Loving Monday: I’ll Ask the Questions Here
“This is not a teaching moment. Don’t you dare use it as one.”
I forced a grin back into its straight place before I looked up. I knew who stood in front of my desk. She announced her arrival in my office 100 yards before she got there with quick stomps, rustling papers and the seesaw sounds of her indecision between gasps and sighs.
I always knew. Of all the folks I had the privilege to manage, she was my favorite.
As she threw herself backwards into the chair, the file ejected from her hands onto my desk. I grabbed the papers as they slid by.
“What are you working on?” I asked, peeking out from behind my manila shield.
“I’m buried,” she said.
Gasp.
“I just need to know if there’s coverage. Yes or no? That’s all, just the answer.”
Sigh.
“Don’t help me find it. Don’t ask any questions. Just tell me.”
A half-swallowed laugh stuck in my throat and interrupted her next gasp. I straightened in my chair and stared her down.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
::
She was always better at staring then me. Forty-three seconds later I blinked, then pushed the file back across the desk and told her to pay the claim. She snatched up her papers and marched out.
“Do you want to know why?” I called after her, grinning again. She didn’t turn back, but let loose an exhale clear from the floor and grunted with no small display of flying hair and flailing arms as coworkers ducked back into their cubicles.
The art of policy interpretation would have been lost on my colleague that day. But normally I wouldn’t back down from What do you think? quite so readily.
When an employee came to consult on a case, they expected an answer.
I figured my job was to help them find it.
Not to give it to them.
::
We’re on week two of discussion of Loving Monday over at High Calling Blogs. In chapters 4-7, John W. Beckett continues his story, sharing how he yielded to fully trust in God and how he began to integrate his faith and his work into one whole.
He stopped me in chapter 6 for a while as he wrestled over his sense of calling. He pressed God with the questions that gnawed at him:
Is my involvement in business truly my calling, or is it more a matter of personal preference? Should I be thinking about some more direct form of ministry? (p. 50)
Good questions, to be sure. And I can’t help but think God was pleased by the asking. Yet, God didn’t just give him the answer.
Beckett discovered that God answered his question with another question:
Answers weren’t immediate. But after several months, and to my surprise, I sensed it was I who was being asked a very key question: Would I be willing to completely release my involvement in the company and follow a very different direction in life? (p. 50)
As he grappled with the question, he released all of his aspirations — whether continuing in business or leaving it behind — and chose to trust God for his and his company’s future, “whatever that may be.” And when he stepped off the mat, he found God left him where he was. He led him to continue in the business, but Beckett did so with the complete assurance that he was “where [he] belonged.”
::
My colleague would return to my desk another day with the same question. And we would walk through a series of questions, beginning with What do you think?
We would analyze the policy contract, we would review case law, we would consider the statutes. And ultimately, though I would never spell it out for her, she would discover the answer to her question as she sought to answer mine.
She would not return to her desk and parrot what I had told her. She would comprehend the answer, and it would be truly hers.
Truthfully? I often throw my hair around, gasp and wave my arms when God answers my questions with questions of His own. This is not a teaching moment, I will growl at Him. Just tell me the answer.
But it seems to me, as Beckett relates here, that wrestling through the questions — rather than simply receiving an answer — takes me to a place where I own the answer.
Yes, the truth is God’s. But I internalize it as mine.
::
For more discussion on Loving Monday, check out Laura’s post over at the High Calling Blogs or any of the others this week:
L.L. Barkat’s Loving Monday: My Messy Life
Monica’s God Guides the Clueless
Glynn’s Why Bad Stuff Happens At Work
Last week: Loving Monday: The Optional Downgrade
Want to join in? Follow the widget at HCB to purchase the book or get the eBook for free at Beckett’s website.
Truly a teaching moment
I love this story, Lyla. It tells me so much about your teacher-heart. Funny, I didn’t even touch on Beckett’s grappling with the work vs. ministry in my post.
And that’s a biggie.
I love to see through your eyes! Glynn mentions this in his post too.
AS L.L. mentions, I too am struggling with the neat packaging of some challenging content. One could write an entire book on this issue alone! BUt, as I told L.L., I’m trying to read between the lines–put myself in his shoes and imagine the struggles he must have felt. It’s helping.
I’m so glad your reading this book with me!
2010/02/15 at 4:25 PM
As always I love it!
Oh and by the way- awesome job on Elizabeth’s blog makeover…are you for hire cause I defineatly need a change!
2010/02/15 at 5:03 PM
I just want to see you toss your hair around and wave your arms in the air. Really, I do. …
Another great post, Lyla. Again, I’m not reading the book, but reading it through your eyes is plenty-good reading.
2010/02/15 at 8:57 PM
Laura, I agree, I think he flattens the emotional part of the struggle he must have had with all the crises he experienced. But I ask myself, how could he not have wrestled hard? I think it’s background for the rest of the message of the book, and perhaps not so crucial for that purpose. I’m hoping so anyway…
Thanks Julie. We had a good time with it — and just let me know. I don’t get to play much with WordPress – what you see is what you get. But Blogger… gives you a whole design playground.
Jennifer, you probably won’t see it. Laughing at myself a little on that. I’m not quite that demonstrative, am I? But trust me, there’s a whole lot of mental stomping and thrashing, and even a little hair throwing when I have my temper tantrums.
2010/02/15 at 9:52 PM
I have never thought of it that way–God teaching me to “own” the answer versus just parroting it back. But I like the concept. I can see several hard instances in my life where even if God would have “told” me, I wouldn’t have appreciated the answer. And I wouldn’t have agreed with it either. I needed to live it, work it out before accepting it.
2010/02/16 at 8:41 PM
Dad commenting from your mom’s laptop:
Like Jennifer, I too would like to see you throwing your hair around. The arm waving I get.
Your granddad told me on more than one occasion that a good education was not always knowing the answers but it was knowing where to find the answer. We don’t always know the answer but the answer is there if and when we earnestly seek it.
Dad
2010/02/16 at 9:43 PM
Jennifer — It’s funny, I am with God so much like my kids are with us. Always have to prove the answer. God’s kind of proactive that way, and knowing I’ll insist on proving it anyway, He often makes me prove it first.
Dad — that was one of the first things I was taught as a manager. You don’t have to know everything but you have to know when you don’t and you have to know where to find it.
2010/02/21 at 6:48 PM
I’ve been thinking about this post off and on since reading it way back when. Sometimes I laugh when God answers my question with questions of His own. But usually I fume. In the end, as things either work out the way I think they should or the way I think they shouldn’t–and after I’ve recognized I’ll have to adjust–He fills me with wonder. And I think that’s what you’re saying.
But you didn’t provide all the answers in your piece, either, and readers had to think for themselves to make the necessary connections. That’s one reason this was so powerful–and why it stuck with me.
2010/02/23 at 1:54 PM
Solveig, you make me smile. Sometimes I worry that my tendency to want folks to think I know everything plays out too much. I’m glad to know that maybe, at least this once, I didn’t.
2010/02/23 at 7:36 PM