I Bit Off More Than I Can Chew

Now what?

I didn’t really care that the crocuses were blooming. That was probably a sign.

I wanted balmy, subtle spring to come, but not until I was good and ready for it. This also should have been a sign.

You see, I might have said “yes” to a few too many “good things” this quarter. I’m sure you’ve never done that, so allow me to briefly recall how we got here: Winter seemed like such a good time to hole up at my computer, cranking away. There were several things I wanted to keep doing and a handful more I wanted to try. The new things, well, they were stepping stones to imagined futures that could be quite nice. And—bonus—saying yes to them didn’t require me at the time to say no to anything I was already doing. I could have my cake and eat it too, or so I thought.

These Lenten roses are helping me pretend spring hasn’t really sprung. They usually start blooming around the start of Lent.

But now spring, with all its outdoor invitations, has come, and I find myself loathing how the evening light lingers and teases me. “There’s still time to get outside,” it says. “Oh, but if you push dinner to the right, you won’t get as many minutes at the machine after the kids go to bed. And you need every one of them because of the too-many-things choice.”

I regret now how high I thought my capacity could be, how full I thought I could keep my cup without spilling it. I regret that I cannot seem to stop thinking more highly of my future self than I ought (Rom. 12:3), and that I cannot get my present, planning self to remember this.

I got a few of the things off my plate last night, and found a little breathing room to reflect. And here’s what I’m thinking now: First, let’s not call life a balancing or juggling act, because I already know that “some things can bounce and some can’t.” (As proof, I’ve been bouncing laundry to future weeks for most of my adult life.) But I am neither a clown nor an entertainer, and this metaphor feels far too chaotic for my liking.

Maybe it’s the Wicked soundtrack still running through my head, but let’s try thinking of it all as more of a dance. Some bits are choreographed beforehand; a great many are not. It is as much art as science, as much how it’s all done as what is done. We know when it’s being danced well, when we’re firing on all cylinders, even if we can’t quite name why. But when the steps or partners or music get overly complicated, when the dancer tries to do too many things at once, someone ends up getting hurt. (I’m not sure whether to cry, laugh or feel seen by this scene from Saved by the Bell, but in case you’re thinking of it too . . . )

So here is the tension we might always be learning to live within: We are to steward our talents and time without burying them, squandering them or stretching them too thinly across too many things. But just as that thought puffs us up (I’m using all the things to do all the things!), we are reminded again to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Since we’re dancing around the verse that recently gut-punched me on this subject, let’s just read it:

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Rom. 12:3, emphasis mine).

This verse seems to lay out two measuring sticks for how we are to think of ourselves and our abilities: 1) with sober judgment, and 2) in faith. What a dance it is, to rightly consider not only if you can do the thing (based on the facts of past performance and wisdom) but then to consider whether God might ask you do it anyway, in faith.

These “Questions to Ask” before saying “yes” to a request were written by Jordan Raynor and appeared in a print issue of Common Good Magazine. I keep them pinned near my desk. Obviously, I should heed their wisdom more often.

My goal is so often to do it all seamlessly, to take on just the right amount that allows me to predictably and steadily do the work in my own strength, thank you very much. But there is also a way in which we are invited to live on the edge of our natural strengths, to realize that even our perceived prowess is subject to sudden change. The control I crave has always been illusory, after all, a mirage that appears when my planner is open and then disappears when it’s closed.

We make commitments and say “yes” to opportunities. But we do not know what flu bugs or other flukes the future holds. We do not know what friends will call in crisis, which children might suddenly require more time and attention than they did a week ago.

“What you ought to say is, ‘If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.’
(James 4:15 NLT)”

But can I write that in work emails? Can I level with fellow humans about my chronic capacity problem: “Listen, I know there’s a limit to what I can do. Every time I pass it, I think, ‘Ope, there it was.’ But I am still struggling to predict it.”

Now I’m thinking of a nuclear reactor, of the need to run such a costly piece of energy-generating machinery at or very near its capacity. But not over. We know the costs of pushing something like that beyond its limits.

And we know the costs of pushing past our own too. But that’s where the metaphor begins to break down, because you and I are not machines. We are not commissioned with nameplate capacities that tell us exactly how hard we can be run and for how long. We do not have the option of adding another reactor when the demands get too high. We cannot be decommissioned for a while to recover.

We think of these non-machine attributes as downsides that get in the way of our productivity and efficiency. But our embodiment is a feature of our design as humans, not a bug. The shifting baselines of our capacities, the unpredictability of it all, is what keeps us tethered to something, Someone, beyond ourselves.

Can we really still believe, in this age of efficiency-at-all-costs, that His power is made perfect in weakness? We may not be perfect, and we may not do all the things perfectly. We may, in fact, fall on our faces with nuclear flourish. But the power to do the next thing at hand, the power to plan the next 12 things with less hubris and more wisdom, the power that doesn’t necessarily come from you—it can’t be stopped by you either.

So let’s refine as we go. Let’s say, “Ope, that was too much,” when we need to, and sometimes even when we think we don’t.