Finishing strong: questions for fall self-reflection

I just can’t help myself.

It must be something about the season: hints of fall and kids returning to school always prompts introspection in me. (Even though my nest is empty, years of my own schooling and those of my kids have me conditioned!) I purposefully use this time of year as my second of two “life check-in” junctures. 

I do my annual spiritual inventory, self-reflection and (personal and professional) goal-setting every January. In late August/early September, I check in on those items again, course-correcting for anything that’s gone awry and thinking carefully about how to best use the remainder of the year for God’s glory. 

This year the exercise feels especially significant as I’ve relocated to a new state. That transition has, as you might expect, come with a significant amount of change (and a very quiet blog/newsletter—huge “thank you” to my subscribers for their patience!). 

Here are the questions I’m asking myself; perhaps they’ll prompt something valuable in you, too, with which to forge ahead into the rest of the calendar year:

• With the growing seasons of spring and summer waning: How have I grown in recent months? What part of my life has God nourished especially (even if it’s different than I anticipated or hoped)?
• Fall is the time when many plants need pruning to weather the winter: What might God be asking me to let go of or cut back on for health and future growth?
• As school resumes for students: What is God teaching me right now about Himself? About myself?
• Fall will eventually give way to cool weather: Who around me needs to be drawn near for the warmth of fellowship? How can I fortify new and existing relationships against difficult seasons that might lie ahead?

When James wrote to the Jewish Christians scattered abroad, he reminded them how important it is to not merely hear the Word but to internalize it and live it out. He used the metaphor of a mirror: that God’s law provides us with a reflection that reveals to us the dirt on our faces (sin). To walk away from the mirror without choosing to wash off the filth (repentance, trusting in Jesus’ sacrifice), is utter foolishness.

For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

James 1:23–25 NLT

While this seasonal check-in doesn’t address our moral failings (that should happen daily!), the spirit of the exercise is the same: we may have “forgotten what we look like” somewhere along the way, so let’s return to the mirror to see what God is doing in our lives and how we can respond in faith.