Holy Club 16

Am I defeated in any part of my life?

Tough question - particularly if like me you suffer from winter blues - is it the time of year or something deeper. This calls for personal honesty and reflection. It's easy to avoid questions like this and live in denial - a vicious circle of failure, recrimination and guilt. If we get into one of these downward spirals, its difficult to break out of it without accountability support.

The Holy Club habit of journalling helps to answer questions like this. Are there patterns of missing deadlines, hiding away from other people, retreating into fantasy worlds? All these things are good and necessary, but not if they happen too often.

A colleague of mine exercised the discipline at least once a year of logging everything he did for a week - breaking it down into 15 minute segments. He found it helped a lot to identify unhealthy life patterns - he didn't talk of 'being defeated', but it was  definitely in his mind.

One week a year was enough (otherwise the pattern of obsessing about how you spend time becomes part of the defeat, not a way to overcome it) it took a lot of time, and courage to look hard at the lessons to learn from it.

I've never had a spiritual director, but I guess this might be something they would help with. Peer accountability (in an atmosphere of trust and love) works too.

Bible passage to meditate on: 1 Peter 5:1-11