I have a tendency to procrastinate. I'm much more efficient working on a deadline. Projects that I know about months in advance tend to get my full attention in the last week (or 48 hours) before they are due, no matter how important they are: term papers, sermons, financial paperwork. I have a lot of trouble escaping the tyranny of the everyday, the tyranny of the semi-urgent to deal with the truly important. I actually think the same fear is the reason I can't ever completely clear out my e-mail inbox: I'm afraid, for whatever reason, of completing everything in it. Of being completely caught up. It's a different sort of fear, I think, but it controls my actions nonetheless.
Needing fear to crack the whip and force me to work definitely impacted my long absence from blogging.
As I've thought about that this week (in response to working on my loan deferment paperwork and student IEPs at work), I've begun to realize that I'm easily motivated by fear. Fear of failure, fear of public shaming, fear or financial consequences.
In 1 John the confident assertion leaps off the page: "Perfect love casts out fear."
What does it mean for me that I can't do my work until I'm afraid of failing? Do I love my work? Or do I love success? Do I work for the Lord, or for human approval? Why do I wait so long to do my IEP prep work? Do I love my students, or just my job / paycheck?
Perfect love casts out fear.
Must I have to face my fears before I can overcome them?
Perfect love casts out fear.
Can I overcome my fears? How should I pray to overcome my fear? How will my life and work look different when that fear is gone?
One thing I've wondered is whether or not my thoughts on this topic lean towards some pop-psychology need to be a "self-actualized individual." Should I be totally in control of my own motives and desires and actions? It seems unlikely I can achieve such a state.
I don't yet have answers, or even direction. What I do have is the collect for the Second Sunday in Lent:
"O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from thy ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of thy Word, Jesus Christ thy Son; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever."
In response to the collect, I want my prayer to be: "Father in heaven, have mercy on me for all those things I have left undone. I have not loved you with my whole heart, and have not loved my neighbor as myself. Cast out my fear and help me to work for you with gladness and singleness of heart, being strengthened by your Holy Spirit. Change my heart God, so that I may repent and turn to you. In your perfect love, cast out my fear. Amen."
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