Mike Breen taught us during our 3DM immersion that “the learning is in the room.” It’s not always the person up front and leading something who has all the answers and the things we need to hear, no matter how much education and experience they might have. I’ve been doing Quito Quest across nine years, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. So it’s been super fun to keep learning from the wisdom this (young) team has brought with them.
Quito Quest pushes you. It’s physically demanding. It’s spiritually demanding. It’s mentally demanding. And it can be downright emotionally punishing. And being with a team of awesome, excited people serving alongside loving, welcoming, hard-working locals can cause this sense of wanting to “keep up.” So we run into exhaustion very easily. We run into guilt when we just can’t stretch anymore in this particular way, but we compare ourselves to someone who seems like they can.
My first block hosting a team in 2008, I never asked for a break. I felt like it was complaining to even say out loud honestly when I was tired or hungry or pissed at a team leader. By the fourth block, I found time to sit and read our daily scriptures, to rest, to blog, to stay out of the sun and away from people for a few minutes during the day. This wasn’t because I’d actually wised up at this point. It was because after 70 days my body finally fought back and let me know that my rhythms were unsustainable.
It’s not my instinct to take a break. Or to let someone else work harder than me (in my perception). But another thing Mike Breen taught us was to work out of our rest, rather than resting from our work. It’s an important distinction. If you just go go go until you have to rest, that’s not really rest. It’s catching up. But if rest in Christ is intentionally part of your rhythm, there’s a well from which to draw, and a power which is not our own, out of which to minister.
A team member brought her own learning to the room tonight. For those members of the team who were tired and expressed a frustration born from trying to keep up and to have something to offer to those at the ministry sites, she offered that wisdom to us. She said that it is much like the safety instructions on the airplane. When pressure drops and the masks come out of the ceiling, you have to put your own mask on before you help anyone else with theirs.
What’s funny is how many people in the room immediately said “I hate that!” I guess I’m not alone in wanting to take care of others. In wanting to tough it out and keep up regardless of my own weakness. In picturing some little kid sitting next to me in that emergency and wanting to get a mask on them immediately. But the whole point of that safety brief on the plane is that if you don’t bother to take care of yourself, you may become unable to to take of anyone else either.
Rest isn’t selfish. It was modeled by Jesus in how much time he spent in the wilderness or the mountains or in the garden alone with the Father. It’s how we have enough energy to do what we are called to do. It’s how we go from serving out of our own guilt to ministering out of God’s grace.
