Nine to Five, Part I

“I know, but that’s just how I am.”

I can’t tell you how many times I made this statement last week as concerned coworkers converged upon my office. "Shouldn't you be going home now?" "How long are you staying today?" I went from working half days on-site to working 9-10 hour days overnight. I tested the waters and discovered that I could swim. So I spent the whole week swimming.

As the week drew to a close, though, I noticed that bitterness and frustration were edging out my gratitude for these restored abilities. It seemed to me that it was time to examine the "that" in "that's just how I am.” Nine times out of ten, I find myself using that statement to excuse some pattern of sin in my life by an appeal to genetics, environment, or tradition. Could that be true here?

I’ve always been a workaholic. I learned in high school that the difference between a 99 and a 100 on an exam might be as much as three hours of preparation, and I decided then that it was worth it. Yes, I was the valedictorian. (No one else in my class was as crazy as I was, although a number of them were smarter).

Oh, for those report card days--when I knew where I stood among my peers! Success is not easily quantified in my current field, and so I have to seek out mechanisms by which to gauge achievement. One easy way that I can affirm myself is by working overtime. I suspect that this is the primary reason that I do it; it silences my fear that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not measuring up.

I could have gone on indefinitely working in this manner, but my sickness has forced me to think through what happens on autopilot. I guess that I absorbed a bit of my coworkers' concern last week, so I took two days to work only the requisite 7.5 hours. By the third day, though, I was a disaster (as was my desk). So this is what my workload would look like if I didn’t work after hours?

A little frustration or anxiety might be normal responses to this scenario, but there was nothing little about my frustration and anxiety. I was so traumatized by the experiment that I had to evaluate it seriously. Some unconscious thing that I was "needing”, wanting, or fearing had been jeopardized by my new plan.

I demand a lot of myself at work, and I also demand a lot of my work. I give so much to my job that I expect some reciprocity. The satisfaction of knowing that I have "conquered" a certain amount of work or approval from my boss are typically adequate for my purposes. But there are days that I walk away and wonder what I really used 75% of my waking hours to accomplish. Often these are days on which my greedy heart needed more than I got, and bitterness grew up in the absence of reward. In A Journey Worth Taking: Finding Your Purpose in This World, Charles Drew writes, "The simple joy of working hard at something eludes us. Whether we are at school, on the playing field, on stage, in the boardroom, or on the net, the desperate need to ‘win’ in some sense—to get ahead by our efforts, to define ourselves over against the competition, or just to keep up—strangles our souls." Always the need to win, even if I am the only witness to the victory.

But if it provokes me to bitterness and resentment, then why do I work so hard? It is perfectly obvious to me that I am working to meet self-esteem needs, to quiet fears of inadequacy and to satisfy desires for power. It is equally obvious that this food cannot satiate the appetites toward which it is applied. There is never enough approval to satisfy one obsessed with self. So I cannot work for that purpose.

Colossians 3 instructs, "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ."

Could "serving the Lord," then, be a better purpose for my work. Colossians 3 does not assure me that I will receive any temporal reward for my hard work. And it's interesting that this statement about working as for the Lord is nestled into a chapter about putting on the new self. Our attitude toward work can be a very important way that we fight our flesh. The flesh will find some purpose in work; the spirit must work to redeem that purpose.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with working hard at my job, so long as the work is "unto the Lord". But I wonder, sometimes, if I work doggedly in that context so that I can ignore other arenas of service. No matter how hard it is to gauge success at work, it is easier to gauge there than in most types of ministry. Drew writes, "'Pursuing my vocation' does not, rightly, mean 'working hard at my job.' It rather means 'enjoying God and loving people as I seek faithfully to use my gifts and opportunities to his glory.'" By working 50-60 hours per week at the office, am I able to love and serve the people whom God has called me to love and serve?

My vocation is bigger than my job, and the former should never suffer at the hands of the latter. Nine to five is good; seven to five may not be. Lord, reveal to me how I may faithfully glorify you with the work of my hands. Release me from the bondage of my need for approval and achievement, that I may serve you with a pure heart all my days.