Journey to Surrender

This is a therapeutic post for me. I don’t generally like to talk about stuff that isn’t already at least marginally in place in my own life. This particular topic, however, is something I find myself still wrestling with. So if you don’t mind, I’ll invite you to climb inside my head for a bit.

I had time with my extended family during our summer vacation. One night we decided to play the game “Family Memories.” It was a fun trip down memory lane, but I won’t bore you with the details, with the exception of something my dad said to me in the course of the game. Basically what he said was that he admired the way I had done such a good job of finding balance in my life, contrasting it somewhat with the way he had not done as well at it as he would have liked to. He didn’t elaborate, but I assumed he was referring to the balance I’ve always tried to strike between family, career, faith and my own self- interests.

On the surface his kind words were encouraging to me. It blessed me to know that my effort to live my life with integrity was recognized by my dad. But in the intervening weeks, as I find myself struggling for direction in my career, finances and ministry, I’ve come smack up against some serious doubts. Has what my dad described as a balanced life actually just been a life filled with compromises and capitulations that ultimately result in me falling short of my potential?

Maybe, as I sometime do, I am seeing the dark side of what should otherwise positive comment. (I can sometimes be a bit of a glass-half-empty kind of guy.) Maybe I am over-analyzing – I tend to do that too. Maybe the enemy is whispering deception in my ear. I don’t really know what has caused me to wander down the road of doubt, but here I am, regardless.

Two World Views

What I’ve come up against is two distinctive world views. World view one is the American Dream, where success is defined by what you have: a bigger house (preferably with an in-home theater system), a certain make of car (also requiring an advance audio/ video/navigation system), a vacation home, and a significant net worth. The other world view, that of the Kingdom of God, has a distinctly different definition of success. Greatness in the Kingdom has nothing to do with what you have, but rather it is based on who you are inside.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the struggle I’m having is the ongoing tug-of-war between these two world views. I’m no fool; I know that the choices I’ve made over the years to make my family and faith a priority over climbing the corporate ladder have probably cost me in the material sense. By no means have I always gotten it right, especially early on. And don’t get me wrong, I have a well-paying job and have held several positions of significant responsibility in my company. But had I opted to change jobs more, move my family more, travel more, and work more hours, I know I could be beyond where I am now both in pay and position.

Even in my ministry life it’s tempting to define success by numbers. My desire for significance, even when it comes to Kingdom work, can easily morph into an unholy ambition to be impressive in the world’s terms: to hold positions of greater influence and authority, to serve and touch larger numbers in larger churches and bigger venues in more countries, etc.

Balance vs. Compromise

There’s much more to my mid-life reflections of this nature, but it is time for me to wind this up. So where I am on this right now is trying to answer a key question: What’s the real difference between balance and compromise? To date my reflections have led me to what I think is the key difference: integrity.

Compromise involves doing something you don’t want to do or not doing something you do want to do. It generally involves giving in or giving up. It comes with the feeling that I lost and someone else won. It can foster resentment, indebtedness and scorekeeping. Corey at Simple Marriage wrote a great post entitled “Warning: Compromising in Your Marriage May Ruin It.”  He describes how the wrong kind of compromise can ultimately do damage to your marriage, and I agree with his perspective.

Now contrast that kind of compromise with balance. Where compromise comes from obligation, balance has to do with choice. Choosing to live my life in balance means I try to act with integrity toward my core values. For example, it means I give my work enough priority and attention to ensure that my family is fairly provided for and sometimes even spoiled a bit, because that is important to me. But I choose not to work 80 hours a week and such, not because I would feel guilty or because my wife would fuss at me, but because that would not be living with integrity toward the value I hold for my wife and family. It would go against who I am.

I say all this not to accuse those whose work requires extra hours, extra travel or frequent corporate moves. I don’t presume to judge the values of others. I just know that for me, living a balanced life, living in agreement with my priorities, means I have choices to make. Those choices have consequences in the natural. But I also believe they have even greater consequences in the eternal.

Would I turn down a beach condo if someone were to give us one? Don’t be silly, of course not. I’m not against having stuff. Would I like to be completely debt free and have a fully funded emergency fund, as Dave Ramsey says? Sure. But the stuff is not really the point. The point, at least for me, is to be completely content with a life of balance and integrity and to realize that sometimes, as the old adage goes, less really is more.

Productive vs. Fruitful

So now that I’ve teased you into thinking I was actually going to wrap this up a few paragraphs ago (don’t you hate when preachers do that), I want to touch on a closely related struggle. I know, I know, this should probably be a series instead of one post. My Communication degree daughter warned that people don’t read posts of more than 200 words. I don’t think I’ve done a post less than 500 yet. But now I’m digressing (even further).

I’m also grappling with the notion that whether in work or ministry or even at home, my life is not summed up by the totality of what I do. That is really hard for me. I’m very action oriented and accomplishment driven. I make lists for the satisfaction of checking things off them. But I’m trying to get to a place where the manner in which I do things gets much more attention than the doing of them. I also want to enjoy the doing and not just the being done. I want to have peace and joy, whether working under a stressful job situation (as I am now) or when everything is swimming along nicely, whether I get 100% or 10% of my to do list done.

Kathleen Quiring has a couple of related posts that I found helpful in this self- examination. One from her blog  challenged my thinking by posing the notion that being productive isn’t necessarily the same as being fruitful. I like that distinction – a lot. The other was a guest post she did on Engaged Marriage where she suggested, in response to a time budgeting post by Dustin, that we might be better off taking more time and getting less stuff done. I think she’s onto something when she encourages us to not just consider how much we do but “how meaningfully we do each thing.”


Sorry, but I don’t know if there is really a point to this way-too-long and rambling post. I don’t even know why I felt I needed to post this for others to read. Maybe there are folks out there feeling the tug of the two world views, feeling like they haven’t amounted all they wanted to be, or who are trying to make sense out of their struggle for significance. Maybe some of this will be helpful.

If you wish to continue the dialogue post a comment or drop me an email (remember there’s a convenient email form on the left sidebar).

Now, thanks for visiting, but it’s time for everyone to climb back out of my head.


PS Sorry, daughter, this one hit 1486 words. And you are right, no one probably read this far. But I feel better anyway. (Now I’ve crossed over 1500 words and am approaching novella territory). So I’ll simply say, “The End.”