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`This morning I awoke to the sound of a jackhammer. I thought at first I was snoozing inside a construction zone but after a few shakes of my head I realized it was our old friend Flicker. Flicker is a rather large common flicker (Colaptes auratus) who drops by from time to time to rattle our cage, literally. This morning he was doing a particularly good job of it. I threw my legs over the side of the bed and stalked out of the bedroom to peer through the kitchen window and watch him. He was standing on the board on which our bird feeder is mounted and bashing his beak against the board for all he was worth (flickers are in the woodpecker family). The board is attached to our metal deck railing and so he was setting up a vibration through it and the deck and the whole wall of the house. The wall of the house acted like a huge amplifier. The racket was so loud that the windows were rattling. But it wasn't the noise that got to me.
As I watched out the window, Flicker bashed his beak against the board and then he paused to look with disgust at the empty bird feeder. Then he let loose with another machinegun burst with his beak. He paused with some satisfaction and this time turned his head to look sideways through the large window, which framed me in my underwear. as he scowled directly at me in my scanty unmentionables, I felt gelded of all pride and usefulness. I felt like he had caught me in my underwear not doing my job. Clutching at my groin with both hands I doubled over and fled for the bedroom in embarrassment and guilt. The racket happened again and I peered meekly around the bedroom doorposts to look out the large window, now a safe distance on the other side of the house. Flicker scowled directly at me again and even at the much greater distance seemed to pierce me with his sharp black eyes.
“Linda, you gotta feed the birds, right now!” I said to the rumpled heap in the bed.
“Why? Is Flicker making you feel guilty again?” replied the rumpled heap. Linda peered out from the heap and snickered at me and the emasculated look on my face. “You have got to be the only person I know of in the whole Cariboo who would allow themselves to feel guilt-ridden and harassed by a mere bird.”
She is right; I do allow myself to feel guilty and harangued by mere birds, and just about everybody else. I have this hook in my belly that demands that I satisfy what I perceive are the expectations of every living thing. I will double myself over backwards to try and meet everybody's expectations and never feel like I have done it adequately. Even guests for dinner at our home splay me out like a worm, caught by the hook in my people-pleasing belly, wiggling helplessly at the end of my “need to satisfy” line. “You really don't have to ask 10 times if someone would like to have more mashed potatoes, dear,” Linda said to me after one of my recent dinner performances. “It's OK to just let them say, 'Pass the spuds, please.' ” Does anybody else out there know how it feels to be an addicted, compulsive people-pleaser?
I have done a fair bit of thinking about this “problem.” it took me a long time to recognize it as a problem at all, and longer still to realize that I was afflicted with it. It took even longer to try and figure out the motivations behind it. Eventually I realized, that among other things, I really don't feel very good about myself and I feel like I have to earn people's approval by meeting their needs. Often I even put the Christian stamp of endorsement on what I do by labeling it “selflessness.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Self is usually smack-dab in the centre of the people pleaser affliction. I discovered that most of what I do for other people was really to meet my own needs. And when I thought about it, I realized that this was a pathetic motivation for helping anyone.
After years of working on this, I haven't got my affliction licked yet. In fact, you might say I am a recovering compulsive people-pleaser. Oh, I tout slogans like, “I don't do guilt” and all that kind of stuff, but my wife knows that it ain't true. All it takes is a little temptation from a mere bird and I am in danger of falling off the wagon. But you know what, I am working on it. Specifically, I am working on three danger zones. One is coming to know the truth that it is possible to have a healthy and solid work ethic, which is very important to me, without being a compulsive people-pleaser. Compulsive people-pleasers like me tend to get the two all mixed up. Another is the realization that compulsive people-pleasing actually gets in the way of my spiritual walk with Christ. Compulsive people-pleasers like me tend to miss this truth. The third is that it is not Christ's will that I should be a compulsive people-pleaser, but in fact be liberated from it to enjoy him and enjoy observing him at work in other people's lives.
Compulsive people-pleasers like me tend to have a bit of a messiah complex, connecting working for Christ too closely with the workings of Christ. These three danger zones are often at the root of burnout, particularly for Christian pastors who often take them even a step further and give them the stamp of holiness. Go figure, holiness being linked to compulsive people-pleasing and burnout.
As I work on these things, one of the most fruitful parts of the Bible that I have spent hours contemplating is this: “While Jesus and his followers were travelling, Jesus went into a town. A woman named Martha let Jesus stay at her house. Martha had a sister named Mary, who was sitting at Jesus' feet and listening to him teach. But Martha was busy with all the work to be done. She went in and said, 'Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me alone to do all the work? Tell her to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. Only one thing is important. Mary has chosen the better thing, and it will never be taken away from her.' ” (Luke 10:38-42)
