Productivity - a god.

I’ve now lived in Belgium for three months. Typing that feels surreal- time feels slow and gooey, like waiting for the honey to stop dripping from your spoon so you can finally sweeten your tea. I feel like I’ve been here for years but somehow also feel like a newborn baby.

The past three months have been a rollercoaster. You know... the wooden kind that you know will probably give you a headache but you ride it anyway because it looks so enticing. At first it was week to week: a week of positives, then a hard week. Now, it seems to be hour to hour- having a full conversation in Dutch at the fabric store sends me soaring, only to have a complete meltdown a few hours later over not having the right adapter to plug in my curling iron. These are the things they told me to expect going into the mission field, but it doesn’t excuse me from having to walk it out.

In some ways, I feel like I have too much information about what to expect. They told me about a “honeymoon phase” where I’d feel like everyday was part of an extended holiday. They told me it would be followed by a huge crash and culture shock. (I think this is where I currently stand???) They told me eventually it will eventually level out. 

So I anticipate, I try to prepare myself so that whatever comes next won’t blindside me. Peculiarly enough, my anticipation of future emotions has begun to totally rob my ability to feel the current ones.

The past few weeks have been sort of a “mind tornado”. I start the day, ready to be productive- in ministry jobs, creating art, language learning. About 11am, I begin to get really overwhelmed in trying to plan out how to divide my time and if what I need to do that day is “good enough to be considered missionary work"

"Do I do computer work first? I need to finish that art piece for the exhibition? I am totally behind in language learning, so I should probably focus on that first- at least that’s what everyone is telling me…? What does it even mean to be a missionary? What is my actual job?”

After mulling it all over, I usually find myself so deeply overwhelmed that I’m frozen. Only to begin scolding myself for the time I’ve wasted thinking about it all, which of course only adds to my anxiety. And so I start out to do something, anything, in hopes that it will make me feel successful to have completed a task.

It’s a vicious cycle. 

And truly, it’s rooted in a deep and nauseating fear of other’s opinions. I want so badly for people to benefit from my existence. I desperately want my team to be encouraged, helped, and impressed by what I bring to the table. I want my boyfriend to think I’m badass in the Kingdom. I want my family to think I’m doing well. I want Belgians to be wonder-struck by how well I integrate to their culture, how quickly I learn their language. At the same time, I want my new friends to be moved by my ability to be “at peace with not having it all together."

But it’s a fake version of vulnerability.

I’m coming to realise just how much I manipulate a conversation to make people think a certain thing about me.

It’s exhausting. 

I’ll gently tuck away my emotions if it means I can be more productive- in accomplishing my agenda to make people think good of me, or in my day to day tasks (not even sure what that entails right now…?)

//

“I am a God of total and complete love. If you are feeling an emotion, whether “bad” or “good”, submit it to me. If it is rooted in fear, then you may have momentarily forgotten this love. 

Your obsession with productivity is deeply rooted in your fear of not being enough for the people in your life and for Me. You think that if you did more ministry, learned the language faster, prayed for more people on the train, that we’d all be proud of you. Madeline, there’s nothing left to do, don’t you see? You genuinely believe that being busy in and of itself is bettering the world. You want to be used by Me so badly... so long as it looks like getting to work and seeing progress. Madeline, your control will only hurt you worse. You will run yourself into the ground trying to make us all happy. Please release your checklist to me… of what you want to see done in your life, in Belgium, in the Kingdom. Your hands are clutched around these ideas but I want to use them elsewhere. 

//

What if you never again evaluated how much you’ve accomplished? What if you just did what I put in front of you, as it came? If you stopped trying to compare whether you were worth more than the person next to you? What if you were genuinely at peace?

What if you didn’t question whether or not you had enough to bring to even be invited to the Table?

You’re invited. Without making another thing, doing another task. Without giving to another soul, without a new revelation. You’re invited. In all the confusion and chaos of your mind. You’re invited without taking another step of growth. You’re invited now. 

You’re invited to come, sit, enjoy. Communion as your only goal. There’s nothing else, no other step that your enjoyment of Me should lead to. I’m the end goal. It’s what you were made for, it’s all you were made for. 

You have all that you need. You are all you need to be. 

So breathe. 

Deeper. 

Fill up your belly with the peace I died to give you. There’s nothing left to do. Only love to enjoy.