A funny thing happened while I was carefully planning out my life: my husband nearly delivered a baby in a blizzard.
There I was, talking with my work team about how to remind people of the power of kindness. Should we order new stickers? How about pens that say, “Kindness is Contagious”?
Nope. Let’s just send Saul out in a snowstorm.
Last Monday morning I wrote a blog about my husband’s crazy weekend. (If you missed that post, check out it out on my website.) The story is one for the ages, but I typed it out as quickly as I could because my son needed me to take him to an early morning doctor’s appointment.
I wrote. I pushed publish. I shut my computer.
Four hours later, my phone rang. It was a reporter with NBC Nightly News. “Is your husband the one who got stuck in the blizzard?” Ummm. Yes. How do you know that? “It was shared by some sports sites we follow on Twitter.” Huh?
Then a reporter from Minneapolis called. Then Omaha. Then Lincoln, Milwaukee, Madison, Fargo, Aberdeen, Athens, Wayne, Wakefield and a whole lot of other places I’m forgetting.
Before you get too excited, NBC Nightly News did not run the story. Too many travel complications to get everybody in the same place. But hundreds of thousands of people heard the story through either traditional or social media.
People are calling to book me for speaking events. They want to know more about this idea that kindness is a teachable skill — and they want me to teach it to their employees! My Kindness Team has never been this busy. (They are loving it. I think.)
And here I was planning on buying a few pens with my website on them.
God has been talking to me a lot lately about not trying to fix, control or manipulate situations. When I let go, He did in 4 hours what I have not been able to do in 8 years.
What do you need to let go of? Is there a plan that will only work if it’s done your way? Is there someone in your life who needs to come around to your way of thinking?
What if we just step back and give ourselves and each other a break? I’m okay. You’re okay. We can remind ourselves that we don’t have it all figured out and that’s fine.
We are exactly where we are supposed to be, doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing. And if we (or others) are not doing it “right,” we can trust that God will jump in and correct the course. That’s not part of our job. Leave that to The Boss.
After all, He can change hearts, He can change plans, and He can deliver babies in blizzards way more efficiently than we can.
