What’s Mine to Do?

thoughts and tips on how to tell

Early in my ministry, I ran across a book called When Helping You Is Hurting Me: Escaping the Messiah Trap by Carmen Berry. To be honest, I can’t remember much about the book except for two statements which, when woven together, can get us tangled into a web of overfunctioning, burnout, and resentment:

If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.
Everyone else’s needs are more important than mine. 

Freeing yourself from the messiah trap means confronting and deconstructing these statements. Ideally, we’d do some healing work around both of them, but it occurs to me that addressing just one of them could be enough to get us out of the messiah trap’s snare. 

For example, take “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.” This gets reinforced every time we do something for someone that they could do for themselves. We teach people how to treat us and what to expect from us. Letting things go takes a Herculean amount of spiritual muscle–few things are harder, for me anyway–but when we do, we find one of two things to be true:

1. Someone else ends up doing it.

2. It doesn’t get done, and almost always, life goes on.

Did someone say Hercules? (Yes, any excuse to slip in some Ted Lasso-adjacent content. Brett Goldstein will save the MCU.)

But MaryAnn, you say. There *are* things only I can do. Yes, I know. Parents feel this intensely, though it’s not unique to caregiving. Truth is, it’s a gift to be needed. It’s what we were built for as humans, and most of us wouldn’t have it any other way. As exhausted as everyone is these days, the alternative–to never be needed by anyone–feels tragic to me. 

Still, many of us are drowning in the too-muchness. Which leads us to the second statement, “Everyone’s needs are more important than mine.” At particular moments in time, this may be true. In the aggregate… well, you are a child of God, and why would you treat the beloved that way? 

I mentioned in a recent Blue Room roundup that I’ve been leaning on the question “What’s mine to do?” I cribbed this from Enneagram Godmother Suzanne Stabile, who as a Two on the Enneagram [Caregiver] is susceptible to overfunctioning and compassion fatigue.

(As an Enneagram One [Reformer/Improver], my overfunctioning comes from Getting It Right No Matter the Cost.) 

“What’s mine to do” is as good an antidote as any to the messiah trap, but along with most life wisdom, it’s easy in theory but hard in practice.