I spent most of 2008 serving in Iraq with the United States military. I was assigned to joint mission with military, department of state, and foreign aid agencies from several nations. My role was to serve as a business advisor to a local Iraqi small business development center and micro lending finance institute.

It was a pretty cool mission since I had a chance to use my business education in a very hands-on manner. But I quickly experienced some significant personal challenges due to the nature of being deployed to a foreign area. As an independent thinker, the authoritative hierarchical structure of the military hit me hard. Some of the folks I reported to weren’t interested in my ideas and weren’t always open to discussion. And since we were confined to the base and on call 24/7, there was no way to “escape” the environment until the 12 month deployment was over.

I spent most of 2008 serving in Iraq with the United States military. I was assigned to joint mission with military, department of state, and foreign aid agencies from several nations. My role was to serve as a business advisor to a local Iraqi small business development center and micro lending finance institute.

It was a pretty cool mission since I had a chance to use my business education in a very hands-on manner. But I quickly experienced some significant personal challenges due to the nature of being deployed to a foreign area. As an independent thinker, the authoritative hierarchical structure of the military hit me hard. Some of the folks I reported to weren’t interested in my ideas and weren’t always open to discussion. And since we were confined to the base and on call 24/7, there was no way to “escape” the environment until the 12 month deployment was over.

Most of the time we use our spiritual belief system to inform our business practices. But isn’t it interesting when the opposite takes place? Sometimes our business environment teaches us something about how we ought to approach our walk with God and also our faith in general. By now this has happened several times, but my experience in Iraq was one of the first.

I had always approached life with a go-getter attitude (still do). I’d always been a high achiever and quick to take initiative. I wanted to get an A in all my classes and be rated as a high performer at work and to have the reputation that went along with it. It’s clear that mindset carried over into my faith as I approached it as somewhat of a race or a contest. (I wonder how much different of a faith experience “type B” folks have.) So you can probably imagine some of my consternation when things didn’t go smoothly, I didn’t always win high marks for performance, or when I couldn’t escape my environment.

After months of fighting the system and fighting God some too (God wanted me to be excellent in all I do, right?), I finally came to the conclusion that my basis for success might be a little off. Sometimes getting an A+ in all of life’s pursuits just isn’t possible. Sometimes just passing is good enough. That burst my bubble initially, but I eventually was able to let go of my high-achiever mindset to accept the inevitable. In fact, I remember the day I finally decided to measure my success by just getting through each day until it was time to come home. It felt like giving up to me, but at least I was finally able to honestly manage my expectations.

Sometimes God places us in circumstances where we can’t excel, so that way we have to rely on Him. His goal isn’t to make us the hero of every story or for us to rise to the top of every class. If it was, we’d never grow, either in capability or humility. God wasn’t punishing me by allowing me to experience tough situations. He was giving me the opportunity to simply do a job that needed to be done and trust Him with the outcome. When we truly give God control of our both our personal and business lives, we can approach each project as an assignment from Him without being completely attached to our grade, rating, or reputation as the measure of success.

Now, when I’m in business situations, I pick and choose my battles based on my personal and organizational priorities. For the high priorities, I’ll give it everything I’ve got. With lower priorities – or when environmental factors outside my control carry too much weight – I don’t kill myself trying to make things perfect. I just try to make sure the job gets done. But more importantly, I realize that not only is God in control, He has a plan and a purpose for each assignment He gives me. Maybe He wants to put His “special forces” in tough situations where they won’t necessarily look good and there’s no easy answer. I’ve decided to volunteer, how about you?