Weeks later, and I still have been mulling over the Glory Tour by Jackie Hill Perry and Dr. Sarita Lyons. There was a moment from the first teaching session in which Jackie walked thoroughly through the human relationship with power and how it fit into the story of Hagar, see Genesis 16. Genesis 16 CSB – Hagar and Ishmael – Abram’s wife, – Bible Gateway It was a powerful point, illustrating the repeated cycle of abuse of power amongst Abram, Sarai, and Hagar. However, in addition to fitting the context of Jackie’s teaching, this consideration of power convicted something within me. As guided by Jackie, when I felt the internal highlight to the discussion of power, I prayed in that moment for God to reveal to me what He was saying to me through this word. I had a conversation with my Pastor this week, that affirmed to me the value of imagining ourselves within the scripture, and the value of meditating on your presence in every role within a given story. This fit perfectly to how the story of Hagar has impacted me.
Over the past month or so, when I would meet with my therapist, I would discuss some frustrations I was having with respect to work. To be transparent, I felt like my role and teams were being micromanaged. Perhaps this is the common or natural response for anyone, but I recognized a long time ago that I do not naturally respond well to micromanaging. Previously, when experiencing micromanagement, it would severely impact my mental wellness and self-esteem.
As a young professional, in an environment that did not provide proactive support and training to position me with an adequate level of confidence to perform my role, there was always a level of underlying imposter syndrome. This feeling of perceived fraudulence or self-doubt, and self-identified incompetence to perform the role that I was expected to perform.
Over the years since, and with a lot of support, I have stepped away from aligning with the lie that I am not qualitied. To be honest and brief, I think I experienced a period of unhealthy devotion to learning and developing in an effort to never be in the position of feeling inadequate again. So fast forward to present times, as I had been experiencing the micromanagement this time around, my reaction was no longer broken self-esteem, but rather more defensiveness and confusion. Defensive, in the sense of, I know the extent of pain, self-work, and time required to recover my self-esteem from the damage of micromanagement…we not doing that again! And the confusion, in the sense of, I know I am capable and qualified, I thought my boss knew/trusted that I am capable and qualified – so how did we end up in this space of my boss presenting what I received to be a root issue of a lack of trust in me/my teams?
To pause there, this was a time that I felt very overwhelmed with work. I honestly felt like I and my teams exhaust ourselves daily to perform our roles well, but this non-direct feedback in the form of micromanagement presented as if the effort that we are putting in is not good enough. When I articulate feeling overwhelmed, for me, that is a direct translation to also mean, that I feel out of control of my circumstances; my circumstances are overpowering me.
One on my strengths at work is my analytical and strategic thinking. One of the hardships of this strength, is that it requires mental capacity and time to exercise and leverage to the fullest extent. In the mix of feeling overwhelmed, I feel like I sat in my suffering for some time before I made space and time to pause, pray, and strategize on how to productively respond to the micromanagement and feeling overwhelmed.
In response to my prayers to God, asking how to respectfully respond to the micromanagement (because I didn’t need any help identifying wrong or disrespectful responses) I was reminded of 2 Peter 1:3-11.
3 His[b] divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by[c] his own glory and goodness. 4 By these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness with knowledge, 6 knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with godliness, 7 godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being useless or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. 10 Therefore, brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election, because if you do these things you will never stumble. 11 For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20peter%201&version=CSB>
This was a reminder to me to be cautious and mindful of how I respond during these times, because my response would reflect my alignment to Christ. My presence in the workplace is opportunity to do ministry and reveal God’s heart. So, in following my understanding of how Christ pursued people, I led with my humanity – my human weakness. I chose to increase communication instead of being mad all by myself, and requested dedicated time to speak with my boss. I shared in transparency and vulnerability, what I was feeling as a result of the insertions into my role and my teams functions. From there, I think my intentionality to seek God’s perspective fell off. I was hoping for my boss to communicate support for me and my teams to execute well. However, I did not receive that. Instead, I decided that if I cannot genuinely and organically receive support, I would at minimum document support. I strategized this whole plan, including strategic meetings and questions to gain clarity of the expectations of my role, so that it would be clear when I am performing within alignment or not.
It sounded ingenious to me! So as I was meeting with my therapist following these times, I was communicating to her, that I felt powerful! I specifically articulated that, during a time in which I was not able to directly change my circumstances, I have identified an alternative means to get what I wanted – support at work.
In parallel to this experience at work, God was slowly revealing to me that this dynamic or desire for power also exists in my personal life. Again, to be honest and brief for now, navigating being a young widowed mom aka a single mom has been an emotional roller coaster. From reflecting on the quality of my marriage to my experiences with entering back into the dating world, I have come to understand even more what I do and do not want in any future relationship or marriage that I may have. Similar to my work stories, there is so much more I can share about my experiences and all that I have learned along the way. And I will, at some point share more in different forums, however for now, the necessary information is simply that I have spent time identifying my values and needs from relationships and community.
As I navigated dating, I was recognizing that there were essential needs that were not being met for me, and I felt disappointed and saddened by that. I have been trusting God as he restored my heart to wholeness, and had progressively shown me that my heart is resilient enough to love again, and believing the promise spoken to my heart that I will experience marriage again. However, like Sarai, the math wasn’t mathing! As I navigated dating, my desire for a healthy and Godly relationship increased, however, my reality was not changing.
Perpetuated by my personal longings for companionship and help in raising Malia, plus Malia’s increased requests for our household to be more than just me and her and for a little brother or sister, I felt an increasing urgency to see the promise come to fruition. Seeing as though my reality was not yet in alignment, my urgency was clearly ahead of God moving. I found myself in position – sometimes consciously and sometimes subconsciously – looking to strategically manipulate a dating experience to propel it into what I wanted it to be. Morphing my standards to fit a person rather than expecting the person to meet my standards and using and abusing my “feminine power” to increase attractions in hope of it influencing a man’s decision to choose me.
PRAYER
The antidote to a sinful desire for power is humility. Humility is a noun, defined as the state of being humble. Humble is an adjective, it means not thinking you are better than other people, being free from pride or arrogance. Humility produces desperation that encourages complete dependence upon God. In my opinion, humility as a verb is PRAY. Prayer is humility in action. To pray, is submit that we are less than God – in all of our brilliance, intellect, wisdom – God is and will forever be greater.
When I am mindfully submitting to God in prayer, I always refer to the essence of God’s response to Job in Job chapters 38-41. I think I shared about this before, but God’s response in the book of Job is giving spicy to me! He respectfully allows Job to complain for nearly the entirety of the book, but when God speaks He drops the mic and flexes on Job, to the point that Job understands that he can only respond in humility in Job 42.
1-6 Job answered God: “I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything. Nothing and no one can upset your plans. You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water, ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’ I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head. You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking. Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’ I admit I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears! I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise! I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2042&version=MSG>
In addition to putting my humility into action, prayer requires for me to be honest and confess to God that I have been trying to exercise my own power and control over things that I do not have the authority to control. Recognizing that I am desiring something or moving outside of God’s will in order to exercise my own will.
God dropped the mic on me and showed me errors in how I move and convicted me. I unpacked all of this for myself over the past couple of weeks. I actually ended up skipping last week in sharing a Selah Sunday post, not because I was not prepared, but because becoming aware of my sinful desires and wielding of power within my life wrecked me emotionally. I paused, reflected, and felt deeply humbled to understand that in such significant ways I have moved in pursuit of my own will rather than patiently yielding to God’s will. I paused in repentance. Going back to replicate a portion of Jackie’s teaching of the story of Hagar, you see in Genesis 16:1, Sarai’s identified problem that she had not yet bore Abram a son to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abam. In Genesis 16:2, Sarai admits awareness of God’s control or power to allow her to have a baby or not, but in the very same verse exercises her own strategic plan to manipulate the people around her to achieve her desire, independent of God’s will. In Genesis 16: 3-6, we see how Sarai’s wielding of power inflicts suffering to herself and especially to Hagar. I paused to lament my identification with Sarai – the hurting antagonist in the story.
FAITH
Jumping back into Job 42
12 God blessed Job’s later life even more than his earlier life…16-17 Job lived on another 140 years, living to see his children and grandchildren—four generations of them! Then he died—an old man, a full life.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2042&version=MSG>
I am believing that God still has the power to bless and restore a life even more than the earlier life. I trust God’s promises whispered into my heart when it comes to my career and a marriage. I am yielding my own timeframes and specific desires to those of the Lord. Even when it hurts, even when it disappoints me – I trust you God.