"What kind of leader is able to call people to wait on God in the face of real threat,
when all of their survival instincts are raging?
What inner strength does a leader need to be able to access in order to stay calm,
to quiet the primal instincts of others,
and to create space for turning to God in the midst of such fierce human reactivity?
Only a leader who has waited for God in the darkest moments of his own deep need.
Only a leader who has stood still and waited for God's deliverance
in the places where she feared for her very life.
Only the leader with inner spiritual authority
that comes from his own waiting can ask others to do the same."
Ruth Haley Barton
Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership
So far 2013 has been all over the map for me.
It's been a time of huge adjustments on the home front as Ken and I settle in once again to what it means to be empty nesters, following the very good event of our daughter and two grandchildren being able to move into a home of their own just before Christmas. Love the space. Can't say I hate the quiet. But I miss them still, very much, and it's February already. Thought I might be done that by now.
Other relationships are in flux too. Shifts and separations and deepenings and wanings. I'm discovering new territories in my heart that I didn't know were there, and I haven't yet decided if I like the new landscape or not. Feels weird inside of me right now. Thought I might have figured out how to do relationships by now.
We've actually had winter this year, and my people are feeling it, and I, their pastor, feel it with them. Several, over-the-top life situations in our faith community all chose February as their arrival date. Highview herself, now 15 plus years old, is experiencing her own brand of teenage angst, with changes and morphings and new faces around the table and a brand new world of understandings and relevance and theological reflection. New dynamics. New ways of doing things. Being pushed on my values at almost every turn.
I feel stretched, yet again, in my ability to lead in love through what is very much another sort of brand new territory. Why is it the older you get the more you realize that what you know only opens you to what you don't know? Thought I might know a bit more than this by now.
It's not exactly a time of intensive threat, as Barton describes above. She's comparing Moses' experience standing in front of the Red Sea just before it parted, to what leaders often feel in the midst of a ministry crisis. There are no Egyptians bearing down on us, on me, right now, at least not that I'm aware of.
Still, I needed this reminder today. I am comforted again by the truth that the courage to navigate new territories doesn't come from having lived life lightly. Looking back on the times when 'real threat' was , well, really threatening, and remembering the more-than-adequate guts that God provided me in each and every situation, I know that I have already been well prepared for any next steps He leads me to take.
I can do this.
All of it.
The relationships.
The ministry challenges.
The next steps.
Boldly. With great calm and confidence.
Not by my own devices.
But in the power of a God who just keeps on showing up.
