Secondly, I would like to share some advice. Never get involved in event planning. If asked, "will you research some information and prepare materials?" you can say yes. If begged, "could you come early and help set up/scrub toilets/assemble tables?" go right ahead. But if you are sitting in a meeting and someone asks "So who would be willing to organize this event?" hold your breath, count to five hundred, run for the door. As a people-pleaser, that growing silence will begin to crush you where you sit until you raise your hand and volunteer just because no one else is doing it. I'm begging you, refrain.
Event planning, for people-pleasers, is kind of like zookeeping for control freaks. That is if the zoos have no cages and the control freaks have OCD. It is unrelenting, illogical, excruciating torture, before, during, and after the event.
We had an event today that I've been working on since early June. It was a two hour picnic. For the past three nights, I have woken with nightmares about the potential disruptions or disasters that could occur at the event. The latest involved (and I kid you not) nuclear warfare. I agonized for days over whether to print particular brochures in color (wow! fabulous design!) or in grayscale (wow! fabulous budgeting!). And don't even get me started on the bounce house saga, which I highly suspect has taken years off my life. ["I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you. So, let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity so be honest. How do you feel?]*
People-pleasers, you are awesome. I'm betting there are a lot of you who are interested/active in orphan care. Because the root of people-pleasing is an inability to bear the sight of other people in pain (or, at our worst, in even slightly less-than-enthusiastic happiness). There are so many gifts that you bring to the table: empathy, compassion, tireless diligence, unrelenting support for the underdog, a fierce hatred of injustice, and probably some stellar baking skills. And when you volunteer for the jobs no one else seems to want, you do it with the best intentions. But it just might kill you, and it's not really fair to everyone else.
So I have this to say to everyone out there (and even louder to myself): find the people who love to do the things that you hate to do. Find the ones who do them well, who delight in them. Be good friends to those people, and call them up the next time someone asks you to do something you absolutely hate. God has gifted all of us uniquely. Remember that when you volunteer to do something that is not your gift, you are robbing someone else of exercising their gift.
Of course, there are jobs that everyone hates, and those you just have to do (cleaning gutters, picking up dog poo, ironing, etc). But there are probably fewer of those than you think, especially if you're in the habit of volunteering for everything you assume everyone else would hate to do. Many of the times I have had the most fun serving have been the seemingly most meaningless jobs: scrubbing toilets, serving cafeteria food, changing diapers. I think if we all paid more attention to hearing what tasks and kinds of tasks delight the various people in our lives, we might all work a bit more symbiotically.
Wouldn't it be cool if, instead of asking the people we meet "what do you do?" we asked, "what do you love to do?" And then we put that to work...for the Kingdom...?
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 1 Corinthians 12:14-26
*Anyone know which movie this came from? Hint: it turned twenty this year...
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