Getting in Alignment
[Applause]
[Music]
and just
as quickly as that began
and ended so has
our time with covet
i want to share with you a little bit
about getting in alignment
understanding your purpose and getting
in alignment i don’t know about you but
march 2020 came and i was preparing for
spring break i was trying to decide what
it was that i was going to do what kind
of vacation i was going to have
how i was going to experience 2020s
spring break however right before that
happened
i got a call at work
i work at a university and higher
education we were called in
and we were told we were not going to be
coming back
not coming back what do you mean what do
you mean we’re not coming back we’re
going to be working from home and so we
want you to bring your computer in
and we’re going to make sure that you
are prepared to work
remotely and just like that
spring break changed and what i thought
was going to be a week of vacation
became
a week of what i would probably call
if i was 12 punishment
why because we were all sequestered to
home
now home is not a bad place to be but
if you’re determining and deciding that
you’re going on vacation
to be stuck at home now changes that
and so i really want to talk a little
bit about
what happened in march of 2020.
many of us got and became
unaligned now i don’t know about you but
i remember when my
i got my first car think about your
first car
mine was a pacer and
for those of y’all that are young and
don’t know what a pacer is google it i
promise you’ll you’ll laugh
but a pacer is much like a skate
with a lot of windows on wheels
and that’s what i had i had a pacer and
it had a cassette not a track because
i’m not that old
but in my cassette player i would play
some of the best music and when we had
something like um oh i don’t know
billie jean or something like sometimes
your hands would go up while you were
supposed to be driving because you know
many times we like to
wave our hands in the air and wave them
like we just don’t care
while we’re driving and there’s this
little thing called
alignment that we don’t really realize
is there
until we take our hands off the wheel
and when we take our hands off the wheel
we
realize that maybe
my car is going to keep going straight
if my part is aligned it’ll
keep on going down the the lane like
it’s supposed to but if it’s not
you’re immediately going to go to the
right or
to the left now
here’s what happens when we get
unaligned
and our car veers either to the right or
to the left
the problem becomes that sometimes we
want to
realign it and we do it too hard
when we’ve been dre drifting to the left
and we
over compensate to the right sometimes
we hit the curb
and that’s what happened march of 2020
some of us hit the curb now you say well
coach how did we hit the curb i mean you
know like we were just going through
life and life was happening yes it was
but it
did not happen the way we planned for it
to happen it
did not happen the way we had in our
minds it was going to happen and because
of that
we got out of alignment
now i just want to tell you just for a
few minutes how do we get back in
alignment because
i know some of you are struggling i was
struggling
so as we begin to go into alignment
i just want to tell you that i have a
cute little acronym
for a line and i want to just tell you a
little bit about that as we go forward
a we acknowledge
that we are out of balance see before we
can
get ourselves together before we can get
ourselves fixed up
we have to acknowledge that there is
something wrong i have to acknowledge
and i have to come to the realization
that my life is not on the track that i
thought it was supposed to be on
see if we’re real honest covet just
brought up some things that we already
knew
that we were going too much that we were
doing too much that we’re
in too many meetings that we had our
schedule packed so tight that we could
barely breathe
but march 2020 came and voila
all of our schedules were completely
cleaned we had nowhere to go
because everybody was at home everything
was shut down
and we began to realize that we were
doing a lot
we were at a lot of places we our
schedules were totally packed
and this time of covid helped us to
realize
that we were out of balance
so we needed to acknowledge that we were
out
of alignment l
i need you just like i need me
to learn how to play and to laugh again
i don’t know about you but sometimes
when we get
to the place where we are struggling and
where we are
really really uh having a hard time with
all of the things that are happening and
all of the stuff that is going on
when we can just turn on some music and
we can just get in the kitchen and we
can jam to the music
when we can dance and we don’t have to
worry about anybody looking at us and
anybody judging us or anybody making any
any decisions for us
we need to learn to play again
we need to learn to laugh again we need
to learn how to be that little kid
that’s still on the inside that really
just wants to break out
we need to learn to live again
to love again in ways in which we have
forgotten because our life was so
busy and we were so out of alignment
i in all thy ways acknowledge him and he
shall direct that path
the message bible kind of says it this
way it says that
as we begin to move forward in christ
we have to know that we must acknowledge
him
because he’s the one in control see the
biggest thing that we have had
issues with is that we’ve been in
control we’ve been in control of
everything that’s happening we’ve been
in control of our purpose we’ve been
into control of all the things that were
going on
but what we didn’t really realize is
that while we thought we were in control
we really weren’t
and so we’ve got to acknowledge whatever
you choose to call your higher power
i choose to call him jesus
g grace
give yourself and give others grace
you say well why you know we all are
we all are struggling yes we all
are struggling and in doing that we all
need to extend to each other and to
ourselves grace
and what is grace grace is just that
time it is that
expanse it is that unmerited
undeserved
time and space that we give to
our friends and to ourselves
so that when we have that quick come
back when we
have that meltdown when we have that
time of
not knowing exactly what is going on
we can extend that love we can extend
that peace
to someone else
and in no
just look at somebody and tell them no
i know that it feels like a cuss word i
know that it feels like that you are
swearing at someone when you tell them
no but i promise you if you want to be
free
if you want to change your life if you
want to be the person that you are
called to be you have to learn the power
of the word no
it’s not a cuss word it doesn’t require
explanation just say
no so if we’re going to align our lives
and if we’re going to get in balance
then it requires us to
understand our purpose and understand
what god has called us to be
see each of us have taken our clues from
everybody
out there and we’ve listened to
everybody but ourselves
and it is time it is time for
us to begin to listen to who what what
god has called us to be
who are you and where is your alignment
see when i look at bridgestone and i try
to figure out
because you know i’m not really that uh
mechanically inclined
and i look to see what does it really
mean to be aligned
and it just means that the tires are
being
angled so that they hit the ground
in the most effective way
if you will acknowledge your situations
if you will learn to laugh and to love
and to
to really have grace for other people if
you will acknowledge
whatever you choose to call your higher
power and
if you will learn the power of the word
no
i promise you that you will be able to
realign yourself
and fulfill the purpose that you have