Find Rest: A Women's Plan For Lasting Peace In A Busy Lifeনমুনা

Know When To Pull Yourself Off The Field

I was training an elite group of up-and-coming female leaders at a huge aerospace corporation. As part of our role-playing case study, they worked on a fictional workplace scenario: after some financial setbacks, their unit had a big opportunity that might keep their whole department afloat. It would require “all hands on deck,” overtime, and weekends for the next six months. Then each person was told they now had a unique personal crisis to juggle (such as a husband diagnosed with cancer, a young child needing speech therapy at 4 p.m. three days a week, or elderly parents who needed help finding and moving into assisted living). 

The women crafted a solution for their particular conundrum, then did a role-play to present it to a senior male executive. 

The team with the cancer case was first up, with a carefully-crafted solution that involved working early hours and late nights to make up for missing time for the husband’s chemo, and enlisting others to cover for them while they were gone. The women leaders were completely confounded by the executive’s response: “Your proposal is heroic and admirable, but completely unrealistic. I didn’t believe a word of it.” 

Awkward silence.

Every competent woman knows that you do whatever it takes to get the job done well. But just as important, we need to recognize when circumstances render us unable to get our job done well. Just as a good soccer player would never insist on playing on a badly sprained ankle, thereby putting the whole team at risk, we sometimes need to realize when we’re actually doing our team—and ourselves—a disservice if we do not pull ourselves off the field for a time. As the tough executive put it that day, “Yeah, we might need you—but your husband needs you more.” 

How many times do we realize we have overcommitted or encountered unforeseen circumstances that leave us incapable of finishing our obligations? We need to learn when to pull ourselves off the field for a time, wave our white flag of humility, and enjoy the peaceful fruit of realistic expectations. 

God never gives us a calling without providing all we need to get it done, and that includes time and emotional capacity. If we aren’t able to get it done, despite our best efforts, then He has a different plan in mind—perhaps a different person or a different time. Let’s listen when the Holy Spirit gently calls us to set certain things aside and trust that He has them in His control.

Set Aside Superwomen