Intention: Cultivate relationships
There’s this thing I do with biographies. I like to flip to the back pages of the book and see how they finished. Sort of like, how’d they do? Did they let life overcome them? To me, life is about relationships. In biographies, you can read how relationships begin and end. It’s the end part that I often wonder about. Friendships don’t end with an “unfollow” across social media. Marriages don’t end in divorce court. They start to unravel when someone stops wiping the splashes off their partner’s mirror or the chalk-like toothpaste trails across the vanity. What biographies show is how someone loved in relationships, processed life’s challenges, hurts, victories, and unanswered prayers. It’s how given anything grossly unfair and unexplained, they maintained faith and they persevered.
Beginning with the end in mind is the mark to which a Christian strives. We live our lives to be in that place. My mother-in-love? is allowing God to fight her stage 4, pancreatic cancer battle. Every day, she gives him praise loud enough so that it will echo through a thousand generations. Her legacy and biography could then fill up a thousand volumes! I am written somewhere in those chapters and the Christian I am today because she mentored me. Her prayers and hugs are the very fabric of my faith and our family.
It’s been said that from our pain, comes our purpose. God gave me Compassion That Compels and through it some significance to be a voice of hope to the hurting. But that’s only a part of me. Without my husband and two daughters, the legacy would be incomplete. We hold each other up. But over the years, I spent so much time away from them. As I reflect, my heart aches even now. Here’s what I have learned. WE ALL HAVE A VOICE. When God gives you a voice, use it to empower others. Start first with the ones around you, like my mother-in-love? has done.
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12
Your legacy is never built alone because we’re not called to do life alone. Like scaffolding is braced by triangles, the most rigid geometric shape, so is your legacy scaffolding. It’s reinforced vertically with cross braces aligning to keep it central and unwavering. Without the triangular brace, the platform collapses. Legacy scaffolding is your relationships. It’s not what you do in this life that builds that legacy. It’s who and how you’ve loved in this life.
I commit to:
Praying and evaluating your relationships. Maybe it starts with a simple prayer.
God, I’m tired of stumbling through my days until catastrophe collides with my life. I want to learn how to build relationships and that may mean tearing down walls that I’ve built. Today, I create a legacy of ______________. It may be a blueprint from my pain and hurts, but I trust your plan for my life. In your son’s name. Amen