This week from Mitch
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Do you ever feel like what you are doing is not good enough? Or do you ever feel like something is wrong? As a dyslexic who is in part paid to share my thoughts and prayers with you all, I feel the weight of my diagnosis every Tuesday and Wednesday as I write to you all. Without Allison Askins editing my gibberish into something coherent, there is no way St. Martin's would have gone to two publications a week. The truth is, without help, I do not think I would have been able to handle the stress or vulnerability that regularly writing to hundreds and sometimes thousands involves. I would have quit a long time ago.
As I reflected on the nature of stress this morning, I came to a realization. I realized that stress is not something we as humans are designed to deal with alone. In other words, we were created to be both communal and dependent. In Genesis, we were created to be a people of the garden. In Exodus, our strength was in numbers. In Luke, Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs. In short, while being alone for short times is biblical, being lonely is not. We are created to be in community with the body of the faithful and dependent on God.
I bring this up, because, for too many of us, we struggle with stress silently and without partnership. As a communal people, this struggle is as unnatural as it is unfaithful. Paul writes about a church that struggles together. Jesus calls us to be in constant conversation with our God who created us. We are told to listen for the Holy Spirit. If you struggle with insecurities as I do, surround yourself with loving people. People who will read your work and correct you. If you feel like you are not good enough, remember that you were created by God and made perfect in God's love.
If you are feeling alone, lean on your church. Mutual leaning -- me against you, and you against me -- creates a stable base. Feelings of insecurity and stress are natural. Struggling with these feelings by ourselves is not.
As I look back on the body of work and the writing that I have done since this pandemic, I am quite happy. The comments you have shared and seeing the readership increase has been very special to me. Seeing people join the church, and hearing them say that they feel connected because of it, has been uplifting. The stress, vulnerability, and insecurity were indeed worth it, but, most importantly, these feelings were only overcome by being in community. As I said in the beginning, without help, and without a community, I would have quit writing these notes a long time ago, but quitting would have robbed me of the growth that this writing has allowed. That growth has taught me, once again, that we need one another. We need community.
In Christ,
Mitch+
