Putting yourself on the sidelines while the game still goes on, just doesn’t feel right

I find myself in a most frustrating place.

For the first time in 20 years I don’t have direct leadership responsibility. Part of me loves it and another part is going crazy as I see so many things that I think are not being led and for the first time I can’t do anything about it.

It’s one thing to trust God to help you fix something, it’s another thing completely looking on and trusting God to fix it without you. How will he ever manage without me? (I’m only joking in case you didn’t pick it…)

I think I will probably look back on this patch of time as very important in my life, but at the moment, not having answers and not having a way to “fix things” and just having to trust God sucks!

(Very spiritual aren’t I!)

I read these paragraphs in the very helpful book, Leading out of who you are:

The goal of a leader, therefore, must be not only to develop skills in others but to enable others to be willing to lay down their skills. Often this involves the leader inviting people periodically to step down from their leadership roles in order to renew their experience of freedom. I myself believe that all leaders should lay down their roles every five years or so. A period in which we are shorn of our power is good for us and reveals whether we are truly free. This is more than a sabbatical. It should be undertaken on an understanding that the role that that power may not necessarily be taken up again. They should be genuinely let go and handed over. This also ensures that a leader experiences once more what it is like to be led, and to recieve before she gives.

Many good leaders cannot get to this place: it is too painful, it asks too much of them. Their skills remain their own personal possessions.  As such, they remain skills – they cannot become gifts. A gift is something we give away to others, for their benefit, not our own. This means – tragically – that they will always excercise their leadership with a desire to preserve themselves. Of course this is a place where all of us, not only leaders, need to go to be set free. But this is a book about leadership, and it’s worth pointing out that most leaders have more to give up than most people. They are probably leaders by virtue of their skills: their power and training and personality. They lead because people accept their influence. For them it is harder to let go. They have more to lose. However, what they will discover when they do let go is that what they have let go is given back to them once more.

Self-emptying leads to transformation; it leads to empowerment. In my own experience I have found that many of the skills I have possessed that I have also let go have been given back to me, but with a power they did not have before.

I didn’t want to read this and I didn’t want to share it with you, mainly because it names too clearly what I find myself going through at the moment.

I am in a period of letting go and part of me desperately wants to find something to quickly grab on to, but God keeps telling me to relax and enjoy the ride.

I finished the Kingdom Cells manuscript yesterday, which was a great relief. I really feel like the book is important, but even that is now a process of letting go because others now have to take it and organise it in such a way that it is available for people to read.

3 of my kids are doing a course that I would normally be leading, but instead I find myself with the space to pray, write and play golf. It’s a little strange, but I am enjoying the space.

Leeanne and I are going to make a go of more painting and fixing around the house while they do the course. It’s so strange to have the space to do that.

Letting go is a strange thing. Putting yourself on the sidelines while the game still goes on, just doesn’t feel right, but I guess that’s what God was trying to do when he invented the Sabbath.

In August 2010 I wrote a reflection on the Sabbath (read it here) quoting Eugene Peterson who explained why Sabbath is an active act of faith.

I’m starting to wonder whether Life brings periods of Sabbath like the one I am going through at the moment, and the job in moments like this is to actually allow yourself to stop, breathe and reflect. I like how Walker pointed out in Leading Out of Who You Are that it is moments like this you learn whether you are truly free.

As long as I can allow the game to go on without me, and trust that the head coach knows what He is doing, I think this could be one of the best years of my life.