Rev. Amy Brundle, Marketing & Communications Manager for NAMI NC, "The Idols of Performance and Productivity"

 

 
 

Rev. Amy Brundle is an ordained Baptist music minister living in Raleigh, N.C. with her husband, Scott, and a spoiled torbie cat named Brandy. She is also the Marketing & Communications Manager for NAMI North Carolina, a mental health awareness and advocacy nonprofit organization. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and has been studying music for nearly 35 years. Her passions include inspiring volunteers to grow as worship leaders and increasing mental health advocacy within the local church.   

 

The Idols of Performance and Productivity

 

For years I’ve religiously kept a productivity journal to plan my daily schedule. You know the type – color coded tabs, stickers, each day broken out into 15 minute increments, pages labeled with inspirational phrases like “You’ve Got This!” or “Seize the Day!”. These journals are designed to make you excited – and frankly, obsessive – about squeezing every last minute of productive energy out of your day. No time wasted here! The idea is to achieve the most goals in the shortest amount of time.

This idea fits in really well with my personality and the dirty secret I keep – I routinely fall into the trap of worshiping the idol of productivity.

When I was a child, productivity and busyness were next to godliness. God forbid you ever tell one of my parents you were bored. You’d be scrubbing the baseboards or washing windows for the rest of the day. My people-pleasing self internalized that reverence for productivity and I began judging myself on how much I could accomplish or how well I performed. I spent my high school years running from band practice, to work, to church basketball, while also doing mission trips and keeping straight As. If there was free time in my schedule, I would find a way to fill it. And whatever I chose to fill it had to be done perfectly.

I’ve kept this mindset well into adulthood. When I served in professional music ministry, it was alongside a demanding full-time marketing career, as well as participation in musical ensembles, family obligations, and a social life. I worked 60 hours a week for seven years without a break, and was never satisfied because surely there was something else I needed to be doing. I strove to add exercise, meal planning, volunteer work, writing, or a hundred other projects to my limited free time. Finally, as I’ve gotten into my forties, I’ve discovered why I’ve pushed myself so hard to be productive and perfect.

My depression had me convinced that I wasn’t enough on my own. I had to perform, to give, to produce, to justify my own existence. I had to spend myself making other people’s lives richer and easier. Just being on the earth as myself wasn’t enough for my loved ones, and it definitely wasn’t enough for God.

I worshiped at the idols of productivity and performance because it was easier. It was easier to accept that I had to earn everything I received and prove my worth than it was to believe that I intrinsically had worth because of God’s grace and favor. It was easier to believe that my friends and family only spent time with me based on what I provided than it was to believe that they truly value me for who I am, flaws and all. It was more comfortable to strive for perfection than it was to be content with imperfection.

But lately, as I’m approaching middle age, I recognize how tired I am. My fatigue at maintaining a non-stop pace of production has overrun my feelings of inadequacy, of not getting enough done. I cherish afternoons that I can while away with a good book. I don’t accomplish nearly as much in a day as I intend to. And the world has not stopped, nor have my friends abandoned me. Nor has God stopped loving me.

Maybe my depression and the idols lied. Maybe I don’t have to prove my worth or work hard enough to deserve love and dignity. Maybe I can serve out of a full cup, well-rested and confident in my standing before the Lord. These are scary ideas for a lifelong people pleaser with depression to grasp. But they are true of all of us. God loves us and saved us as we are, not as we had the potential to be if we worked hard enough. We are enough on our own. And thank God, we will not be judged in heaven on how faithfully we completed everything on our to-do lists.

I’m still learning this lesson, but have come a long way. That being said, I think I’ll hold on to the productivity journal for now – if only for the stickers.

_____


The Clergy and Mental Health Blog is a forum for faith leaders to share insights and observations, sometimes speaking from personal experience, about faith and mental health.  We welcome diversity of thought and perspective.  The view of authors are their own and do not represent the views of the blog as a whole.

 

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