It's been quite a while since I last posted. The time gap weighs heavily on me, not because of an obligation to let you know what I'm up to, but because blogging is such a cathartic release.

Conversations with my mentor this week have highlighted the need to continue to let things go before you dry up and become useless. He picked up this post Empty Inside in particular where I made the statement "I feel empty inside, the tank is dry." He told me two things that I wont soon forget.

1. That in his work (he is the Pastor to Pastors for my denomination so he interacts with a lot of them), he see's this all the time. Pastors who have stopped replentishing themselves and have run dry. When you get to that point you start to dig in to the wrong parts of your character, the unredeemed parts, and you always end up regretting it.

2. The second thing he told me is that he doesn't want to see me ever writing something like that again.

He wasn't telling me to censor my thoughts, but rather to be more deliberate in how I plan my time with my family, church work, other work commitments and everything else. If I don't, if I continue to burn myself out, I might find myself looking back at my alienated family, failing ministry and failed life.

I read a story this week about a baptist pastor who was so consumed with his ministry that he didn't have time to mow his lawn. One night his wife reminded him that tomorrow morning all his daughters friends would be coming around for her birthday party and he realized that the knee high grass wasn't really child friendly. So in the middle of the night he went out and with a torch in his mouth cut the grass.
When he was half done he looked around and noticed that peeping behind the curtains were all his neighbours wondering what the hell was going on. At that point he realized that his authenticity with his neighbours was completely shot, why would they entertain a religion that keeps someone so busy?

It's food for thought.