failing over and over as a pastor to a recovery church.

There’s just not cure for this brutal calling to serve families suffering with substance use disorder and mental health challenges. After my pandemic nervous breakdown, I have adopted this quote as my own: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” (Winston Churchill) I could not even succeed at having a proper breakdown! In fact, I did not realize that was what happened to me until I began to recover! Isn’t that ridiculous? When you add a pandemic on top of a weekly dose of overdoses and suicides and family break ups and watching childhood trauma being lived out in real time with real littles…what you get is MORE failure with less opportunity to hug it out. The very things that help us cope with our suffering – hugging and high-fiving and laughing and crying together – was happening over zoom (for gosh sakes). And then, somehow, it was my fault as a pastor for not DOING SOMETHING about this social distance we created – as if our protocols were somehow a political statement. Too much. Too much. And it just felt like over 20 years of preaching and walking this walk of doing hard things together with love meant…nothing. The one thing that kept me out of the hospital (this may have been a mistake but whatever at least I got to eat my own food and sleep in my own bed) were the Everything Happens podcasts. So there! You either saved me or prevented me from getting much needed treatment (just kidding). Today, I am more then on the road to recovery – I am finding joy in the moment. But boy, if I forget what I learned? If I go back to my pre-pandemic, “little engine that could and MUST self”? I will crash and burn again. So thanks for all you guys are doing. I’m just going to go now…practice some more failing with great enthusiasm. Teresa McBean, Pastor and Enneagram Practitioner, oh, and failure.