Results.Relationship.Recovery.

We loved you so much that we gave you not only God's Good News but our own lives, too. Don't you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that our expenses would not be a burden to anyone there as we preached God's Good News among you. - 1 Thessalonians 2:8-9 (NLT)

On my spiritual journey right now, with my mentor, I am working through the Celebrate Recovery Step Studies. I am recovering from being driven by performance, control and perfectionism, which are rooted in my co-dependency. On the dependency continuum, between the one extreme of non-dependency to the other extreme of co-dependency, I am working really hard to live generously in the middle at inter-dependency. I have learned that the difference between loving people and co-depending people is a matter of the motive of my heart. Loving people is selflessly choosing to help, whereas co-depending people is selfishly helping out of obligation or guilt. As a co-dependent, I have rescued people, only to resent them and punish them later when they chose to not remain liberated.

How this plays out in my leadership of others is that I am learning to balance, therefore, the tension between results and relationship. I admit that there have been times when my desire to see something accomplished meant that I was willing to sacrifice relationship with people. As a servant leader, I am understanding more and more that developing people is best accomplished through relationship. No more using others to satisfy my need to prove myself. In the bible passage above, Paul followed Jesus’ example, investing relationally in the lives of others, in order to help them realize their God-given potential and accomplish their God-given goals. I commit to following Jesus' example too! I choose to grow! Juzsayin...