As I am trying to grow in following up with people I have intentionally taken time after each meeting I’ve had with people just to stop, think, and process through our time together. It’s been wonderfully helpful in evaluating the time and how I can be better caring for them, but even beyond that it’s really taught me to be examining my own heart. Seeing how effective it was in the context of discipling others, I eventually learned how helpful it could be in discipling myself.
As I was so worked up about giving my talk last week I began to miss certain deadlines. I missed my last evaluation entirely. Initially, I gave it no thought and did not look to see how my heart was engaged in it. Several times after the missed deadline I planned to set aside time to do it or even did sit down to do it, but it never actually happened. In many respects I just was not willing to die to my desires to do other things that I thought were more fun or exciting. I had trouble seeing doing the evaluation as better than any number of smaller things that came up. Learning, just recently, that my heart really was engaged the whole time and that I was choosing simply to not obey and desiring to maximize my own ideas has been very helpful.