Welcome to the March 21st edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
The Story of My Week
My week was dominated by life post-surgery of my wife.
Instead of her been discharged within 48 hours, she ends up spending 5 nights in the hospital.
The joy of the whole situation is that she gets more rest as she recovers.
My kids have been the real troopers. They have adapted and made daddy's job easier.
The generosity of friends and neighbors has also helped along the way. I got homemade meals over the weekend. Another friend ordered and had a meal delivered to our apartment.
During all of this, I went through one of the primary causes of moral failure in leaders.
I started with a dedicated sense of action to keep everything on track on the home front while keeping half-an-eye on the work-end.
And I was succeeding.
After a while, I developed a sense of entitlement that I deserved to have "downtime" every day for all the good work I had done.
My reward was to sit in front of the TV - I deserved that much, right?
Anyway, I weaned myself out of that. Telling myself I deserve "it" is the classic slope to letting go.
Letting go can lead to a downward spiral on the road to a personal failure.
And I am committed to growing and not failing in my personal walk.
And avoid the error of self-indulgent.
Things I Learnt
1-For our People in the Front Lines: I was talking with a friend of the family who is a medical doctor in Spain.
This month makes a year since the COVID lockdown came into play in Spain.
As it turned out, her family of 4 all caught the virus. It was serious on the husband and he had to be put on admission for days.
He returned from the hospital a different man. He had lost a bit of the bounce that made him endearing. Eventually, he recovered it.
She continued to fight the battles on the frontlines. She was stressed out - overworked, short-staffed, and tired.
She went for therapy and has been put on a 2-month paid time off.
I can imagine this is the stress that most of the frontline workers lived through. And this is the story for almost a year.
Someone was telling the story of his friend who is a doctor in the US. Every day, his family prays as he goes out for his safe return.
The COVID virus was a war front that we sent our medical personnel into every day.
Unfortunately, we haven't realized that some of our medical personnel are having Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
My friend reminded me of this.
Spare a moment to show compassion to any medical personnel around you.
2-Same Stories but Different Feelings: One of our friends, while checking up on how I was doing on the home front since my wife was still recovering at the hospital, included this in our conversation "Being with the kid’s is no easy job, as you know now more than ever 😅"
I smiled as I read it.
I understood what she was saying but there was a flaw in her message. She assumed that I needed to go through a particular experience to feel how someone else feels.
Common stories and experiences bond us but they don't necessarily carry the same weight for everyone.
Let me use an analogy.
Assuming I and 5 other guys did a 5k run. We all completed the run but I am feeling so drained at the end like I am about to pass out. Typical signs of a newbie runner on the block.
The other 5 guys look like they could start a new 5k run without breaking a sweat.
As it turns out, they are army guys who have seen a couple of war front action. They have been trained to endue and the 5k run was like kindergarten class to them.
We went through the same run but we came out with different feelings.
According to them, the way I felt was how they felt one time after 3 days of trying to escape the enemy while running low on supplies.
To feel my emotions, they needed a different experience. Our 5k run was a common experience that binds us.
And this is what similar life stories do to us.
For example, my story last week bonded with someone who responded to me. As it would turn out, his family was also going through an experience that our family had gone through twice in 5 years.
My wife reached out to his wife to share our story.
Bonded by common experience even if our emotions differed.
The Psalms taught me to find words for my emotions. Add to that the book of Job, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and a couple of the prophets - emotions are finding words of expression.
As we find words to express our emotions, we will find people who bond with our emotions.
People who may have different experiences but the same emotions.
Postscript
May God open your eyes to see the people He put around you to show you His generosity. And may you receive them with a grateful heart. Amen
Tata,
Tola
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