So, I'm watching Santa Clause 2 with the fam after a tasty breakfast and at one point, Tim Allen's character says "I've ruined Christmas"
And it made me think about the financial struggles and screwups and issues and it made me feel like that is exactly what I have done. It doesn't matter that the expectation levels are high - I helped raise the bar every one of the last 5 Christmases our family has had and now, facing a Christmas that we will be lucky to have half what we had last year, I am feeling pretty worthless.
So many things have to break just right to even get to that point. And I know that I have to play each one like a carefully thought out poker game with every ebb and flow and misdirection and real and fake tells and anything else that could happen all while playing it cool enough that no one realizes how close I am to failing the people I love.
Between crisis after crisis at work, crisis after crisis in the financial department, the impending bomb of my student loans coming due and well, the gamut of issues in the lives of the people I love, I wonder how much I can carry.
And I remember that I have always sought out positions of leadership. That I have always admired men like MacArthur who overcame impossible odds in Malinta tunnel and at Inchon and Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That the men who succeed do so by being cool and focused under inordinate pressure. And that they are leaders because people turn to them in the moment of crisis to seek support and confidence and comfort - to know they will be the ones who solve the problem.
I know the night before Inchon must have been hell for MacArthur. I imagine what it must have been like for him to stand in Malinta tunnel as the commander, the husband and the father and know that he could never show anything other than supreme confidence or else he would rattle the already strained morale of his troops and his family. I cannot imagine what it must have been like the night before the Missile Crisis ended when we truly stood on the brink of unthinkable destruction. And then I remember that the context of my issues is pretty durn small. I know a year from now it will be okay.
I choose leadership because of three things. God gave me gifts that let me do it well and it would be wrong to choose easier paths because I wanted less stress in my life. I truly do want to make things better for the people I am responsible for, for the people I love, for the people I serve. And I would much rather be the person in the room making decisions than the person outside the room waiting for decisions to be made. So this is my path. I chose it, and I would choose it again. The pain in my chest is the penalty of rank as Drucker says.
And yesterday, in church, the Gospel said “Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.” And I heard that loud and clear. So much of my little life crises are mere tribulations that distract me from what matters.
So, I don't have time to worry. And it is wrong to give in to stress and worry.
I have to save Christmas.
