Every now and then I get to leverage these weekly lines to simply say to my people “I’m proud of you.” Some days and weeks the sources of that appreciation will just show up in mass. When it does, my heart sings and I have to find some way to give it a voice. This week, it takes three verses.

On Tuesday I went to Lynch Elementary to meet with my new lunch pal. That’s a mentoring program that pairs adults with kids for thirty minutes a week. Wouldn’t you know it, the boy I went to see was ill and absent that day. Wasted trip? By no means. I saw no fewer than eight folks from that Church on Gandy gladly making a difference. Some were there to see their new young friends. Others were helping teachers with stuff and making sure they got a lunch break. I even saw one with shovel in-hand going out to garden things up a bit. What was most evident was the joy exuding from our people and the deep appreciation expressed by the faculty and staff. We are just beginning to make an incredible difference in the life of Lynch and its people.

Hurt happens. It always has, still does, and certainly will. Lingering pain comes from lots of sources, takes lots of shapes, and often never goes away. But if you are human and remotely self-aware, you know that already. So, how do we handle this in such a way that it doesn’t handle us? 

That’s the question I took on in last Sunday’s installment of “Give Up to Go Up.” Every day we choose to hold on to our hurt is a day that we have to live with the consequences of that decision. And so does everyone around you. Hurt people hurt. And intentionally or not, hurt people hurt people. They just do. Said more personally, we just do. Confessionally, I just do too. Here’s the silver bullet, the golden key, magic wand – any good metaphor will do:

What you do with your hurt is more important than the hurt itself. 

Two years ago this week, we were hunkered down, preparing for the worst any hurricane could offer. Gratefully, a five degree shift left us largely inconvenienced and within a week or so, unscathed. That has not been the fortune of our friends to the east, particularly in the Bahamas. As I write this, North Carolina is somewhere between being pelted and hammered by Dorian’s second significant venture onto land.  The next few hours will let us know how they fare and what the immediate needs may be.