I just got back to Harare from Kenya where I helped coordinate the Tambira Nairobi 2006 tour featuring the Celebration Choir. It certainly brought back memories of the days when I coordinated tours for Integrity Music. It was when I was working for Integrity Music that I began to travel in earnest and to teach workshops on purpose during the worship seminars I organized. So I have many fond memories of that season in my life.
IT'S OVER.
But that season of my life is over. I kept thinking the entire time that I was on tour last week, "Did I really do this for a living at one time?" It was strange because I loved what I did when I was with Integrity Music and I admit that I enjoyed some of the aspects of the tour last week. I no longer enjoy the pressures of putting on an event, however, where it takes so much work for everything to go well, and still have many things that are beyond your control go not so well.
That is the point I want to make this week. You must give yourself permission to grow and for things to change if you are to have a successful PurposeQuest. When things change and when you change, you must not spend time and energy trying to recapture what is gone. When a season is over, it's over. You must learn to let it go.
I spent time last night with a businessman who was trying to talk himself out of how he felt. There is an aspect of his company that is making money and that work is something he has done for many years. In some ways, he is emotionally attached to that work. Yet the joy is gone and he was wrestling with the fact that he didn't have the time to build other aspects of his business because that particular division took so much of his time and energy. What's more, he no longer enjoyed that aspect of his work.
By the end of our three-hour session, he decided to let it go to pursue other things. I think he made the correct decision.
MOVE ON.
Has something changed in you or your work? The answer may not be to redouble your efforts to capture what is gone. The answer may be to discover new areas where you can invest your energy with renewed enthusiasm. I am not spending any time trying to recover my long-gone love for event planning and touring. Instead I want to invest my life and energy in writing, seminars and eventually media. That's where the life is for me today.
I thank God for my past work as an event planner, but I thank God it is in the past. What should be in your past that you are trying to keep in the present? If there is anything that needs to end, I urge you to be honest with yourself and let it go! There's so much more ahead for you, but first you must decide to move ahead. I'm not saying it will be easy. It requires great courage to face reality, but if you don't, you will never find all that God has for you to do. So do what you know you must do and, in the meantime, have a great week!
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