Experiment 1: Unearth the root of the pressure to do (and do and do).

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One July evening, Dagi handed me a crinkled envelope over the remains of the paella and tacos we’d just consumed. By the expectant look on his face, I knew the contents would be something extraordinary. Here’s what I unfolded: a letter of invitation to a two-night silent retreat at a local retreat center, and my eyes blurred with tears. It had been a stressful month teaching summer PE (which I have no expertise in!) and keeping our one-year-old happy and laundry folded. My soul craved the space to simply be.

But all my life cultivating such space has been a struggle. I have always been an achiever, a doer. As a little girl, I would bring my straight-A report card to Krispy Kreme for a box of glazed confections. At one year-end awards ceremony, I won certificates in nearly every subject–from academics to the arts. Each summer during high school, I would paint walls in my grandparents’ rental properties, wash windows, babysit, write novels. Sitting still made me feel useless, even worthless. 

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Now as a mother who primarily works from home, the metrics of achievement have changed, but the desire hasn’t. If I am honest with myself, I still strive to win awards: for Super Mama, Best Wife, Stellar Christian. Too often it is my desire to achieve that controls my actions. Too often it is the twisted attempt to deck myself in trophies that pushes me to attend Bible studies, bounce babies in the nursery, and ensure healthy dinners promptly served at 6pm.

And here lies one of the ugly roots of my pressure to do: ego. Ego feeds my need to accomplish more and more, to be acclaimed and affirmed in my grand productivity. I want the thank you’s for my volunteering and the you are amazing’s for my home-cooked meals. 

Underneath my desire for this acclaim and affirmation lies a deep insecurity: I need to efficiently complete lists of tasks to feel complete. I need to layer tasks on top of each other like ice-cream scoops precariously stacked on a cone: respond to emails while contenting Jeremiah with pots and pans while listening to a French podcast to keep up with my français while a timer beeps for the broccoli I’m burning in the oven. My (often) unconscious thought-process goes like this: If I don’t keep doing, I won’t achieve. And if I don’t achieve, I won’t be worth anything.

And if I’m not worth anything, I won’t be loved.

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Enter: the retreat. The spiritual director I was assigned, a retired school teacher with shoulder-length white hair, orthopedic shoes, and the most gentle blue eyes, encouraged me on the first evening to simply be. To do nothing. So after our meeting, I crumpled into a patio chair overlooking a fringe of forest. The journal, Bible, and devotional book I’d brought sat unopened beside me. And it was wonderful. Later that weekend, I sipped coffee without words. I meandered wooded trails without words. I lay before God without any words at all. 

And here is the gift I discovered there, in the place of (to the world's eyes) utter uselessness and utter unproductivity: 

I am profoundly loved. 

In my leather-bound journal I wrote, The wonder of it all is that, far from feeling useless or worthless, I feel the quiet pulse of God’s love for me all the stronger. Stripped of my pretense to worth through accomplishment, good works, hard work, and doing, I feel closer to knowing my belovedness. I feel nearer to God, nearer to His abundant love for me, nearer to His presence… There is nothing I can do to earn His love…Quite simply, God loves me.

This does not mean that accomplishment, hard work, and doing are bad. As believers we are called to be poured out, like blood from a vein, like wine from a cup. Our whole selves–body, mind, spirit–are not our own. But I am learning to do what God calls me to do for entirely different reasons than the ones I was enslaved to before. I am learning to bake a casserole for a new mom and attend Bible study not to bolster my own ego or paper over an insecurity–and certainly not to make myself worthy of God’s love. 

But out of an obedience rooted in a grateful love for the God who so lavishly, wildly loves me. Divine love frees me to work and do not in order to gain love, but from the security of already having it. Rather than labor to achieve love through endless, efficiently ticked-off tasks, I am already loved beyond my wildest fathoming. I am already rooted and grounded in a love nothing can separate me from.

I already have what my soul longs for. 

My silent retreat was last July, and I still struggle to believe the truth that I am loved simply by being. I still feel the pull to do more and more, faster and faster, to somehow earn divine love. But I will keep speaking this truth over and over again, until I no longer need to: either in this life, or the day I enter the presence of Love forever. 

Scripture references: 2 Timothy 4:6; 1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 3:17-21

This blog is part of the “Experiments in Inefficiency” series, which explores what it means to resist unbiblical cultural and personal pressures to produce in favor of Jesus’ easy yoke.