A Time To Be Resilient

I sat in the pew listening to this minister that I had heard many times before, speak on a subject I had heard before. My mind had began to drift away.

Have you ever had that small thought in your mind that says I know where this is going. It is about this time my mind started to tune out and day dream. Just when I had made up my mind to tune out this minister struck a familiar note. He did something that I had been trained to do in preparing a speech, he gave his message a frame of reference, one that I could relate to.

You see the sermon was called “Bounce Back Ability”,the ability to come back after facing a problem. I had heard this sermon before and thought I understood all of it’s principles.

But then the minister started talking about a tree in his backyard. It was a Crepe Myrtle tree. He talked about how a strong rain had come and pounded this little tree he had planted. The rain had not only up rooted it,but almost washed it a way. He thought to himself, that it would not live after such harsh treatment and being so young,but he stuck it back in the ground anyway,thinking it would not live.

He told one of his neighbors about the little Crepe Myrtle tree and that he thought it wouldn’t make it a couple of days later. The neighbor looked at him and laughed and said “it will make it, it’s a Crepe Myrtle”.

He didn’t know why the neighbor was so confident that the tree would make it. But as the tree grew his saw that it required less watering , that it could withstand the strongest winds. He notices how the tree would bend in the strong winds and then go back to it’s regular position, and how even with little or no water it bloomed every year. Not just bloomed,but gave beautiful blooms year after year.

He came to understand the smile on his neighbors face when he said the tree was a crepe Myrtle.

I bought a crepe Myrtle and planted it in my yard after I heard this sermon. It was a scroungy little bush planted in the wrong season almost winter. I have watched it now for over fifteenth years. It has grown tall. I have done very little for this tree other than look at it from time to time and think about the sermon.

We are all facing some hard times ahead, it is time for us to be like the Crepe Myrtle, the word is resilient.it’s time for us to be resilient.

Time For Change

That magic word change sometimes welcomed and sometimes not. It does not matter if we welcome it or not change comes, as the song says” Everything Must Change” ( a beautiful song if you haven’t heard it) I think the first rendition I heard was played by George Benson. So change has brought us yet another welcomed surprise and I would dare say a new day. Yes things are difficult now, they always are just before change. But change is needed for growth. I have been a advocate for change most of my life. Being born an African American Boomer, it seem that things have always been changing all of my life. Yet not enough things changed to make a big difference to me it seemed. I had no real understanding of how change worked.

There are two different kinds of change, one sudden and the other slow. Most of the change that comes suddenly is not good because it is the type of change that forces us to accept it ,and grow as a result of it.

But slow change over time is good , why you ask? Because slow change occurs in such a way that we have to anticipate it and so when it comes it is appreciated for the gift that it is. Sudden change on the other hand is almost always resented, because of the fact that it makes us do things that we in most cases we don’t want to do. Change because of loss can be like that, or change because of circumstance is also like that. But change as reward for long and patient waiting , now that is sweet change. Sam Cook sang a” Change is Going to Come”. And it seems change is here, and it is certainly time for a change.