hospital visit, birth, ordination, graduation, role and responsibility, disappointment, and regret that had washed over me in the past 6 years.

It's one thing to be the main character in your life, experiencing every day as it happen, catching some waves and being tossed by others. It's quite another to step back, stand on the shore and reflect on a friend tumbling through the surf, spun around and disoriented. I found empathy for myself as I had the chance to be the onlooking instead of the survivor.

Oh, I thought. No wonder I'm tired. The past several years have been wild. I got my Masters degree and became an ordained minister in the middle of a pandemic while having and losing babies, raising kids, and leading internships. At the very least it's been a bizarre time of life. And having a high capacity has been my saving grace. Floating through life, I've easily been able to let yesterday go and drape a "bring on tomorrow" cape over my shoulders each night.

Spot the obstacles.

Remove them.

Plow forward.

Never pausing to notice that my capacity was shrinking steadily as the demands of life were growing exponentially.

Only after completing the Debrief did I realize how much of my mental, emotional, and spiritual internal space was consumed by unprocessed events. None that were particularly traumatic at the time. But the toll of change, conflict, and criticism over the years fell into my soul like sand accumulating in a jar. Quietly it took up a little more space, a little more weight, a little less room, until each additional day, small conflicts and minor changes to my vision of the future felt overwhelming. My external capacity was gone. And that did not feel OK.

Another time I'll share about capacity returning. About my joy rebounding my internal world being sorted. But for now I'm very curious about this dynamic.

Why did I think I could allow my internal world to take on water and expect my external world to stay afloat? And I don't think I'm alone in this. Why do many of us feel the need to neglect our personal development and health in order to keep up with the demands of life? Shouldn't it be opposite?

The truth is, I love having a high capacity. I enjoy taking on a lot. When I'm in a healthy place I crave getting my hands and heart into multiple projects, event planning, vision casting and team management. Yes, there can be a dark side. The side of personal neglect, stress, anxiety, and overcommitment. I have personal experienced with all of it and will probably again at some level. But what if I shift my focus away from my external capacity to my internal capacity.

What if my capacity to love and forgive were of greater priority than my agenda items? How would life be different if I tackled false beliefs the way I take on a deadline? Or if I managed my personal rhythms the way I manage and develop a team? With focus, attention, care and energy.

This is my work during sabbatical. I'm grateful for the opportunity. Listen to the still quiet voice inside. The voice of the Lord, yes, but maybe just as important in this season, my own voice. Where am I tired, injured, and in need of rest? These are questions I hope to carry with me well beyond sabbatical.

We're half way through these 3 months and already I feel my world has been turned inside out. Priorities righting themselves. Joy undergirding. Capacity returning...in all the right ways.