A Personal Note on Chronic Stress
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I sat at my kitchen table staring blankly as I tried to focus on my devotion time.
My mind kept wandering:
A recent upgrade in practice management software for my growing counseling practice - designed to make things easier, but so far, not. Amazing that just one improvement could create such chaos. Incredible.
And then the challenge of leading people, including the 15 therapists on our staff. Sometimes I think that leading therapists may be similar to leading a group of cats. (Don’t tell them I said that. We have a group of amazing God-called therapists. But… well… some days…. you know what I mean 😊).
Then this newest hassle – dealing with added government regulations for health care practices.
Oh, did I mention a liability insurance audit that raised the possibility of expensive changes to some of our internal business procedures?
I felt ready to implode. I just couldn’t take one more thing.
The usual litany of negative thoughts crowded my mind.
The government just makes it hard for small businesses.
The health insurance industry wants to make it hard for small group counseling practices.
This is too much. Dealing with administrative hassles isn’t why I went into counseling.
The most frustrating part? Dealing with these problems makes it harder to get to things that are my real passion: creating emotional intelligence content and thought leadership for you and others like you. And empowering our therapists to work with their clients therapeutically.
Then it occurred to me (as things often do when sitting with my Bible before God). How can I speak to you, my readers, about leading through stress and overwhelm if I am not experiencing the very thing myself?
That new thought did wonders for me that morning.
And writing to you … telling you about it helped me feel more in touch with my passion. It renewed my enthusiasm. I felt more alive.
I started thinking about the stress many of my readers are facing.
COVID and the resultant fallout for churches. Many simply got out of the habit of attending
Shifting culture and changing attitudes
Financial stress
Lack of volunteers
Difficult relationships in your leadership circle
I imagine that you may feel as though you are swimming upstream as a lot of these pressures interfere with your focus.
Is it any wonder that many pastors consider dropping out of ministry?
And if we don’t see results from our effort, it can feel even worse. Surprisingly, even when good things are happening, we can fall into burnout if we are not careful.
I recently wrote Under the Juniper Tree chronicling Elijah’s experience from chronic stress to the Mount Carmel victory, then to collapse beneath the Juniper Tree.
In that post and the follow-up, After the Juniper Tree, I identified three signs of too much stress and suggested three strategies for dealing with it.
So here I am taking a dose of my own medicine.
My strategies:
talking with God about the challenges I face
getting outside for some birding (the warblers are migrating through my area in full force, and I am excited to identify some more)
focusing on my passion (writing this to you)
and adjusting my mindset as I described above
Pastor, I know your work can be stressful, challenging, and difficult. However, Elijah and I both encourage you to remind yourself of your calling and the reasons that motivated you for ministry in the first place.
In the midst of difficulties, rest. Re-focus. Renew.
Then, as Elijah did, return to the tasks at hand.
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