It is 4:30am in Denver and I am wide awake. I don't know if it is the Lord's doing that I am awake or that Mountain Dew that I slammed right before bedtime. Either way I am awake thinking about leadership. To be more specific, godly leadership. This year has been a very difficult one for me. It seems ironic to say that too since I got married, graduated, and started a career almost all at once. You'd think these things were only a cause to celebrate but that is not always the case. There are many factors that go into those life- altering moments to make them either/or.
Anyways, I started my first big girl job with a big girl paycheck and big girl benefits. I became Philip's sugar momma. You know how you start on something new and you have a dream plan in your head that you are going to change things and be a star to everyone and there will never be any pushback because you are so inspiring? Well then you get my intentions to when I started my job. The store I came into wasn't falling apart, mind you. It just needed a boost and I thought I could give it my, "I know everything about leadership" boost. What began to happen was that I really wasn't liked much at all. There were some people within who had wanted my job but for one reason or another didn't get it and others who just didn't like "the new girl." I couldn't handle being disliked and not being inspiring so I began to deteriorate. Mind you, this is in the thick of wedding planning, moving, and planning to graduate so I was spread very thin and I am not someone who can do it all and do it well. I severely need quiet time and rest. To react to all my new responsibilities that I felt like I was failing at, I wouldn't know when to speak up about what was legitimate and so I would allow things to happen without really communicating with my team. When I don't communicate, I bottle and it shows drastically. Needless to say, I set myself up for failure at my job. Not only was everything that was important to me misunderstood but I was disliked even more. So it is now February, a year later, and we are doing our pre-reviews with the company. I can hardly think of anything good to write about myself because I so disastrously failed at holding my feelings together all year. Not to mention, everyone saw! How do I reinvent the mold that I created when I started?
On the opposite side of my year I can see much more clearly the battles I should've fought and the ones I needed to leave behind. But ultimately I think it begins with an honest look at who I am desiring to be as a leader both in silence and out loud. I am reading a book right now called "Run with the Horses" by Eugene Peterson. It is about how to live life at its best as a child of God and it is a careful look at the life of Jeremiah. If you know anything about Jeremiah you wouldn't think he was the model to use. He was a prophet who was constantly ridiculed for being a prophet and he had virtually no friends besides the Lord. I do not consider that life at its best. Except one of the things that Eugene points out about Jeremiah is that although he struggled with his isolation, he did so towards the Lord. He was not afraid to ask God where he was in the midst of this great calling he had given Jeremiah. It feels good to know that even Jeremiah wanted out. Great people certainly do not get to their intended ends by their intended means. It is always through God's means of molding and shaping us. It is also a comfort to me that on the outside Jeremiah seemed to never have waivered in his confidence but on the inside, in his prayer life, he was begging God to explain himself for having forsaken Jeremiah. I often shrink back from the most important battles because I am scared of being left even more in isolation. But Jeremiah didn't leave his calling. He did desire to but God reminded him that he would live poorly and without much adventure if he lived among normal men. I don't want to live among normal men. I really desire for God to use me for his purposes in loving people and giving the truth in love. I see how normal men and women live and I'm not all too impressed. Especially women who choose to talk behind each others backs rather than face the realities of their relationships. If I have learned anything this year through my prayer life and how it has related to my work it is that God can give us love for anyone. This is not surface love either. Surface love is trying to like them and laughing at all their jokes because you want them to feel a little safer with you, even though it is agony to enjoy their company. Deep, deep love is when God reminds us of his own love for them and you begin to see their flaws as God sees them and it becomes less about being annoyed but more about desiring to see them return to the garden. Out of that deep love, you can begin to truly lead, even if it means isolation. With some of the people I worked with this year I have had to have a lot of discussions with the Lord. Sometimes I have asked God to give other people that love for me because I have been a sore spot to some. But God is so good to hear us because I can truly say that even though I have to begin having some honest discussions with people, I know that I love them and care for where God wants to take them. That is the kind of leader I want to be.
