What's Your Idol?

Hint: It's probably stealing your joy.

We’ve all got one. We’d all like to pretend we don’t. So, we all call it something else.

My life for the last week has revolved around getting over a nasty case of bronchitis. I knew I talked a lot for my job, but it wasn’t until this week when I realized just how much I can’t do without a voice. Stuck at home, unable to even make a phone call, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Given the fact I’ve fallen into the modern habits of always-being-busy-and-leaving-little-time-for-thinking, some uncomfortable truths popped up during the quiet days at home.

You’ve likely been confronted with some truth you didn’t want to hear at some point in your life, whether from similar long periods of time to think or perhaps from a friend or mentor pointing it out for you. It’s one thing when that truth is about something universally accepted as negative: spending too much money, a lack of discipline, selfishness. But, what about when it’s about something we’ve categorized as “good”? Perhaps, even something we’ve become to see as part of our identity. Yet, when we we’re confronted with the truth about it, we realize it’s become just as dangerous as those bad habits we’ve been trying to avoid all along.

It was on my third morning of waking up early, realizing I was not, in fact, better, and having to cancel all of my meetings for the day, when I had to face reality: staying home sick from work wasn’t hard because things weren’t getting done without me. Yes, it would have been better for my coworkers and my customers if I could have attended, but I have a great team who could cover for me. No, staying home sick from work was hard because I have come to believe that being productive is the ultimate good I can do with my life. So, even though rest the world kept spinning on without me heading out for my work day, my own world felt like it had come to a screeching halt. I was writing off my sick days as days with zero value whatsoever. And, as uncomfortable as it was, I started to realize just how problematic that mindset can be.

You see, if days when I am sick and can’t be “useful” to the world around me, what does that say about friends who are chronically ill? What does that say about those recovering from an injury? For that matter, what does that say about any moment any of us spend not actively “doing something useful”? Deep down, I don’t want to believe that moments of life are wasted if they’re not spent in materially productive ways… but, I can’t help but notice that I live my life as if that’s what I believe. And to make things even more embarrassing, I was making my husband’s life miserable through my own display of self-pity.

In my attempt to make myself feel better about my plight, I would complain about how hard it was to not feel useful, how frustrated I was at the work I put in to prep for these work meetings only to not get to go, and how much I hated sitting at home. I was so obsessed with my productivity idol that, in its absence, I couldn’t see anything else. All along, I was missing the opportunity right in front of me to still be kind, patient, and to learn a little perseverance. I didn’t realize productivity was my idol until I didn’t have it, and only then did I realize how unhealthy my relationship was with it.

So, I ask you: what’s your idol? Another way to think about it: what’s the one thing that, when taken away from you, you can’t seem to live without? What appears to bring you joy, but when it’s gone, sends you spiraling into the worst version of yourself? Maybe it’s your job, or your ability to serve your family, or even volunteering in the community. Many of may mistakenly call this thing our “purpose” or “passion,” thinking it’s our deepest calling; yet, if it’s something that can be taken away from us, it can’t be our deepest calling. What we are truly called to do cannot be taken away from us, so it must be something deeper: how we live our lives in whatever it is we’re doing, not what we do with our lives.

For example: my deepest calling isn’t showing up to work every day. Yes, that’s how I live out my calling most days, but when I’m sick, that’s clearly not wise. As a person of faith, I believe my deepest calling is something more like “showing others the love of Jesus.” And, when I’m sick at home, that means being kind to my husband, and myself. I failed that mission because I was to caught up in self-pity over losing my productivity idol. Ultimately, I think that’s part of why idols are such a problem: they trick us into thinking they’re where we should devote all our energy, all the while leaving us ignorant of where our energy is truly best spent.

Where does this leave us? Well, I hope it doesn’t take a bout of bronchitis for you to learn what your idol is—but, we could probably all use some reflection time. As yourself the questions above to identify what you rely on for joy and fulfillment, and do some soul-searching to separate what’s outside of your control and what you can hold onto even when all else is taken away. From there, as always, our best course of action is to take one small step at a time, with humility, in the direction of less reliance on the idol. As we do this, I can’t help but believe we’ll find a deeper, truer joy than the joy we thought we had before.

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Journal Prompt of the Week

What’s the one thing that your joy depends on? Is it within your control?