Today we continue with our Capacity on the Field Series. There will be a new post every M, W, F this month, exploring what factors into your capacity on the field. You can find the previously published posts in this series here.
In a recent post, we talked about Spoon Theory and Capacity.
We played with the word SPOONS to learn about spoons. We talked about how to audit your spoons. We discussed what to do about time, energy, capacity, and what can happen if you live outside your spoons for too long.
In this post, I want to talk about other factors that have an impact on our spoons.
Unfortunately, there are things that are out of our control that can take our spoons.
Things happen all day long that take away time, energy, and capacity. Plans change, something takes longer than expected, something is harder than expected or nothing on your to do list happens at all. Someone needs help, something breaks, something needed can’t be found or someone gets sick. All things that spend our spoons and take time, energy, and capacity.
We can plan out our spoons, schedule within our capacity and still get to the end of the day without the needed spoons to get through the kids’ bedtime routine, email that one supporter or cook a healthy meal.
We can start the day with soul-tending, peaceful quiet time and then, sense our spoons slipping away the moment we leave our gate in the morning.
What zaps our energy so quickly?
Why do our spoons come and go at different paces on different days?
How can we hang onto spoons even in the midst of these unexpected factors?
Before we can take a full look at the unexpected factors that impact our spoons, we have to first understand the expected factors.
The expected or known factors are many, but often the hardest to explain. They are things we assume shouldn’t or don’t impact us but end up impacting us the most.
Let’s look at just a few of them.
Young Families – If you have young children or multiple children, you’re going to have impacted spoons. You have to work around nap times, food allergies, diaper changes, childhood illnesses, sleepless nights, breastfeeding challenges, and lots of extra laundry. You’re potty training and parenting the basics and nursing fevers and carefully analyzing dangers all around. You might be making your own baby food, training a worker in your home to help you, hand washing bedding or figuring out mosquito nets over bunk beds and cribs. Your capacity is impacted by all the thinking and planning. You are working from a different place, a different capacity with a different number of spoons than someone who isn’t in that stage of life.
Singles – You have a different spoon level and capacity than a couple on your team. You are just you! You are doing all the things all by yourself. You are navigating safety and finances and work and health and team relationships all alone. You probably use up spoons having to ask for help and hoping someone says yes. In your audit, lots of things have to happen but you only have your spoons to spend. This takes great capacity, that although is known, is still complicated and real.
Parents of TCKs – If you’re parenting while working overseas, this impacts your spoons. Kids mean lots of mental energy, helping them through transitions, through friendships, through language. You’re working with teachers in other cultures, figuring out playdates and sports schedules and school supply lists. You’re signing papers that you don’t fully understand and trying to keep your kids safe in homes, schools, programs, and places that are foreign to you. As they grow, you’re navigating passport country things and host country things with pressure to make sure your kids have a good grasp on both. You might have kids on both sides of the ocean who are learning to adult on their own. You’re having late night deep discussions about hard topics while emotions are high, and spoons are low for you and for them. This takes capacity and spoons.
A special note on TCKs – They also have their own spoons. They have their own things that affect their spoons. They probably need their own spoon audit and spoon theory vocabulary. Also, as much as we want them to be involved and be a part of what we do, they are not extra spoons for you or your work. There is a delicate balance in that sentence that is unique to each family unit but can’t be ignored. Have that conversation.
Chronic Health Issues – You might have a disease or health condition like lupus or diabetes or sleep apnea. You might need medications that are hard to find, require trips to other countries for treatments, or need frequent breaks or extra understanding. You might be filing medical forms, getting things pre-approved, figuring out new doctors and new medical systems in multiple languages. All while just trying to stay healthy, eat right, and keep going. This means spending spoons on things that people might not understand. This means spending spoons to explain it over and over and over again.
Disabilities or Differences – Neurodiversity might have entered your story somehow. You might have ADHD and you’re just learning about how it’s impacted you over the years. You might have kids with autism, learning disabilities, neurological differences, or sensory challenges. You live in the desert with kids who hate touching sand. You wear local fabrics that are rough and itchy. You have to eat foods that contain allergens, chemicals, dyes and lots of unknowns. You also have to eat foods that are different in texture, color, and fragrance. You might have a spouse with executive function challenges, demand avoidance, and low ability to focus, or stay on task. Language learning might be nearly impossible. You might work with national churches that have long services and loud music but are required to attend with kids who lose all their spoons in the first 5 minutes of drums pounding. You might be homeschooling and accommodating and helping while figuring out testing, therapy, counseling, and processes in a country not your own. This means intense amounts of spoons used for everyone in the family.
You might be reading these paragraphs and seeing yourself in one or more of them. You might be realizing that you have known circumstances that are impacting your spoons.
What if you’re a young family with a chronic health issue and neurodivergence?
What if you’re a single worker with ADHD and thyroid issues?
What if you’re married to someone with these challenges?
What if you lead a family on a team with these known factors?
After taking a look at the known things, we must circle back to all the unknown events that affect our spoons each day.
Traffic jams, a neighborhood break-in, a car needing a part that will take months to acquire, or a day where everything just goes wrong.
With all of these known and unknown factors, what now?
How does anyone stay on the field in a sustainable, healthy way with any of these known things?
Is there a place for singles and families with neurodivergence or health issues?
Does member care include these scenarios with understanding, resources, help and accommodations?
What do accommodations—spoon saving things—look like for workers on the field?
What if sabbatical or medical leave or other time away is needed?
In this post, I’m asking questions that have individual answers in your specific context. As a coach, I ask lots of questions with the hope that many of you who are reading this might start conversations, ask your own questions, get equipped and find answers for these hard questions.
As you have these conversations, take all of the information, all the known and unknown factors and go back to the first post about spoon theory. With all of the information, reread SPOONS and do another audit.
With what you know now, how many spoons do you have? What takes spoons and what gives spoons? What do you do if your spoons are spent and you need support?
How do we make the field and global work accessible to people with fewer spoons?
Are we able to accommodate differences and challenges to make this work doable, achievable, and realistic with the spoons each person has to offer?
How can we better live within our spoons as we enlarge our capacity, learn new skills, and tend our souls?
If these are questions that you’d like to talk through with someone, I’d love to help. Leave a comment or send an email. We can work it out together. As a reminder, Global Trellis is here to enlarge the capacity of Great Commission cross-cultural workers. We believe that you can have a tended soul and an expanding skill set, able to use your spoons as you play your part of the Great Commission where God has called you.
Photo by Nadine Primeau on Unsplash
This is an excellent system that more workers need as a part of their personal tool set for sustainable service