You have a hard time getting to sleep Saturday night. All the moving parts of the coming Sunday morning are chasing around in your head. The ones that have been well thought through and carefully planned now seem heavy with potential for catastrophe. Your overactive brain also surfaces a dozen minor details that have not been attended to and will need emergency triage the instant you arrive at church the next morning. It's all you can do to stop yourself from getting up to phone the people who will need to help salvage the situation. If it's really bad, you may get up and send panicky e-mails in hopes that folks will read them upon awakening. The sermon that seemed adequate when you pushed the print button this afternoon is now revealed to be the worst sermon ever in the history of preaching. Or perhaps you decided to go with an old sermon from another time and place. While this decision seemed utterly reasonable last Wednesday, you now realize that you are, in fact, the laziest pastor in Christendom, entirely unworthy of your pay. You should go back to waitressing in a BBQ joint. At least there you did an honest day's work.
When you finally fall asleep, it is to several hours of anxiety dreams: you oversleep, you can't find a clock with the correct time, you forget to get dressed before leaving for church, you can't find your sermon, you forget the important meeting before worship, the car is behaving strangely--it won't make that left turn to get to the street the church is on, you can't find your office key, you need to call someone from church but you can't get the phone to work properly, worship has begun but no one is paying any attention, you are standing in the pulpit totally nude--has anyone noticed?
You wake up exhausted and anxious and it's only 6:30 a.m.
Not that this ever happens to me. Nope.
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7 comments:
Well, some part of that happens about every week. Just not all at once.
oh yes... i have days like that... and like cheesehead portions of that most weeks. sigh. saturday night dreaming... such fun.
you have almost completely accurately described my saturday nights.
you just need to add a cat that wants to sleep on your pillow and occasionally groom you during the night, interrupting said anxiety dreams (my favorite is when worship is starting and you aren't there...).
awesome.
I have also never experienced anything like that on a regular basis. Well, not being a pastor, mine would not be about having to do a chancel drama in worship and not showing up on time or being "on stage" naked and not knowing my lines.
Yikes.
Someone besides me shared the evening worship message, and even though I still had a busy morning -it was so much less stressful having her lead worship. Loved the semi-stress free moment.
Ha ha! that's funny. 'specially since its not happening to me. *grins*
Your BBQ line reminded me of a friend. She'd been a waitress in a steakhoue for years. She was always completely honest about reporting her tips to the IRS. When she started working as a probation officer, she was audited for the next three years. The IRS couldn't believe she would willingly take such a cut in pay.
Heh.
Been there. Done that. *sigh*
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