Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and I'm really glad to be with you today for the Infinitely Precious podcast. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for being my companion on this journey and allowing me to be yours. I love the opportunity to, reflect on the journey that is the spiritual journey for all of us in our lives, for the places where we feel it.

And for me, the the nature of spirituality is one that touches upon all the aspects of our lives. And so those aspects are the aspects we reflect on together. I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for you joining me and for you sharing the podcast with others as it impacts you, the most impactful ones. So as I prepared for today's podcast, and there were a lot of different topics on my mind, of course, part of what came to my mind as I was thinking about the Infinitely Precious podcast in particular this week is the fact that for me, coming from the path of Jesus and in particular being raised in and given the Christian tradition, leading within a Christian faith community, a church.

This is Holy Week and Holy Week is a busy week. There is preparation, making sure that all of the programs we hand out are correct. I have a great team of people who do a lot of that work, but I have to generate some of the content. We have a cooperative service on Thursday night. It's called Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday with foot washing and communion commemorating Jesus' last supper and washing the disciples' feet.

Friday is Good Friday. We have a Good Friday service. It's led by lots of really cool laypeople from the congregation, but I'm responsible for that. Saturday is the Easter egg hunt, and I'm a part of that. And then on Sunday morning, there's an Easter sunrise service, which is different from the Easter, main service that happens at our usual worship time.

It's a time of year when I can feel the pressure because there are extra services built into the week, there are extra events, there's extra preparation. This is an opportunity. There are folks for whom Easter is so important that that's the one time or one of several times they come a year with the hope of hearing something. At least that's what I like to believe, with the hope of hearing something that will offer grace and and, a sense of meaning. And so when we come to the Easter service every year, I wanna be sure that there is a sense of each one of us being infinitely precious, that each one of us is unconditionally loved, that we're all a gift, each one of us, in the hope that a person who might not hear it any other Sunday of the year, because Easter is their big Sunday, no judgment about that, that they get to hear that message, that it be a message of invitation, of love, of preciousness.

And what that comes down to is because I am the primary communicator as a pastor in a congregation or at least one of the primary communicators, I want to be sure I do my best, and that measures up to being pressure. So how do I prepare for these things? How do I make sure they're all the best they can be? Now, from my deep sense of theology, I know that I can prepare all week long, but what's most important is that I show up in the moment when I'm speaking and speak from the heart. Speak what arises in that moment based on all the preparation that leads to that moment.

That's that's how I feel about it. But up until the moment when I am there, there's a time to prepare, and there's a pressure. What do we do when pressure bears down? That became important to me. Now I began my week because Mondays are the beginning of my week.

I began my week with some lists of things that needed to be done, tried to prioritize those things, went into the office, did some work. Before I went in the office, had a good quiet time here, sorting through some things, thinking through some things, meditating and praying, got some work done, did some of the things that, needed to be done, left to come home because I needed to record the Infinitely Precious podcast, and write, another podcast that I'm a part of, as well as edit another podcast that drops this week. So there were a lot of things sort of all dancing on my plate. So I came home, I ate lunch, and then there was a part of me that knew I should dive right in to the Infinitely Precious podcast that I needed to get that done. And when I was feeling the pressure, one of my responses is to avoid the pressure by distracting myself.

I don't know if that's the way you do it. You may have other things that you do. So there I was sitting in my chair where I pray every day and where I do my morning reading and meditation, and there were several books over there, and the books called out to me. It's as if books that I've been wanting to read or look out suddenly just needed to be touched right then. I needed to pick them up, needed to take a look at them, in order to avoid the pressure that I was feeling within to do this.

Now some of you would just say because you cut through that stuff, you would just say, well then just do it. Just do it. And there's a part of me that looks back on that moment and says, why didn't I just do it? But it doesn't matter why I didn't just do it then because I didn't. So I allowed myself to be distracted by a number of different things.

I even picked up my phone and scrolled for a little bit, before realizing that's exactly what I was doing, and I set it back down. I realized that I wasn't feeling ready to speak into the infinitely precious space, and so I was trying to distract myself from, my lack of readiness. What that allowed me to do was to recognize that I was distracted, to even recognize what was distracting me, my uncertainty about what I'd be talking about, my fear of getting it wrong. I know. I know.

It's not about getting it right or wrong. It's about speaking what arises in the moment. I know that. But every once in a while, being human just as I am, I forget. So I recognized that I had forgotten.

I recognized that I was distracting myself and what was distracting me, and I recognized that within myself there is this little critic that wants to take the opportunity because of the distraction forty five minutes to an hour or so of it that wants to take that moment to beat me up about it, about, and judge me for having been distracted. So I got a triple recognition. The recognition that I was being distracted, that I was distracted, the recognition that I was being distracted because of my concerns about not being ready, about not knowing what I was speaking into this moment, and then recognizing that little judgmental critical voice that rises within me sometimes to poke at me, to prod at me, to question my value as a human being. I recognize all three of those things and I took the moment right then as I sat with that recognition to release. First, the recognition that I was distracted, that I had done what some would call waste time.

I recognized it, and I released that distraction. Then I recognized what was behind it, a fear that I was unprepared to talk to you, to share in this companionship, which is really about me being honest about the journey of faith I'm on and trying to address the issues that arise for me in the hopes that our shared humanity will let it be heard. So I recognize that and I release that. And then that last one is to recognize that little critical voice and the third one is the hardest to release for me, but I released it. I've released it and can be until I had fully released it I didn't feel ready to sit down here with you.

All of it is a way of saying that instead of focusing on the recognizing and releasing, I took the opportunity then to be thankful for the return because I could have spent the entire afternoon distracted by whatever was in front of me, but whatever was there instead of being focused as I should be. As I should be, you see? I've already attached a value to it. It slid right out of my mouth. I'm already the shoulds of life, which allows me when I don't do a should to let that little judgmental voice back in.

I even recognize the use of the voice here in the podcast. And so this has been a way of kind of talking through, it may seem free form and after I sit with it for a bit I may not be happy, we'll see. But it's a process. When you feel pressure we all deal with it in different ways. Some of us sort of run away or distract ourselves or some of us get right down to it.

I'm pleased for you all folks. But for those of us who get distracted, recognize it, release it, and return. And instead of focusing on the fact that it took you a while to recognize it or a while to release it, focus on the gift of the return. You did come back. You weren't stuck there.

I did come back. I wasn't stuck there. And the return becomes the gift. And the time that it took for me to come to a place of recognition becomes an opportunity for me to learn. To learn, to recognize the signs within myself, where in my body I feel it when the pressure is building and I want to run away, To stop and maybe catch myself, maybe the next time because of today, I'll catch myself earlier, maybe I won't, but maybe I will have learned and see that pattern rising.

And when we begin to recognize the patterns that trigger us within, we can begin to see them as they arise and let them go and be thankful for an opportunity to return to what is the place that we hoped we would be all along. So my friend, if you're feeling the heaviness, you're feeling the pressure of the world in which we live and the pressure leads you to want to be distracted, distract yourself, to run away, or just to get down to work, whatever it is, take the opportunity as well to recognize in yourself you are infinitely precious. You're unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. Whether you end up procrastinating, whether you're recovering perfectionist like I am who gets stuck, sometimes putting things off until they can be perfect, which guess what? They never will be.

No matter how you deal with it, just remember how precious, how loved, and what a gift you are. Thanks for joining me this week. I don't know if this is a special week for you or not, but until the next time we're together again, I wish you all the very best. Thanks for joining me.