Healthy Things

A consultant once told a group that I was participating in , “Healthy things grow.” In the moment, I thought that was Earth shatteringi. Healthy things grow! We need to grow!! Grow, grow, grow, grow….nothing else matters.

Fast forward a few years. Growth without support results in a flimsy house of cards. Growth does not indicate health! Healthy things do grow, but so do cancers, tumors, bad habits, lies, abuse……………

Its a house of cards. Its the chicken or the egg. Focus on growth or focus on the structure? I’m not sure what the answer is, other than to be sensitive to both!!

Healthy things bear fruit. Fruit that is productive. Fruit that moves an individual or organization forward. Fruit that leads to more fruit, to more advancement. Healthy things become bigger than themselves. They spawn new ideas, they constantly renew themselves, and make the environment around them more fruitful. Growth alone is depleting.

Healthy things bear fruit. Look around you. What is your fruit?

Apologize

Apologizing doesn’t mean you intentionally harmed someone. It means you regret that someone was harmed. You may or may not have been able to do anything about what caused the harm. However, you can show empathy, meet that person where they are emotionally, and say “I’m sorry.”

I’ve seen multiple cases where good employees get harmed by a decision management made. The employees felt overlooked or underappreciated by management’s decision(s). Management disregarded the employees’ reaction rather than expressing empathy. Management chose to ignore rather than to simply say “I’m sorry you feel this way, this is why I did what I did.” The result is that moral declined, multiple team members left, and the team has a general mistrust of management. Management remedies this by bringing in a new face to oversee the team. Over time, this might work, but that new face has to take some abuse and will never be able to meet management’s expectations because they have to fix a team that management broke.

The unwillingness or lack of awareness to simply apologize for unintentional harm cost this business hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in revenue. Never underestimate the power of simply saying “I’m sorry.”

Being home

Due to COVID-19, I’ve been spending a lot of time at home. Frankly, all my time is spent at home. This means constant family time. This has changed our family interactions considerably. I’ve not been rushing out the door at 7 AM and rushing back in at 6 PM (ish). I’m around more than just on the weekends. My wife and kids see how I work. They have never really understood what I do to provide for our crew (I barely do myself). Over the past several weeks they’ve observed the intensity of my days, with me being elated and stressed out, sometimes both over the course of 15 minutes. The kids have gotten to know my team through video conference. For the first time, maybe in forever, home and work aren’t in conflict. What’s more, I feel that I’m working with more clarity than I have in a long time.

I’ve always been a gym rat. My routine is to get up at 4:30 AM to go to the gym. Covid closed the gym so I transitioned to the garage gym. After two days of working out in the garage, my 10 year old got curious. He started playing around while I did burpees or thrusters. Then a few days later he’s beside me, matching me rep for rep as we complete the workout. We completed “Murph” over Memorial Day! Then my wife, who is not a morning person or a gym person, joins us! Just like that, out of nowhere, my family has a new activity to do together. This only happened because I was at home, with them, rather than running off to do my own thing.

There are many more stories I could tell about how this Covid season has been a blessing to my family. I’m ready for the drama and the paranoia to go away. But I’m not ready for these moments of family discipleship to end.

My oldest son came up behind me the other morning while I was working and asked, “Daddy, are you going to go back to your office soon?” I hesitated and said, “Why do you ask?” He hugged me and said “because I don’t want you to. I like you being around.” My heart was filled and broken at the same time. Filled with love from and for my family. Broken by the struggle with priorities as things get back to normal. I have much thinking to do about what the new normal will be.