“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
I used to think this line from the Bible was an extortion to work harder: work with all your heart because you are serving God. It was therefore a revelation when someone explained that the line could also mean working as best you can knowing that God is pleased, not working an unreasonable amount to serve what people think, or being endlessly driven to seek affirmation. It’s not a whip; it’s an encouragement, and it’s liberating.
Today I had a phone call with a friend who told me that her architect husband is getting a hard time from his colleagues for his refusal to be available at all hours; he has even gone so far as to block their calls at weekends, which is apparently not the done thing in the architect world. I am full of admiration for him. He’s like Daniel in Babylon, drawing his line at what he cannot do: sacrifice his weekend with his wife. I think it's pretty clear he's working to serve the Lord not man.
I think I can struggle with perfectionism, and I am definitely a seeker of recognition/affirmation. Last year I spent a lot of time preparing lessons for students to complete at home. It was important that students had access to high quality learning material whilst they were away from school, and it was right that I took this job seriously. But the audio recording – my goodness! It felt like every time I was recording spoken instructions onto the lessons, I would misspeak, trip over a word, or someone would interrupt me. And then I’d want to start again. One time I was trying to say that students needed to make sure they had pen and paper for an activity, and for some reason (tiredness?) I just kept saying “pen and pencil” and then I’d have to begin all over. It was only when I listened to another colleague’s Sway and heard him stumble and then laugh and correct himself, that I thought: Why am I spending so long perfecting every lesson? Honestly: pride. Parents might be listening and I didn’t want them to hear my mistakes - it's embarrassing. (Students are presumably used to hearing a teacher stumble over her words and self-correct!).
Sometimes my husband observes my putting together lesson powerpoints in the evenings, and once told me I’m thinking too much about which picture to put on a slide. He said. “Don’t spend more than a few seconds choosing an image, especially if the students are only going to be looking at it for a few seconds anyway.” And yet I catch myself trawling through Google images, wanting to get just the clearest, wittiest, most appropriate picture to illustrate the point I’m making on that particular slide. I’m pretty sure that’s working to please man not God though – God would probably want me to stop faffing with my powerpoint and talk to my family.
This Christmas, we had a friend round for dinner, not someone with whom I normally spend a lot of time socialising, although we did used to work together. I was therefore surprised when she credited me with a turning point in her teaching career. Apparently, she was once drowning in planning and marking, and I had advised her that she would learn to care less and then she would speed up. That sounds like such terrible advice! But at least she’s stuck it out in teaching. I remember staying up to the early hours agonising over my grading of Year 7 essays, going over the piles of papers to check and tweak. Now, I’d just put a number on and move on with my life. I'm currently trying to convince a new colleague of this as she spent half term making herself miserable with marking. It's hard though, when we want to do it right.
The same applies to all areas of life, no doubt. It was just cake sale day at the boys’ school. In the past, my pride would have determined that they arrived with home baking; now, I’ll just be pleased that I remembered to send them in with money to buy said cakes.
And parenting in general, of course. I have the awesome responsibility of doing my best in being the main carer for three children. I’ve read a lot of parenting books. I went to parenting courses and weekly mums’ meetings and even did some sessions of counselling, and I always feel like there is more I should be doing, praying, prioritising. I found first lockdown really hard when friends posted lovely pictures of all the wholesome activities they were doing at home (was I doing the right things? or too much/too little of them?), and the more recent lockdown hard in a different way when it felt like admitting defeat when we sent the boys into school as key worker children, as my husband and I were both live on Teams for lessons. So I’m not the mum I’d like everyone to think I am, but perhaps I kind of need to accept that I am a 'good enough' mum, a trying to serve God mum, and that might just have to be enough for now.
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