I’ve been feeling really down, hopeless and somewhat depressed lately. I don’t like it. Lisa decided, with my 100% support, that she would quit work and go to University to get her nursing degree. Less income more expense. I told her that I would stop struggling with my vocation and just be content with it. My constant struggle with my calling, if it actually is a calling, can cause us lots of anxiety, especially now that we need reliable income.
But me being me, the struggle emerged again and she knew it. Finally, yesterday morning, we had a serious talk. She said, “The trap is only in your mind!” I thought all day about what she said, and I realized that she is right! I suddenly knew, again, that what gets me really hopeless is when I feel trapped. Exteriorly, I don’t look trapped. And I’m not. I’m very free to do what I want. So what is it that makes me begin to question my vocation so deeply and disturbingly? If I’m not really trapped, maybe I feel trapped in other ways. And if I do feel trapped in other ways, why do I allow this to happen? Why, if I don’t have to be trapped, do I allow myself to be and feel trapped?
When I was asking myself these questions yesterday it began to dawn on me that I feel trapped when I feel pressure to conform, constrain and control myself. I began to notice areas I felt some pressure to conform: sometimes I feel an unspoken pressure from the institution and individuals within it to adhere to a preset systemization of belief and morality; sometimes I allow a comment left on my blog or criticism from other bloggers to intimidate me into conformity; sometimes I feel afraid to let what I really believe to leak out of my mouth; sometimes I allow criticism of the way I oversee our community, or criticism of our community itself, to frighten me into silence, passivity and paralysis.
I want to live free. I want to believe what I believe, oversee the way I oversee, write the way I write, paint the way I paint, and live the way I live. When I allow others to cause me to shrink back, that’s when I become sad, hopeless and immobilized. As soon as I realized that, I immediately was free again. ‘Til next time.
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David I struggle with some of the same stuff. Who would have thought this this quote would hellp me almost more than anything:
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
I do not say this to make light of your feelings or situation or make a joke. I’m only trying to encourage you to keep on keepin’ it real.
Brother,
As a pastor, I totally hear what you’re saying. The slightest comment can sometimes send me off into a tailspin leading to paralysis. Paralysis is nothing more than my Godless fear taking over.
David, I struggle with a lot of the same things. This reminded me of a passage I read the the other day by Brennan Manning in his book “The Ragamuffin Gospel”.
I also understand your feeling. It caused me to leave a community so I could figure it out on my own. I needed to be free from the expectation of others and the pressure that caused in my own mind. In this time I’ve developed into a person that can now deal with those expectation in a constructive, rather than destructive way. And we always have to remember the source of all of it, God. You are in my prayers.
I’m on the side lines watching from a far…
Cheering you on…
Encouraged, not by your struggle…
But the benefit you derive from it…
Hoping for you to know…
I’ve benefited too…
But not with out your transparency…
Thank you so much…
Wow, the little train that could………….I think I can, I think I can.
Just arrived here and not sure of anything other than your post I just read. All I can say is that the same feeling of “trapped” is basically what every single human who questions the church feels as a direct result of that same church making them feel “guilty” in some way, hence the recoiling from it.
And I would suggest you continue to exercise the behaviour of freedom in your life at all levels you feel you need it as much as possible.
If people got priests that encouraged them to be more and more free instead of more and more guilty, the church may save itself yet.
Hi David, I just found your blog. You encourage me more than I can say – thank you! I travel a very Christ-centered path, but haven’t been able to do that in the company of a large church community for the reasons you mention in this post – feeling pressured to conform. I love God and I love loving others with His love. Thanks again and please know that you are going the right way….
David
you are not alone in these feelings. And strangely I posted something similar on my newest blog (which is read by my congregation). I have been encouraged by you – and want to wish you strength for your journey.
Pete
Thanks again, David!
Something just dawned on me while reading the comments. G commented:
“All I can say is that the same feeling of “trapped” is basically what every single human who questions the church feels as a direct result of that same church making them feel “guilty” in some way, hence the recoiling from it.”
Not to let guilt-inducing churches off the hook…but we ARE in fact guilty. That is the paradox of the Gospel of Jesus. Guilty sinners can be free. Our struggle with feeling imprisoned is usually due to not believing that we really are free in Christ..i.e. not believing the Gospel at a given moment.
The way this works out for me is that when I don’t believe Jesus is enough, I try to fill the void with the approval of others, or by comfort in material things, or by power over others, or by controlling others. Of course, none of these things ever really “work” in the long run.
Believe the Gospel more.. you will be more free
Jeff S.
P.S. How to believe more is a whole other topic
Boy did you marry the right wife! Jokes aside it is quite remarkable that two of the most “free” persons in my opinion were at the same time the most “trapped” by circumstances-Victor Frankl and Nelson Mandela. It even made me wonder if it could actually solve your (and many others) problem if you were to move to say a congregation in Africa where your options are even more limited because as long as entrapment is a choice born out of love it is not entrapement at all but true freedom…then again I’m having an awful flew and it could be that I’m halusinating from the fever. So don’t take this to seriously. Good luck fellow inmate!
I’ve struggled with this unspoken, subtle pressure to conform–especially as it relates to the church body–as well. I’ve wondered for a few years now why it is that so many of my friends DO NOT feel this pressure. Why it is that the things that pastors say get under my skin and not theirs? Why it is that another plan or agenda or program meets with resistance from me and a “Oh, that would be nice” or a “I’d LOVE to be on the team” from them?
I suppose it could be that I am just a selfish person who wants things my way and/or my conscience has been seared. I suppose it could be that inner voice of “be nice at all costs” left over from a MN upbringing resents having to duke it out with that other inner voice of “what twaddle this is!” I suppose it could be that my friends are far more easygoing than I am about differences, so they just agree (even if they don’t agree) and then go about their business not really caring what happens later. But I think I’ve figured out why they don’t feel this heavy burden while I do…
because they agree with the pressurebuilders. They are not offended by groupthink because they wholeheartedly agree with the vision and the plan and the programmed agendas. They buy it! They believe it is best! They want it! They are on board! They are part of the inner circle and they will make it happen!
If and when they do butt up against those hard places of conflicting convictions, they too have sudden fits of “I can’t believe this is happening here–in church!” They attempt to regain equilibrium by formulating plans, zealously setting out to influence the system, praying that the problems will disappear, toying with the idea of leaving, and finally admitting in frustration that they don’t have a clue how to proceed and now they understand what I was trying to articulate.
I’m not thankful that some of my friends have gotten to the place I am, but it is sometimes nice to have human company on the narrow road. And the greatest thing of all is that somehow God always gets us through it…by reminding us that in Him we ARE (present tense) free.
I think it is worth remembering (at all times) that even the Bible was born out of a certain sense of entrapment. I do not just mean in terms of themes like exodus and exile, but in terms of the actual document itself: the tension of James vs. Ephesians, the polemic of Yahweh vs. Elohim accounts, the priesthoods of Aaron vs. the priesthoods of Moses … Carthage, Trent and 95 Theses. My point simply being that our heritage is one of divergence and debate. The pressures of individuals, institutions, cycles and belief systems IS our story; I find a subtle beauty in choosing to “own” our heritage and continuing the cycle of seeking liberation from repression–knowing full well that another generation will have to offer their own blood, sweat and tears to tear themselves from whatever grand ideology we solidify in our attempt to be free. The irony is something we must choose to own, lest we jettison our own identity altogether.
David I just saw this quote on another blog, thought you might like it. (I do).
* “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”
* Harvey Firestone, Industrialist.
Not comparing your struggle, here, to victim mentality, however by providing this quote. Mostly the first and last sentence hit home for me.
Two weeks after quitting my job, selling my house, moving my family to another city and starting seminary classes, the Bishop came to talk to our class. For reasons more litigious than pastoral, I suspect, he said to us: “If there is any way you can avoid being a pastor, than please do so.” That request has reverberated in my head ever since that day nearly 16 years ago. Thus far, I have not yet been able to do so, giving me confidence whenever the dragon of discontentment-with-my-vocation raises its ugly head, which, like you and many others who have already commented, is very often.
When I become discontented with this pastor stuff, I just remember where I came from, what I came out of, and the trapped feeling of pulling on the “green chain” on a hot day, and no hope for change.
When I feel trapped as a preacher, I think of Joni Eareckson Tada, Clay Dyer, or Nick Vujicic [google him], or I think of David Ring who asked me many years ago if I would arrange for him to try out at the church where I was an elder–I did NOT give him a second thought—-man, was I wrong. Or when I feel really trapped, I think of blind Fanny Crosby who wrote, among many hymns, “”Blessed Assurance.”"
It works for me–but then I am simple and common and not a deep thinker, so it is easy for me to lift open the trap door and rejoin the rat race.
fishon