{"id":3081,"date":"2014-10-31T17:46:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T17:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2014-10-31T17:46:01","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T17:46:01","slug":"i-choose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/i-choose\/","title":{"rendered":"I Choose…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first read Edwin Friedman\u2019s book, A failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix,<\/em> in the fall of 2009. I didn\u2019t realize just how much I learned from this book until I picked it up again. His thoughts on self-differentiation changed the way that I lead and interact with people in my family and in the church that I serve. The area in which this book has helped me the most is in this area of differentiation\u2026 it\u2019s the idea that not everything is personal or has to be personal. It\u2019s ok to have people disagree with you. It\u2019s ok to have people change and argue with you. It\u2019s the nature of the position; it\u2019s not personal unless I make it personal. However, as a woman, I know that many things are personal\u2026 I have conversations and opposition simply because I\u2019m a woman. In situations like that, the way that I differentiate is by telling myself that this would happen to any woman in my position. Again, it\u2019s not me; it\u2019s my position that is causing so much strife. If I don\u2019t think this way, then the burden is too heavy for me to carry. It\u2019s too difficult. I\u2019m interested to know what you all think about this way of differentiating?<\/p>\n

There are two quotes that stood out to me this time around\u2026 it has nothing to do with self-differentiation, but important nonetheless.\u00a0First, \u201cmore learning will not, on it\u2019s own, automatically change the way people see things or think. There must be first a shift in the emotional process<\/strong> of that institution (person).<\/em>\u201d (P31) Why haven\u2019t I thought of this before? I think that this is the reason that I struggle with church so much. People come and learn, but nothing seems to change in the way that they do life. How do we get people to have this emotional shift? Or, is that not my job?<\/p>\n

Second, \u201cmost of the decisions we make in life turn out to be right or wrong not because we were prescient about the future- which after all does not exist yet- but because of what we do after we make the decision.\u201d (P61) As Christians, we are so consumed with doing \u201cGod\u2019s will.\u201d We invoke \u201cGod\u2019s will\u201d more than anything ales\u2026 but what if God\u2019s will is broader than we think\u2026 and what if God cares about the follow-up and the follow-through more than he cares about that initial decision. What if God cares more about my integrity rather then if I go to Costco today or tomorrow? We tend to focus so much on the initial decision that we forget the journey that will get us to the end. The journey is harder than the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first read Edwin Friedman\u2019s book, A failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, in the fall of 2009. I didn\u2019t realize just how much I learned from this book until I picked it up again. His thoughts on self-differentiation changed the way that I lead and interact with people in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-friedman","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3082,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3081\/revisions\/3082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}