How are you doing?

Seems like a simple question to ask – one that we seem to ask an awful lot.  “How are you doing?”  “How’ve you been?”  “How are things?”  Sometimes we get an answer back that is almost as short as, if not shorter than, the question. “Fine.”  “I’m okay, thanks.”  “Not so good.” 

When we ask such a question, what is our intention?  Are we asking from an honest desire to hear how the other is doing/feeling?  Or are we inviting the other into a conversation, and this was an ice-breaker question?  Or are we merely making idle chit-chat? 

It seems as though 2011 has gotten off to a roaring start, and I thought I had actually caught myself leaving as I was walking in!  District and Conference meetings in Kerrville and San Antonio, church meetings here at the Lake, and the host of other year-end and year-beginning routines have had me on what seems like a dead run, and I’ve had to catch myself from tripping over my calendar several times!

Someone asked me the other day how I was doing, and I honestly had to stop and ponder the question.  It really didn’t matter to me whether the person asking was truly interested or not; it was merely an opportunity to stop and take a pulse of my own personal status.  What was I feeling?  How was I doing?   This year has started off in a blaze of activities for me, and such questions are re-centering for me.  They allow me the opportunity to once again find my equilibrium, my center of balance.  They are good questions for all of us, given many of our hectic lives and the demands on our time, our attention, our sanity. 

One of the things that I did this year as a New Year’s Resolution was to take that question seriously.  When I ask it, I make myself slow down enough to actually try to hear the response that I get – and then to honestly evaluate if the answer is a quick dismissal of the question, or if there is truth in it.  (Sometimes folks will answer quickly to get the attention off of themselves, in order to avoid exposing something painful or uncomfortable in their lives at that moment.)  I also pledged to answer the question as honestly as I could when it was asked of me. 

Perhaps we might all take a moment or two each day and ask, how am I doing today?  And then take the time to do a quick but honest inventory.  What I have found is that when I do take that extra moment or two, I remember why I do what I do – and who I serve.  And I need that.  Don’t you?

So, how are you doing?

See you in Church!

Grace and peace,

Brad