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