This past weekend I lead a retreat for over seventy junior high kids from the area. Like most young teenagers they come to retreats not looking for much or anything at all. And, like most retreats, I went to help share lessons of inspiration and faith only to be taught greater ones for me in my own life.
As we enjoyed a day of fun group activities, energizing songs, powerful witnesses and prayer you could tell that some kids were totally into it and other a bit apprehensive. As I facilitated the activities and even gave a witness I kept being drawn to one kid. A scrawny eighth grader with black rimmed glasses. He kept to himself, avoided eye contact and seemed more into his texting than he was than taking part in the day.
I attempted to start up small talk. When I came to an emotional or moving part of a talk I tried to engage him, but it seemed nothing I did, the special attention, was getting him to budge and I felt defeated.
When it came time for our retreat to end I happened to sit at his table to say my thank you's and good bye's to some kids from my PSR class and as they left, the kid looked at me and with a big smile thanked me for putting on the retreat. Then, coming from the kid who seemed bored and not interested, let alone ever paid attention to anything we did, completely caught me off guard. He said and I paraphrase:
I really enjoyed the day and what you said in your talk about feeling lost on your path up the mountain. It made me think about the things I'm struggling with on my personal journey. Today really helped me. I'm glad I came.
It's funny how often we try to force things to happen "our" way and stress out about making things work out how we think they should, regardless of how things are going. We strive so hard to make things happen now and make them so great and overcomplicated, only to be humbly reminded that what is supposed to happen will indeed happen, maybe not how we would like it to or when we want to, but it will happen when it is supposed to.
Last spring I was struggling with my job, my relationship with my girlfriend and a thousand and one other things and I had my spiritual director give me the best advice I've ever received about how to live my life. He said:
"Only worry about the next three seconds...It's right in front of you and it's the only thing you can control or need to worry about. The rest will happen as it's meant to happen."
How many times in our lives do we get so worked up over what we're doing at work, at home, with friends, with our significant other, etc. and forget that all we can control is what we do right now, and here in the next few seconds, the rest is out of our control. Just imagine how much more we could do in our lives if we thought that way. How much simpler and more enjoyable our lives would be. Sometimes we need those simple reminders that we can't control everything, but if we let go and live for now we can move mountains and change lives, even our own. In my case it took being ignored by a tween who looked like Harry Potter. Point taken god, thanks!
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment