The thing about being an extrovert (at least for me) is that it’s not just that I love spending time with people, or that I love chatting things through with people, it’s that I need to do those things. I process things out loud. Which is one of the main reasons why I can’t make a major decision without telling pretty much everyone I know. And it’s about more than getting advice. Yes, advice does help, but it’s when I say things that I process them in my head too. I think best when I’m talking.

Tonight I realised 2 reasons why this makes ministry difficult. The first is that in the middle of a hard conversation with someone thinking out loud is pretty unhelpful. The second, and more difficult, is after that conversation I really need to talk about it! In the absence of a husband its hard to know who is an appropriate person to debrief with. Tonight the answer is no-one. So during my very long drive home I tried the distraction method – listen to loud music, plan a Sunday school lesson in my head etc etc… anything but think about the conversation I just had. Because at this moment thinking about it just equals me running over everything I said or didn’t say trying to work out how badly I screwed it up. That’s probably not heathy right?

But on the bright side I have a new journey of self discovery – finding the art of processing things in silence.