I have a friend who cannot do something if you ask her to. It’s got a fancy name and everything…Pathological Demand Avoidance or PDA for short. It’s not her being difficult…it is a behaviour that stems from a physiological stress response. But, if you put it on a rota and stick it on the fridge she is happy to get on with the task! The brain is a wonderful and complex thing.
I am happy to do something if you ask me…I will dive in and get into the nitty-gritty of it, I’ll look at it from all angles and work out the best way to do it and get on with it. I will do 95% of the work and bring it to the point of completion, but pushing that final button…I can’t. Take washing clothes for example…I can wash them, dry them, even iron and fold them but can I put them back on the shelf or hang them in the wardrobe? Nope! I’m responsible for producing a rota for the centre I work in…I am happy to find the dates, assign people to each date, even assign key passages or focus ideas. Can I send the rota out to people? Nah ah!! It sits in my draft messages for weeks until I have to redo it!
I wish there was a nice neat name for my lack of ability to complete tasks other than ‘executive dysfunction around task completion’. I prefer to say I get stuck somewhere between finished and done. My tasks are finished…I’ve completed them, I just haven’t released them into the world (or the wardrobe).
The astute among you may notice there hasn’t been a blog post for a wee while…Ok, 18 months nearly! I have to accept all responsibility for that, sorry. Please forgive the hiatus. We have been very active, Embers has been up to lots of stuff over the last 18 months, I have a whole file of blog posts that are finished but not done. So over the next few months there will be a mix of posts released…some will be reflections, some will be updates about work we have done, some will be simple resource recommendations.
Going back to the Pathological Demand Avoidance and me getting stuck between finished and done, I wonder if we can all be like that with our discipleship sometimes? Maybe you have been challenged to do something but because it was put to you as a demand you have instinctively gone “Nope, can’t do that” but actually if you put it into your daily routine it is more manageable. Or maybe you are happy to pray for someone, seek God for them and even find scripture relevant for them but you then struggle to actually tell them because it exposes you? Is there a way you can break the cycle this week? I’m writing a blog post and publishing it on the same day…what are you going to do?