Spiritual Direction 2

Thanks to all those who offered me some advice on spiritual direction following my post a few months ago. I had my second session with my spiritual director last week and it made a lot more sense this time. I decided to follow Steve’s advice and make up my mind what I wanted to talk about beforehand. This led to a really helpful chat, which moved me a long way along the path of making some important decisions.

At this time in my life I am in a place where nearly everyone I spend time with is a keen public speaker. I’m working and socialising with ordinands and church leaders most of the time, as well as other friends who simply enjoy speaking in front of lots of people. I had begun to feel that there was something wrong with me for not wanting to speak in front of large groups of people and was feeling really under pressure to overcome some kind of ‘issue’ I felt I must have with this. While I think I do need to reach a point where I can speak in front of medium sized groups without being intimidated my spiritual director helped me to see that God has created me the way I am and that there are some things I just don’t like to do and may never like to do. This is not to say that I should use this as an excuse and there are certainly things that I don’t like doing that I am learning to do better and moving on it, however there are some things that it is OK to say are just not for me and that doesn’t make me any less of a person. Sounds obvious I guess but it was so freeing to hear someone say that it was OK to not want to deliver talks and bible studies and to show that they saw value in some of the quieter and less public giftings.