Being, doing, and resilience (44/100)

As I continue to review the literature regarding member care, I find myself struggling again with the issues of doing and being.

My tendency to be performance driven flows naturally from my personality. Meeting expectations (my own and others) is a long habit, or should I say trying to meet those expectations because typically I would and could never measure up to the standard (perfection).

As I grew to understand that God accepts me regardless of my performance, I have grown to trust that it is not what I do that matters. I have learned to pursue excellence but to allow my best to be sufficient.

I have also learned that my expectations of myself, others, and circumstances can be just as crippling to my ability to function and relate to others, including God, as my drivenness for perfection used to be. This is where my journey into Ignatian Indifference has influenced me the most. I am learning to hold things in an open hand allowing God to establish my expectations in setting after setting.

As I am doing the current work to establish targets for care in the themes of holistic care, I find that I am creating lists of things that the missionary does or needs to do rather than areas of being. I see the most important thing as being not doing, and that doing ought to flow out of being.

But how does this express itself practically, particularly in this area of resilience? What does resilience in the cross-cultural worker look like? Or what are aspects of being, within each theme, make one resilient?

And more to the point on this Sabbath day, where am I still more concerned about what I do? Where in my life am I still displaying drivenness and am ruled by my own expectations of how things are to be? Where am I not resting in God's expectations and God's workmanship as expressed in me?


For we are God's [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live]. Ephesians 2:10 (Amplified)