thoughts 3

Sometimes it gets really loud out in the hall. Right now it sounds like someone's being kidnapped. He probably is.

Gunner delivered a great message this morning in chapel. I felt like all of it hit me where I was at. As I've been here at the college, I've been challenged, I've been convicted, I've been encouraged and I've been moved to tears by the things that have come from the pulpit. Today was the first message that really stood out as something that my flesh had to wrestle with, because it hit me so hard where I was at. It was hard to sit through.

Recently I've been thinking it would be great if I didn't have any emotions, at all. That's kind of unrealistic... but sometimes if I feel like, if could just be completely objective, I would be much more effective in a lot of the things I did. That's a little vain, though - a vain pursuit. One of my older brothers reminded me, not so long ago, that a lot (if not all) men in Scripture were fairly candid with their emotions - and he exhorted me to still hold on to that.

I think I one of those generally-applicable things I've always heard about guys (us men folk), and something that I've actually always kind of cringed at the thought of when I thought about whether or not it was applicable to me, is the stereotype that guys shut down when they over-load emotionally. I've been finding more, though, as I've gotten older that certain things do definitely put me into shut down mode. sometimes it's hard to find the on switch or a place to plug me in.

I've found that I've grown greatly as a leader, by the grace of the Lord, as someone who can process things more objectively - at least in comparison to how I would recently process things. I still find, though, that I hit my limits. Part of me really wants to internalize everything.