Great. Now I have Guilt!

Several months ago, I signed up for the Mentoring ministry at my church. It was an eight month commitment whereby mature men and women get paired with two younger men or women in a mentoring relationship. Now, before you all start giggling at the thought of me being considered a mature man, two things...one, my church doesn’t really know me very well, I’m new, and second, they were obviously grading on a curve. Nevertheless, I made the cut. I was expecting to be paired with two twenty-something guys fresh out of college trying to make their way in the world. Instead, I was introduced to two older guys, sharp, accomplished men, one in his late 30’s the other in his late 40’s who both happened to be new to the faith. We meet every two weeks for coffee and conversation. There is no curriculum. What guidance I receive comes to me via weekly e-mail from my man, Tommy Thompson, who heads up the program at Hope. That’s a roundabout way of introducing this morning’s subject, which comes courtesy of Tommy’s most recent email in the form of the following killer quote:

“We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love. Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high-speed good intentions. Is God now pro-exhaustion? Doesn’t He lead people beside the still waters anymore?” (Swenson, Margin, p.30)

Ok. When you read the words, Is God now pro-exhaustion, at 6 o’clock in the morning, it startles you, right? First of all, I’m bummed that I didn’t think of it first...what a great line!! But almost immediately after reading it I felt guilty. Here’s why.

I just came off a week of being sick with a really bad cold. It hampered my activities for practically the entire week. I had to cancel appointments, reschedule a bunch of things. I was only in the office for maybe a total of a day and a half. The rest of my time was spent laying around the house coughing and feeling miserable. For the first week in years I had not a single workout at the gym. In other words, I had eliminated all of the velocity from my life. I had all kinds of time to think, heal and breathe. The trouble was...I hated every minute of it. Sure, part of the hate part was because I was sick. But part of me felt totally out of the game, abandoned by life.

Here’s the thing, everything in the quote Tommy sent me is true. I know it in my gut. But, I’m a high motor kind of guy who comes from a family of high motors. One of the most hilarious things ever is watching my sister Linda during beech week trying to...relax. She’s like a jack-in-the-box on speed! Although I have never been diagnosed, my siblings considerate it an established fact that i have ADHD, a vicious slander of course, but just for the sake of argument, lets say that they’re right? All of this slowing down, taking time to smell the roses, living a more contemplative life sounds great on paper, but when it comes to applying it, I feel like Ralph Northam getting six chapters through Roots, saying, Man, this is harder than i thought!

This coming week is jammed with one thing after another, due to all of last week’s inactivity, but the truth is, I’m psyched. So, thanks...Tommy Thompson, for giving me another reason to think that maybe my guys should be mentoring me instead of the others way around!