Control

On reflection, I'm surprised that it took me this long to get to this point.  Starting this blog, I hoped to post once every two weeks.  I didn't meet that goal at all, but I did at least post once a month until May.  That's the better part of half a year.

I have to confess now, though, that I'm disappointed with myself.  Even though I wrote an entire sermon on transitions and interruptions (see "The Pruning Shears of God" post), a lot of my disciplines went out the window in this last month and a half.  I could make a lot of excuses, and maybe even give a couple of reasons.  But there have been so many times that TFA has given me excellent reflection material that I have failed to put up here it is embarrassing.  I have thought several times about posting those things, and just haven't applied myself to doing so.  Now I wish I had.

This is going to be one of my greatest growing edges as I transition into this new phase of my life: taking initiative.  Taking control over my own disciplines.

If self-control is a muscle, it is one I have developed in some ways.  I meet my academic deadlines.  I respond to most e-mails within a couple of days.  I get myself up for church every Sunday morning.  I call my wife every night and text her every morning. 

In other ways, though, self-control is a fruit of the Spirit I wish were more of a vegetable I childishly leave on my plate.  Of the last thirty days since heading to TFA Induction / Institute, I have done morning prayer maybe six or seven times.  I have read scripture a handful more than that, in the evenings when my work is done early (rare) and my roommate isn't around (rarer still). 

I have allowed, like so many others, the places I have lived and studied done the structural work of my spiritual life for me.  In college I had chapel, Koinonia and Mercy Seat to guide my weekly reading and study.  In seminary I had daily morning prayer, daily chapel, and a whole hose of other gatherings with friends.  Now I have only the random, unsought blessings of surprising conversations with new friends with whom I share a common and comfortable understanding.  Yet even in those moments of unexpected joy, little intimacy is shared.  I have been so blessed to share such depths with friends in the last several years that the intentionality that provides the structure for that deep intimacy has become subconscious.  If I am to continue to grow in the next two years, I need the Spirit to grant me the self-control to re-embrace that same intentionality: within new friendships, within ministry opportunities, within myself.

This is my prayer of supplication as I finish Institute this coming week and as I transition yet again towards NC.  But along with it goes a prayer of thanksgiving for today, for allowing myself to be interrupted from morning prayer (I was one collect away from finishing) and accepting an invitation to come to Starbucks, where I'm writing right now.  Perhaps I internalized my sermon more than I thought :-)