Worrying About Hurrying: A Three-Part Look at Your Purpose
May 6, 2020
The Crutch
May 21, 2020
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Are you worried; are you hurried?
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What are you learning; what are you changing?
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What will be your story after this?
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Irritation or transformation?
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White knuckling or white funerals?
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Getting through it or going deeper?
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What will be your story after this C-19 time?
Hear me clearly on this: You will have a story to tell in the years to come. You will be telling your children and your grandchildren about this time.
What will be your story?
Will it be all about your irritation, or about life changes that led to transformation?
Will you talk about how you white-knuckled your way through this, saying something like, “It wasn’t easy, but got through it?”
Or will you be able to talk about letting go, loosening your grip on your worried and hurried life?
Permanent Change Leads to Transformation
My parents, as many of yours, lived through the Great Depression, as well as WWII. They were influenced by these two experiences for the rest of their lives.
On a light note, my 95-year-old mother still craves syrup. When she orders pancakes or waffles, she practically drowns them in syrup. And each time she will look up and smile sheepishly and say, “Syrup was rationed during WWII. If we got any at all, it was a thimble full. Ever since, I can never get enough.”
I love when this happens (at least a thousand times), because I get to see that young teenage girl in her eyes.
But more significantly were the life-long transformations her generation experienced. These children of the Depression took nothing for granted. They were conservative with their money and their resources, wasting nothing.
My parents would drive me nuts with their 1/3 bananas and 1/2 apples browning up in the frig. They would keep leftovers that would barely feed a squirrel. Going out to restaurants was a rare treat. They would be just as happy, no, much more happy staying at home.
They were conservative with their money, and yet generous and eager to invest in their community, their church, and those in need. They became the greatest generation ever, and the millionaires next door.
These changes brought about from their experience with the Great Depression and WWII became permanent changes, transforming the rest of their lives. And do not miss this: they never drifted from these core values of honesty, hard work, decency, and integrity.
The culture held no sway over them. Their generation enjoyed the simpler life, rarely distracted by the nonsense – the absolute nonsense – by which we are all so easily distracted – and worried and hurried.
These folks had experienced two “plate-tectonic shifts” in their lives, and they were deeply transformed by them – for not just the better, for the best.
Will you be?
What will be your story about this C-19 time, as you go about the rest of your life? Will it be about toilet paper or transformation?
