130: Check your Finite-tude

Join me, Margie Bryce, your leadership coach who focuses on burnout prevention, on this eye-opening episode of the Crabby Pastor Podcast, where we unravel what's essential to find contentment and perseverance through Christ's strength, all while understanding that we are not built for limitless capacity. What if the very Bible verse you've been leaning on for endless strength is actually nudging you to recognize your limits? This heartfelt conversation guides you through maintaining sustainability to fight leadership burnout in both your ministry and personal life by acknowledging your human limitations.

Running on fumes without recognizing our limits can lead to burnout, affecting both physical and mental health. It also saps the joy out of us. Who wants THAT?

Chapters

• 0:01 Understanding and Embracing Finitude
• 9:25 Understanding Healthy Self-Care Habits
• 24:23 Supporting Sustainable Ministry Leaders

Transcript

Margie: 0:01

Hey there, it's Margie Bryce, your host of the Crabby Pastor podcast, where we talk about all things sustainability, whether it's sustainability in ministry, in your personal life and we acknowledge that the church is in a transitional time, so we hit topics there too that are going to stretch your mind and the way you lead, especially how you lead yourself, so that you don't become the crabby pastor. Hey there, friends, margie Bryce here with the Crabby Pastor Podcast, and I have something. Well, gee, I don't know, maybe maybe you won't find that. Well, this is not the most upbeat topic today, but I think it's an essential topic, so that's why I wanted to bring it to you. Just something to you know, keep you up at night, or you can think about in the middle of the night, or maybe just something that you can let roll around in your head, in your mind, in your heart. So I want to talk about being finite. And, yeah, okay, I think we sort of know that we are finite. I think we know we are people who serve the interests of an infinite God, and that is something we're all excited about.

Margie: 1:27

But I want to talk about today is our finitude. That would be our attitude towards the fact that we are finite, because it turns out that we get in trouble in this area and we just blow right past the fact that we are finite, and that gets us in trouble. It gets us. If you do this long enough, hard enough, fast enough, mostly long enough too, you can head to burnout. You will head to burnout.

Margie: 2:03

But I think about passages that we have used that somehow seem to propel us into ignoring the fact that we are finite, and this is something that we do with the scripture, and so I want to share with you Philippians 4.13. And that is a verse that says I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. Now hear me on this. I am not negating what this says in any way, shape or form, but this is sometimes where we take our little exacto knife and we cut that out and frame it and put it on the wall, and that's not a terrible thing to put on your wall. It reminds us that God is with us, god strengthens us, but it's I can do, we'll take all things, all things, and it feels like there's no limits to that, and in some sense there isn't, but in some sense there most definitely is. So we can't forget ever that there is a context of this and that is Paul writing to the church that he established, and with some help for sure, at Philippi, and he's in jail and he's writing this.

Margie: 3:23

So you know, if I back it up, say to verse 10, Paul is saying but I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now, at last, your care for me has flourished again, though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity. So they were attempting, the Church of Philippi was attempting to send things to Paul to provide for some care, and this is what he's speaking about. He says not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. That's a pretty big philosophical statement for somebody in prison. So not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content, I know how to be abased and I know how to abound Everywhere and in all things. I have learned to be both full and has learned through Christ how to continue existing and existing in a good place within himself. Then he says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

Margie: 4:49

So that passage is not the carte blanche rationale for why you can overload. Okay, I just want to make that point clear. There's times that we take that and use that a little out of context so we can be just as guilty as everyone else of doing that kind of thing. Now here's the thing If you are the kind of ministry leader who is visionary, this means that you can see what does not exist and you can see how it can be and come into existence. And if you're the right kind of visionary, you can chart your path, you can figure out all the steps that it's going to take you to bring whatever it is into existence. But at some point in your life, at some point in your life and I would say this is mostly in the maybe the fourth quarter, maybe the end of the third quarter of your life and, granted, we don't know exactly how long our lifespan is, you know, because we are finite. Okay, we do know that at some point, for the visionary person of which I am, you can see that, oh my, at some point a full stop is indeed coming, and you know that's okay. Maybe I'm waxing and waning a little morbid here, but I'm probably going to get worse with the morbid part before it gets better. But at some point we do have that sense and maybe it's when you encounter the death of a loved one.

Margie: 6:26

As ministry leaders, you know we do a lot of funerals and stuff and I've just done my husband's younger brother's funeral, which was really kind of unexpected really. But we do a lot of funerals and there's times that we step into that role of facilitating and helping a family through that process. Right, we do that. But there's a level of personal disconnect that can easily take place when it's not family or somebody close to us. I think the times that it is somebody close to us that we love and we care about that, it can really be rattling. For example, my husband has no living parents Neither one of us do at this stage of the game but when he lost his younger brother, that resonated and reverberated through his life, you know and mine in all honesty, in a much different way where you get the sense of, hey, there is a full stop coming. You know we are finite, we are finite beings. So that's one way it comes clearly, clearly into view.

Margie: 7:45

So you know, this caused a weird conversation at the dinner table between my husband and I Very weird, I don't even know who brought it up. Probably me, probably me. I was saying it was All right, it was me. Now the reality is coming to play here. Okay, we're sitting at the dinner table and I said to him you know, one of the things I'm going to ask Jesus about in heaven is how we die. You know, is that basically, the way this system is set up, from my limited perspective, is that we all pop off the planet at totally random times and in totally random ways.

Margie: 8:33

So then we got into a discussion about what our suggestion, because my husband said that to me well, what would you suggest? Which was a bad thing to ask me, really, because then my mind just just goes. I said, well, you know, we could say Jesus, maybe it would be a good idea if we all, just you know, died in our sleep. I said, of course. Then the unintended consequence of that is that your spouse say would know, at some point I'm going to wake up and there could be a dead person in my bed, and not that that hasn't happened in real life to some people, because I know people that it has happened to and that's got to be a whole other trauma. But so I said, well, okay, maybe that's not the best suggestion, and you know the whole sleep thing.

Margie: 9:25

I thought it was a very peaceful kind of suggestion, though my other suggestion was maybe you should just die doing something that you love. And maybe that resonates from when I was on a cruise recently, and it was a cruise to Hawaii, and somebody fell in the dining area and they took him to a hospital and we found out like the morning that we were going to get off the boat. I was down at the toaster and two guys were talking and one guy was saying it was a terrible cruise and the other guy said, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. And he said, yeah, my best friend died this morning, and I guess it was the guy that had fallen earlier in the week. And I said to my husband even then. I said you know, I mean, if you're gonna go, this is the way to go. Is, you know, died on a cruise to Hawaii? You know that's a pretty good read in your own bit, don't you think? And uh, so you could, you could die doing something you love.

Margie: 10:30

I said to my husband, however, I thought about this. I mean not extensively, but I've thought about what if you die doing something you love and, for example, I love to bike ride and I live in michigan, so that means what I. I can ride outside three months I'm exaggerating there but 47 degrees is the lowest that I will do an outside ride. So I have an indoor bike and here's the thing I said to him at the dinner table that day. I said you know I could be on my indoor bike and you know that's something I enjoy and something I love, and you know you could work this whole system.

Margie: 11:12

Then, if the goal was you're going to die doing something you love, you would avoid doing something you love to try to stack the odds in your favor or at least I would try to strategize that way. But I, if I'm on my indoor bike and I love doing that, here's the thing I said to my husband you could come home one day from work and I don't know what kind of state you'd find me in, because the indoor bike is the only place where I clip in and if you're a bike rider like serious, you know what that means. I don't do this on my outside bike because I'm just not that graceful, but on my indoor bike it makes me be able to go faster because your shoes are made to clip into the pedals, like you're permanently affixed until you snap your wrist and not your wrist, your ankle. Snap your ankle so that you can unclip. I mean, you have to do something. So I said, if I like, had some massive something, go bad. And I'm on my bike. I said, oh my gosh, would you come home and I? I'd still be clipped in. You know, that's the big thing.

Margie: 12:21

Anyway, I think I decided, oh, never mind, I'm glad I'm not God. But at the the same time it really challenged me to think about once again my finitude, and this really is more about self-care than what you're thinking at the moment. I'm telling you, because if your finitude is non-existent in other words, you don't have any grasp at all that you are finite you're going to pilot your life in ways that are really not helpful and actually is going to suck the joy right out of your life. So I'm saying, if your finitude, if your attitude towards being finite is not anywhere near to be found, non-existent, whatever, you can run on fumes and not even be aware of it. In fact, if you go back through the Krabby Pastor podcast and listen to any of the back from burnout interviews that I've done.

Margie: 13:28

The interesting thing is when I ask somebody hey, how did you know you were toddling towards burnout, they typically do not have any sense that they are headed in that direction and most frequently it is other people that say something to them. So you, if you have no sense that you're finite, you can more easily run on fumes than you ought to, which does and will lead to burnout. And you might be the type of person then, if you have no sense of being finite, that you're going to burn the candle on both ends and you're going to be running fast, hard and long with a very heavy load, and you cannot do that Forever. You cannot do that because you cannot do it forever, because you are finite. You can't run as if you have no limits. Our physical bodies are frail, you know. I think scripture says we're like the blades of grass One minute we're here and one minute we're not. You need to have a solid finitude, a solid attitude about the fact that you are finite.

Margie: 14:42

Now here I'm going to say something that I don't know if some would perceive this as heretical. Who knows, probably, but no, I don't really think it is actually. But I think that pray more and read your Bible more has limits for people who are finite, right, you can't pray more and have that impact like your cholesterol. You can't just sit and read your Bible more instead of eating healthy. You can't. You see where I'm going with this? There is we are frail, we're sturdy our bodies, our minds and the people that we are pretty sturdy. I mean, we literally do not know how many germs and bugs and bacteria and viruses hit us and our immune system just goes into what it was created by God to do and protects us. I mean, so we're sturdy, but we're also pretty frail.

Margie: 15:43

I remember the doctor saying to me would you like to see the scans of your mother's chest you know, like her lungs, because she died of lung cancer, and would you like to see those? Because she apparently had cancer everywhere, everywhere, and was unaware. And I had been asking the doctor enough nosy questions that he said, yeah, yeah, you want to come see these scans. And I did and I'll never forget staring at that originating spot in her lung which then, when you're breathing in and out, you literally send cells everywhere, cancer cells through your body and then they just lodge and grow wherever and that's how that goes. But I'll never forget, when I pointed to the originating spot and I said, well, because you know, the scans kind of scaled down a bit, it's not actual size. I said what size was that? And he said, oh, about the size of a nickel. So you know something the size of a nickel can take you down, and I never forgot that. It really reminded me how frail we are.

Margie: 16:53

So we're both sturdy and frail at the same time. We are masterfully and wonderfully made. So we do need to, though, acknowledge our finitude, acknowledge that there's limits to what our physical body, what our emotional state, what our mental capacity is. We have to really, really understand that and live as if we are finite and we do have limits. So we need to pace ourselves. If you do live with a decent sense of finitude, you know that you need to pace yourself and stop walking through the parking lot and two other places as if you are an Olympian speed walker, because that's crazy and you know what happens. Also and I say this because I've been guilty of this, because I'm pretty type A, but you know, you blow right past some stuff that you wouldn't. We miss stuff because we're blowing right past it and maybe there's some really great things that we are blowing right past because we are charging everywhere we go instead of pacing ourselves. Well, if you have a decent sense that you're finite, you really know God is in control and you really rest in that well and not feel as if you are in charge of everything everywhere all at once, because you know that really is God's spot in your life. I think if you know you have a decent sense of being finite, that you're going to live as if your physical body needs care and it looks like this.

Margie: 18:46

Let's talk about your car for a minute. What happens if you don't change the oil regularly? What happens if, like if you live in Michigan and they salt the roads and you know you never wash the car ever? You know at some point rust is going to become a problem. What happens in your car if it overheats? I want to say blow a gasket, but I don't know if that's a good mechanical analogy or not, because I'm not that savvy about the car mechanical stuff. So if you neglect your car, you are going to get less out of your car in the long run than if you did everything that you can to keep your car running and humming well and address problems actively as they arrive and take care of the car so that you can say, get the most miles out of it that you possibly can. And I realize you know there are some brands and types of cars that run better than others. You know, look at your review files and your review websites for those kinds of things. But the analogy still runs the same that you have to treat yourself as if you want to get the most out of it that you possibly can. So we know that our car is finite and just like our car is finite, so are we. And so my good word to you today is to really consider your finitude, your attitude towards being finite, to make sure that you step into the self-care that you need to, so that you can step into everything that God has for you to do. And if you're feeling better, you're going to enjoy and have an experience, the joy that is yours to have as you serve the risen Lord Jesus. And that's it for today. And that's it for today. So how do the pieces of your life fit together? Do they fit together well and things are humming along just fine, or are there some pieces that are tight or absent or just not fitting the bill.

Margie: 21:37

This is your invitation to join me in my glass workshop for a video series where I am going to do a stained glass project while I talk to you about sustainability and building sustainability into your heart and into your life. So I am going to be doing my art, which is a form of self-care, and I'm going to invite you into that space with me and I'm going to chat. I'm going to chat about self-care and I'm going to show you how I create, and there's a nifty, nifty analogy. Stained glass seems to be a very good metaphor for what I want to talk about, so I'd love for you to join me to do that. To opt in, I'll need you to email me at crabbypastor at gmailcom. That's crabbypastor at gmailcom. So you won't want to miss this emailcom. So you won't want to miss this. You definitely won't want to miss this. So, so make a plan to join me in the glass workshop.

Margie: 22:45

Are you wondering whether your fatigue, your lack of motivation, your lack of interest, is burnout maybe? I just wanted to let you know that I have a resource on the website, margiebryce dot com. That's B-R-Y-C-E, margiebryce dot com, and it is a burnout questionnaire free for you to download and kind of self-assess and get a sense of where you're at. There are questions that not only ask about what you're going through but maybe how often you're experiencing it, and that's kind of a key to where you might be, because you have to know where you are in order to chart a course forward. And most pastors who experience pastors and ministry leaders who experience burnout rarely know that that's where they're at until they're well into it. And if you're unsure about that little statistic, so far, everybody that I've interviewed on this podcast who has experienced burnout, when I asked that kind of question, they're like, yeah, I didn't know, that's where I was at. So again, go to margiebricecom it's on the homepage of the website and you can get your burnout questionnaire and kind of see where you're at.

Margie: 24:23

Hey friends, the Crabby Pastor podcast is sponsored by Bryce Art Glass and you can find that on Facebook I make stained glass as part of my self-care and also by Bryce Coaching, where I coach ministry leaders and business leaders, and so the funds that I generate from coaching and from making stained glass is what is supporting this podcast and I will have opportunities for you to be a part of sponsoring me and, as always, you can do the buy me a cup of coffee thing in the in the show notes, but I will have some other ways that you can be a part of getting the word out about the importance of healthy self-care for ministry leaders.

Margie: 25:28

Hey, thanks for listening. It is my deep desire and passion to champion issues of sustainability in ministry and for your life, so I'm here to help. I stepped back from pastoral ministry and I feel called to help ministry leaders create and cultivate sustainability in their lives so that they can go the distance with God and whatever plans that God has for you. I would love to help, I would consider it an honor and, in all things, make sure you connect to these sustainability practices you know, so that you don't become the crabby pastor. Thank you.