Ostium Catholic

Jesus tells his disciples not to worry in advance about what they'll say when brought before authorities. The Spirit will teach them in the moment. Today is the memorial of Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop marched in chains toward martyrdom, who wrote letters along the way rather than waiting until he felt fully prepared to say something worth reading.

Most careers train the opposite instinct: prepare exhaustively before any high-stakes conversation, rehearse the difficult feedback, script the hard ask. Preparation has real value. It's also possible to let more preparation become a permanent excuse for delay, a way of never quite feeling ready enough to have the conversation that actually needs to happen.

Ignatius wrote his most enduring letters from inside an active, dangerous journey, not from the safety of advance planning. Whatever conversation you've been rehearsing indefinitely this month, a difficult piece of feedback to give, a hard ask to make, a boundary to set, is almost certainly smaller than what he faced, and the same willingness to speak before feeling fully ready applies just as well to it.

Name the specific conversation you've been over-preparing for as a way of avoiding it. Set an actual date this week to have it, and trust that the right words will be more available in the moment than they feel right now, in the anticipation.

Most of the anticipatory dread attached to a hard conversation turns out to be larger than the conversation itself once it actually happens. Notice that gap the next time preparation starts feeling like an indefinite delay instead of a finite, useful step.

Set a specific date this week for the conversation you've been indefinitely preparing for instead of having. Go into it with less scripting than usual, on purpose.

Lord, teach me in the moment what I need to say, and free me from using preparation as a reason to keep delaying. Amen.