Happy Friday Friends!
I hope & trust this post finds you all having a great day on this glorious Friday from the Texas Gulf Coast! This is my last "Happy Friday" from Texas as the Haslam family will be relocating to our new home in Alabama this weekend. You have blessed us richly Texas, and we are so grateful for you! :)
Keeping it real, I am not really sure what the point of this Happy Friday is or if anyone will get anything from it. Perhaps it is only for me, to process through my thoughts, feelings and emotions. I am simply going to share my heart and trust God with the rest... :)
It has been an amazing week...or two! In the past two weeks I watched Payton graduate from college AND celebrated my Beautiful Bride on Mother's Day, my colleagues at work honored my family & I with the most beautiful reception I could have ever imagined, we hosted a party at our home for people who started as friends but actually became family, Kath & I went to lunch with 6 of the most amazing women you could ever meet - my Amazing Team!, Landry and I had one more special night fishing on the pier in Galveston until it was his birthday, went to one more Houston Astros game later that day on Landry's 14th birthday - where Justin Verlander threw a 1-hitter and last night we went out to dinner with several families who are very special to us. And in that one, very long, sentence, I listed the people who we have loved and who have loved us for the past 5 years. We helped and prayed for each other in our struggles, we encouraged and prayed for each other in our successes...we did life together! So blessed! So! Very! Blessed! :)
To say this past couple of weeks has been emotional would be an understatement! After much thought, prayer and reflection, there are a few things I have learned that I want to share with you.
1. There is never enough time to say goodbye. I would take another 5 minutes with every single one of the people mentioned above if I could get it and yet, I realize there will never be "enough." You know why? Because I genuinely love each and every one of them. With this, no amount of time - be it minutes, hours, days or months! - will ever be enough! So I have to accept the fact that I will definitely miss the daily presence of every single one of them - just as I miss the daily presence of our friends in Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, Kansas & Illinois - however our moving does not mark the end of our relationship(s), it is simply the turning of the page in this beautiful journey of life. We have friends who we first met in high school, in college and on every step of the journey along the way. They helped make us who we are today! We continue to love them and to do life with them. And we will go to the beautiful people of Alabama - many who have already blessed our life so richly! - and we will do life with them! And our blessings will continue to grow!
2. When you genuinely love people, and walk that out every single day, you don't have to try to explain yourself. This reality hit me with my Amazing Team! Oh that you would all be as blessed as I to work with Precious Souls like these! When I got the honor & privilege of leading this team, they simply needed someone to love them - to see and pull out the greatness that is within each one of them - and to empower them to be all they could be! Easiest job I ever had! The crazy thing is, they think I was a blessing to them and in reality, it was I who was blessed. And when it came time to say goodbye we all knew - we knew how we felt about each other, the level of commitment we have to each other and that while these were relationships that were forged at work, they will last a lifetime. There are no words for all that! And when you realize that you are fully loved and accepted for who you are, no words needed, you realize how blessed you are and you simply thank God. :)
3. While we try to put on masks and control what people see, it is not in our perfections that we help each other, but in our weaknesses. I woke up earlier this week and my heart was heavy. I felt sad to be leaving people that I love so much, to leave a home that we have cherished, to leave a city I could have lived in forever. Having learned that feelings aren't facts and that I have to choose how to respond to my feelings, I turned to God in prayer. I asked Him to lead my heart! I asked Him to renew & refresh my heart, mind, soul & spirit! I asked Him to be with me! I asked Him to fill me with the Holy Spirit and fill me with faith! I asked Him to please help me believe! And guess what? He did! And so I went on and had a great day! And then that evening my youngest Tender Warrior came home and something seemed a little off. I called him into the room and asked him if he was o.k. He very bravely said, "Yeah, great!" I wasn't fully buying it however I chose not to push him. You see, a boy doesn't want to disappoint his Dad. A lot of men are walking around broken because they are still little boys walking around trying not to disappoint their Dad...a different Happy Friday! A few minutes later Kath came in and told me Landry is really struggling today. I called him back into the room. He came in and I asked him about it. He said, while he is excited to be going to Alabama, he is sad to be leaving his friends. I told him I told get it, that I feel the same way. He looked at me with this quizzical look. Like, "Men are allowed to be sad?" I then asked Kath to please go get the prayer I had texted to her that morning. I asked her to read a part of what I had written...it is the words you read above. And in admitting my sadness, I gave him permission to express his feelings. In showing him what I did with my sadness, I gave him a compass that will carry him through many struggles on his life journey. It was in admitting my own brokenness that I was able to help my son, now and in the future.
I just want to encourage you all to love the people you are with when you are with them, cherish every second because time goes fast, and keep it real! I can testify, when you do this, you can look back without regret and you can look forward to the journey the Lord has before you with hopeful expectation! Here we come Alabama! :)
Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.
Have a great day, a wonderful weekend and please cherish your precious families!
Kev
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