You Can Take the Girl off the Farm, but...

I am realizing that growing up in a Midwest farming community with Mennonite culture on top of it has led me to have an abnormal (and at times) unhealthy work ethic. I used to always think that I had a "good" work ethic, but I am realizing that sometimes it is, in fact, not "good." To capture the essence of the approach to work that is ingrained in me, it is basically, "Work. Work hard. Keep working. If things are hard, keep working even harder."

Now, there are some obvious benefits to this approach. I get a lot done. My approach to work combined with my love for efficiency allows me to get much more done in a day than the average human being. Also, there is value in working hard and persevering through obstacles. So many people in modern society bail when things are even inconvenient, let alone truly difficult.

What I'm realizing (not entirely a new revelation) is that work and "doing" and serving all the times can hold a place in my life that is very imbalanced. I lose track of who I should "BE" at times because I am so busy "DOING"! I get very dissatisfied when I am not tangibly accomplishing things that I can cross off my checklists. I even get very critical of people who have less of a threshhold for work, business, facing challenges, etc. They seem lazy to me because, after all, isn't the way I do things the right way? Yeah, I think that's referred to as "judgmental"--Ouch!

Sometimes my stubborn commitment to being tough and working hard even borders on stupidity. (I say borders to make myself feel better--it is stupidity.) About a week ago, we were helping with set up for a community festival. Very few people showed up, and even many who did sort of stood around waiting for some sort of inspiration to strike or something. So, I dive in full force. I'm not going to stand around and wait for people to help me carry tables. I'll just carry them myself. Now, despite my protests at times, I am a city girl. I do not tote bags of feed anymore. I am not in high school, and I do not lift weights anymore. The long rectangular tables are clearly too heavy for me, but I am determined. When clean-up time comes, there are many more people to help, but I proceed with my same stubborn approach. Several guys comment on me carrying them by myself, which only fuels the fire. One of our church elders says, "My, you're strong." I say, "Actually, I'm really not; it's purely stubbornness." Why it doesn't even hit me at that point as being twisted, I can't explain. I consider myself a logical person, but there are times when others things (pride, stubbornness, etc.) seem to completely cloud that. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately so that I will finally learn one of these days), I was hurting quite badly the next day and a day or two after that!

Maybe someday I will learn to give up my stubborn ways and use the good sense God gave me to find some balance in working hard without needing to maintain some crazy old ingrained, unrealistic, unhealthy standard of what a good work ethic really means. Maybe, with a lot of grace, someday I will have a work ethic that is actually "good."