Are You a Sponge or a Duck?

John is a great friend to me. John has spent his career as a lawyer, a law school professor, a seminary professor of homiletics, a 16-year mayor, a fund-raiser, and a Renaissance man. In the last several years, John’s sister-in-law introduced us. I had expressed to her my need for a coach and friend to come alongside me.

She said, “I think you’d like John.”

I do.

In the midst of seasons of heavy burdens in leadership, John pours into me the leadership lessons he has learned throughout his lifetime. One of the most profound and powerful lessons John is teaching me has to do with how I handle stressful situations.

In the midst of one of my heart-sharing moments, John looked at me and commented, “You have a choice. You can either be a duck or a sponge.”

A duck or a sponge? What does that mean?

Think about it. A sponge absorbs everything around itself. As it absorbs, the sponge becomes heavy with the weight of its surroundings. Only when the sponge is squeezed does it lose its weight.

Do you remember the old joke, “How do you get down off a horse?” The answer is that you don’t. “You get down off a duck!”

The downy feathers of a young duck are water repellant. Even in adulthood, water runs off a duck’s back. As the duck glides across the surface of a pond, it appears placid upon the surface. However, all of the activity is taking place under the surface of the water.

I looked at John and protested, “But being a sponge has worked pretty well for me most of my life.” Then I confessed, “Well, not always. I think it’s time that I learn to be a duck.”

I remember when I was a student life officer. God allowed me many hours of listening, counseling, and pastoring students. They dealt with a wide range of issues including family dysfunction, sexual abuse, substance abuse issues, and sexual identity issues. I poured myself into those young people. I wept with them, empathized with them, cared for them, and led many of them on a journey to a place of wholeness in Christ.

Being a sponge seemed to work pretty well for me.

But not entirely. I made some deliberate decisions when I left the office each evening to leave the brokenness and burdens there. I sought to go home and give myself completely to Beth, Katie, and Nathan. After an especially difficult day of listening to pain and trauma, we would slip off campus to one of the few restaurants in Jackson, Kentucky, and enjoy the escape of a family meal.

I was learning to be a duck.

But it is hard for a caring, compassionate person to live as a duck all of the time. There are moments that the sponge in me really comes out.

My greatest challenge with being a duck is when I face conflict with another person. After a conflicting conversation, event, or series of events, my sponge really starts absorbing. I mull, ponder, complain, analyze, evaluate, and generally obsess about the problem and people involved. Absorbed in the problem, I find myself weighed down.

So, throughout my professional and personal life, I have found myself alternating between being a sponge and being a duck. I was never able to identify the process until John asked me the probing question.

Recently I returned to my office after having been out and about. I spied several foreign objects throughout my office. I grinned. Yellow rubber duckies were strategically placed on my desk, shelf and credenza.

My wife had been to a local dollar store. While there, she spotted a package of three small rubber ducks. They now grace my office as a reminder of my attitude, focus, and faith.