Then, I came home and back to work and the overwhelming majority of people just wanted me to do my job. They didn't even care there was a new ring on my finger or awakened look on my face. I've been numb and cold for such a long time, and after one weekend, and a very important and challenging week that lead to it, I had changed.
Within a day or two I felt an extreme sadness weighing heavily on me at work. I spent much of last week at work fighting it with all the tools I knew how. I don't want it. I don't want that numb feeling to creep back over me. I'm recognizing some things. And as the week rolled to an end, I started stumbling across a number of articles and events with a similar theme.
I don't want success more than life.
John is my business partner and I couldn't choose a better one.
I want to live a remarkable life.
I have to live out a calling or I'm going to go numb.
I need to work for people I admire, not just a purpose I respect.
I just might have to step out of the game for a while, and it will likely cost me "success".
The Fresh Exchange:
There is beauty in the process. It’s a beauty that I
continually try hard to remind myself to stop to take in. Too often I get
caught up in climbing to the next peak or trying to be better than I was last
time or constantly needing to perfect the process. There is nothing wrong,however,
with being someone who loves to climb higher and expect better from
themselves. Recently, I have learned that as great as that feeling of
achievement is, there is also an even better feeling with being content within
the process of where we are now. If you are like me at all, you constantly feel
the weight of that ever looming finish line. Lately I am realizing
how important it is to take in the moment of where we are in work, life,
dreams, and the in-between.
My Pastor, Richard Dahlstrom’s Blog:
(this new blog address reflects my profound belief that our lives
are journeys of transformation, and that there’s always a step we can take
towards wholeness – my upcoming sabbatical was the catalyst for the change, as
you see here…)
If success is a mountain, I’m an accidental climber.
Has it ever happened to you? You’ve been working hard for
goals you believe in for a long time. You’ve sacrificed and said no to
trinkets so that you could focus on the gold of your goal. It didn’t
happen overnight, but it happened. You took initial step into the unknown
of a new job, or that visionary idea into a deeper realm of committing to it
and the universe rewarded with you success. The business grew. You
were promoted. The publisher said yes.
It feels good and so you stay on the path a little longer and
you continue to get a few more responsibilities. All the while, there are
other areas of life, and these too are growing. You’re a spouse now,
maybe, or a parent, or you have a loan for a house and are slowly filling it
with stuff. Your hard drive’s filling up with pictures of kids at
Christmas, Little League, Prom night. It’s not perfect. There are
bumps along the way, but you’re still getting more responsibilities. The
business is gaining new market share. Investments are doing their job.
It’s all paying off.
Days become decades, quickly. Now there’s money in the
bank, and when the car breaks you don’t worry about whether you can afford to
get it fixed. You eat out a bit more, maybe a lot more. Others,
looking in on your life from the outside, are a little envious, or maybe
resentful. That’s because you’ve become what our culture tells us is most
important; you’ve become “successful”. You just kept walking, step
by step, and it happened that you eventually found yourself high up on the
slope with your own measure of fame, or influence, or upward mobility, looking
down on the lights below. You wonder how you got there, pausing to look
around for a moment.
You look around, once you have a little time to catch your
breath, but nothing looks familiar. You’re not sure where you are
anymore. You thought this was the right path because back down there
along the way, everyone applauded and affirmed every step you took – college
degree, corporate job, promotion, partner, consultant, marriage, kids, cross
fit, commute. The world’s filled with cheerleaders ready to affirm or
punish every step of the way so that the well trodden mountain becomes your
mountain too. You went, almost without questioning. And then
comes a moment when you know it’s time to rest and recalibrate.
Just such a moment came my way last summer. I’d come
home from two packed months of speaking at conferences on both coasts and
in Europe, ending this season with a cross country flight on a Friday
night. At eight the next morning I joined with other staff members of the
church I lead for a four hour morning of round-robin interviews with several
candidates for a single staff position. These were finished and I was
having lunch with one of the candidates when my phone rang. “Germany?” I
said to myself, seeing the +49 country code. Because I have a daughter
there, I picked up.
“Kristi! Good to hear from you…”
Silence. And then, “Richard it’s Peter.”
“Peter. I thought you were Kristi. Listen, I’ll call
you back, I’m right in the middle of…”
“Nope. I need to chat now, for a just a minute or
two.” I walk away from the
outdoor table just as the waiter brings my food. I’m sitting in the
glorious Seattle sunshine by the front door of the restaurant when he says, “Hans
Peter died today paragliding in the Alps. They found his body early this
evening. I’ll let you know more when I know the time of the funeral.”
After a silent moment Peter says, “I know. Stunning.” We chat a moment
before I hang up the phone and finish the perfunctory interview, wondering why
the world hasn’t stopped for everyone else on this outdoor patio, because God
knows its collapsed for me. I can’t eat, can’t throw up, though I want
to. Then I go going home and sit in the sun that set hours ago
in Austria, sinking behind the Alps and leaving a family I love reeling in
darkness.
One of my best friends is dead. We’d skied the Alps
together, snowshoed the Cascades east of Seattle, and ridden bikes
amongst monuments of Washington DC. We’d rejoiced and agonized over our
kids. We’d argued theology and commiserated about leadership.
Even though we were separated by 6,000 miles or so, he was one of my best
friends. And now he’s gone. The next day I broke down
while telling my congregation, but on Monday there was an important retreat to
lead for my marvelous staff. It would be filled with laughter and
adventures, and I just kept pushing, because there was always another
thing to do just around the corner. The retreat ended and I sat in a
stream and talked at a camera for video that needed making. Then home, then
studying for Sunday, then preaching three times.
After that I collapsed. There was a day or two when the
thought of getting out of bed to make a little coffee was overwhelming, let
alone actually doing my job. It was time for a sabbatical, a break
from the normal routine in order to restore. I knew I needed it.
Sabbaticals are for pastors, what fallow land is
for a farm. God invoked farmers to let the land rest every seven years,
as a remembrance that God’s the provider, and as a gift of restoration for both
the land and the farmer! It’s important for the health of everyone: the
pastor and the church, the farmer and the land. It was time.
When you’re young, nobody tells you about the dangers of
success. It’s like a disco ball, high up there on the ceiling in the center of
the room, and all the lights of everyone’s ambitions are shining on it, so that
its beauty is magnified as it reflects the collective pursuits of greatness back
to everyone in room with sparkle, as if to say, “this is what it’s all
about”. You want it to shine on you too. We call it lots of things,
depending on our profession. We want to build great teams, provide
service second to none, create a product everyone needs, cure cancer, end human
trafficking, write the song, get the corner office, get into Sundance, make the
NY Times Bestseller List, raise amazing kids, find true love. Let’s face
it, there’s a gold medal in every area of life. Maybe this isn’t a bad
thing. After all, we all need a reason to get up in the morning. We
want our lights to shine. We want significance. I get it.
Conventional Wisdom, or disguises dressed as the same,
capitalize on these longings for success. That’s what seminars are for,
and books about losing 100 pounds, or running marathons, or creating a
marketing strategy. There is an entire “pursuit of success” industry
precisely because we believing that going after it is the right thing to do,
and maybe it is.
I’d always thought I wasn’t in that camp. In a world of
big, I’d made my living running a church in my living room, and teaching at
tiny Bible schools around the world several weeks a year. In a world of
urban, I was living with my wife and three children in a place where the phone
book was a single sheet of paper. We were rural, small,
subsistence. There were resource challenges at times, but even though we
lived below the poverty line, we slept under the stars on clear nights, camped
in old fire lookouts where Jack Keroak spent his summers, and enjoyed
tiny staff meetings around the kitchen table. It was hard work, and
frugal, lacking notoriety, but life giving.
That was nearly twenty years ago. Between then and now,
I’ve been privileged to pastor what I believe to be one of the great churches,
in one of the great cities of the world. Grace infuses our life together
as we try to focus more on how Jesus unites us than how lesser issues
divide. There’s joy and laughter, there’s brokenness and healing.
It’s far from perfect. But I’ve been thrilled and honored to carry the
torch for this season. In order to restore creativity and vision,
though, I knew it was time, not for something different, but for a pause.
I asked my board for three months off, so that I could get off
the treadmill, get my bearings, and return, with a sense of refreshment,
and a re-calibrated soul, better able to serve, lead, and discern the
signs.
I’ve been intrigued with the notion of pilgrimage for my
sabbatical time, trying to learn what it means to walk with God by literally
walking… for 40-45 days, through the high Alps. My intent is to move away
for three months: out of speed and into slow, out of complexity and into
simplicity, out of comfort and into suffering, out of certainty and into
dependency. The convergence of my weariness born from success, and the
death of my friend pointed me towards the path of getting out from behind my
books, and desk, and out of my car, putting one foot in front of the other for
400 miles.
Lessons will be learned through preparation and travel about
suffering, traveling light, encounter, endurance, beauty, hospitality, and much
more. And while the original thought was to travel the Pacific
Crest trail from the Canadian border south into Oregon, or from Mt. Rainier to
Mt. Shasta, the death of my Austrian friend left a teaching hole for this
summer that I’m qualified to fill, so I’ll teach the last week of their program
and then my wife and I will begin in Northern Italy, head up through Austria
into Germany, then west before dropping down and finishing our trek in
Switzerland with friends.
I’ll post what we’re experiencing and learning here as I’m able,
so I hope you’ll join us!
Departure: July 23rd Return: October 23rd –
Here’s a Sabbatical Video
that will answer more questions.
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