Tuesdays with Morrie (3): I Promised to Keep in Touch

 

              Mitch Albom confesses that for 17 years he lost contact with his former professor. At his graduation he promised his teacher, Morrie Swartz, that he would stay in touch. He did not. He laments,

 

“In fact, I lost contact with most of the people I knew in college…The years after graduation hardened me into someone quite different from the strutting graduate who left campus that day headed for New York City, ready to offer the world his talent.”

                How many of us have been guilty of the same thing? We promise to stay in touch with people we think we should at the time. But, life’s circumstances and the demands of job, home, school, etc. drive a wedge between our good intentions and the fulfilling of our promises.

                Why is this so important?

                Keeping promises eliminates guilt. We all have done this. Whenever you think of a person, you know you need to communicate with them, but you put it off. Guilt has a strange way of operating off of compound interest: guilt ignored produces more guilt. We find out that when we fail to stay in touch, good memories are replaced with a burdened conscience that feels like a backpack full of rocks.

                Staying in touch validates relationships. Nothing is more important in the world than people. Think about what Christ died for: not programs, but people. Not money, but people. Not power, prowess or prestige, but people. When we keep our word and stay in touch with people, it validates those relationships. There are wonderful blessings and benefits that accrue both ways between friends when relationships are tended to!

                Staying in contact keeps priorities straight. Mitch reveals in his own life that the demands of chasing his dreams, and the demands of deadline-oriented career made him forget some very important people in his life. Once we are caught up in the web of “the tyranny of the urgent,” we are spun into a cocoon  of our own making that becomes a straightjacket binding us to a selfish existence. We forget about others, and our priorities in view of others and eternity gets all messed up.

                Have we followed up on our own promises of staying in touch?

In Christian love, Curtis

Tuesdays with Morrie (2): Stunned by the Normalcy of the Day

Right after Morrie Swartz was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), he went through the mental gymnastics of trying to make sense of it all. He entertained all of the normal, swirling questions regarding family, finances, future, etc. But Mitch Albom records one significant thought that Morrie did not anticipate.

                Mitch writes, “My old professor was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me?”

                Tragic news has a way of stopping our world.  When some unbidden misfortune breaks and shatters our daily routine, it is odd to see others going on as if nothing has happened. I remember feeling this exact thing when my own father died.

                The world did not stop. It seemed sort of “irreverent” to me that the world did not stop to acknowledge my loss. This is what happened to Morrie.

                Stunned by the normalcy of the day around him…this reminds us of several things so deeply vital and important to our daily Christian life.

                First, our own “bad news” (whatever form it may take) will not have the same effect on others. Even though we expect others to understand, if they have not experienced the same thing, they cannot understand.

                Second, news of terminal illness or experiences of death redefine what is normal for us. We are thrust into a new world not of our own making. This lack of control can be responsible for fear spinning out of control. It is at this point that a person is looking for anything to hold onto. The Christian can lend a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on when someone is having to adjust to the news of a new normal.

                Third, our challenge every day is to try to know and understand what has happened to other people when devastating news is received. Depending on what stage of the process we interact with someone, different reactions will be strong and “normal.” Numbness, disbelief, anger, bargaining with God, anguish, withdrawal, etc. are all various symptoms of attempting to cope with the unthinkable.

                Morrie did a remarkable thing. He did not want to see his diagnosis of death render him “useless.” Instead, he offered his own life as a bridge to death for others to join  him on the journey.Let us all, with hearts of Christian compassion, be ready to be used by God when someone’s personal tragedy puts them in a position to be “stunned by the normalcy of the day.”

In Christian love, Curtis