The Me in Team & Atlas Struggles

To those overwhelmed,

Growing up my sport was always baseball. I don’t know if it had to do with my older brother playing or the fact that my dad coached every season, but as soon as I could walk I was swinging a bat ( a foam bat at least). When I finally met the age requirement my dad signed me up for tee ball at our local ball park. To say that I was ecstatic is a huge understatement. I immediately had grand visions of home runs, golden gloves, and MVP’s (at the age of 5 I had already assumed that the MLB was a guarantee). There was only one problem: after the try outs I thought that the rest of the players on my team were terrible. I considered myself to be the fastest, the best hitter, the best thrower, the greatest that Pearland has ever seen (for those that know me all too well, you’re starting to see where some of my more prideful moments originated). 

Bottom line, I thought I was the greatest thing since mac and cheese and there was no way I was going to let my team get in my way of stardom.

I didn’t trust them, and because I didn’t trust my fellow teammates the most peculiar thing would happen when my team was on the field: I would do all of the work. Literally, every time the ball was hit whether it was coming near my mound or not, I would take off running scoop the ball up and instead of throw it to my teammate at first base I would run the ball there myself.  The funny thing is it worked. I even remember grabbing the ball and running to 3^rd base and then all the way back to 1^st base and getting both runners out.

My selfish strategy  of doing all of the work worked well for a while, but sooner or later the bases got further apart, the batters got better, the kids got faster, and my baseball career went down in fiery crash.

How many of you are finding it hard to do all of the work? How many of you feel like an Atlas-like burden is slowly crushing you? How many of you feel like no one can help, that a certain task is only yours to shoulder?

I see these burdens harm people far too often. Many times I have witnessed people “burn out,” cry themselves to sleep at night, or suffer anxiety attacks because they refuse to let go.  Many times we aren’t willing to let others help us out or aren’t willing to put power into the hands of other people. We’re afraid of what could happen. Kings did this. Leaders do this. Church ministers do this. 

If you’re beginning to feel like the sea is rising or the caves are closing in, maybe it’s time to stop programming for people and start letting people program.

Jesus tells us that we can do even greater things than he did (John 14:12), not because we have greater abilities or greater faith, but because we have greater numbers.

Open up.

Allow communities to be actual communities.

Sacrifice doing it all so that others can lead

Merely,

Chris Gerac        

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24 NIV