The tipping point

I'm done. That's it. No more.

How many times have I said that in the last sixteen months? To be honest, there are days when I said it five or six times and yet kept moving forward. My experience as an RD has been stressful, tiring, emotionally exhausting, and is starting to consume my entire life. It's not terribly surprising to me that I moved three hundred miles away from all of my friends and family and promptly became a workaholic, but I thought I was making strides toward balance when I got involved in an awesome church and found a local music scene that interests me.

In a 1/1 a few weeks ago I told a RA that residence life sets us up to be the most insecure people on campus, and since then I have been gradually discovering how true the statement was. When I am on campus, whether I am performing job-related functions or not, I am "on the clock" in the sense that my behavior must remain professional and supportive lest I estrange someone I need to speak with tomorrow. But that was the challenge I expected; every RD has to deal with this living-where-you-work challenge. And so we become engaged in communities and activities off campus to remind us that we have purpose and value outside of living clean lives, saying the right things, and answering the on-call phone at 3am.

The tipping point of my stress was when I realized that although I have events that take me off campus, that I look forward to and spend time preparing for, most of those events melt into yet another performance expectation. What I choose to do is an expression of who I am, but instead of being natural it often feels like I am trying to prove who I am so that people will accept me and care about me. I had a terrible moment the other week when I realized that although there are several people with whom I have genuine friendships in Fort Wayne, my brain snidely reminds me that my primary relationship with most of them is based on what I do rather than who I am.

I could blame this state of affairs on many things, and I have. But last week I came to a breaking point for the umpteenth time since taking this job; I took an honest look at my life and realized that I keep allowing myself to play the victim. I don't have time to relax and I blame it on everyone else because they want to talk at midnight when I would rather be reading or watching Friends...and it's so very easy to just say, "I'm done. That's it. No more." and still not change a thing. And so I got fed up with myself and decided to change a thing.

I've started getting up in the morning. I like mornings, I just don't like the tired that usually accompanies them after late nights and feeling depressed because someone stole my "me" time yet again. But I'm done being a victim of my sleep schedule and my job, so I started getting up and seeing the morning magic hour and making a cup of coffee and reading things that are interesting to me and my Bible and writing in my journal. Do you know how much better I feel? Everything isn't fixed, and insecurity is, as always, lurking around most corners, but now I have some time each day to gain perspective and make myself fit for service.

Because I'm done. That's it. No more. God didn't give me this opportunity so that I could feel sorry for myself.


Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.