We built four wells for clean water in Uganda this year. We put our expanded DFREE® financial empowerment resources in the hands of more churches and community organizations. We won a silver Telly award for our new podcast, “Say Yes When Life Says No.” We released a new book, “Meditations for Financial Freedom, Volume 5.” And we still have four months left in the year to do more.
Contrary to what may appear to be true, this has been one of the least productive years of my life.
Everything I just listed was done by my team. They are passionate professionals who take the work and the mission seriously. Their labor gets attributed to me because my name is on the door. I am blessed to work with them, and I cannot take credit for what they accomplished while I was somewhere else in my head.
I attribute most of my under-performance to two changes. The first is death.
I lost a friend I went to school with from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I lost the friend who embraced me my first day in Chicago when I arrived to work at Operation PUSH. I lost a friend who was a bishop in the AME Church. Then Rev. Jesse Jackson died, the man who taught me how to mobilize people and who put me on a national stage when I was 24 years old. And there were more, folks whose lives were connected to mine in tangible and significant ways.
I have officiated more than a thousand funerals. I know what to say. I know where to stand at the graveside. I know how to hold a family up when their knees go. These deaths landed on me differently than any others in my life.
And then my mother died.
My father died April 12, 1975, at 47 years old. From that day forward I was my mother’s primary support. Fifty-one years. I called her every day, at around the same time, wherever I was traveling. Her health had been in decline for the last four years, and the final six months were severe. My life was organized around supporting my sister and my cousin as they became her primary caregivers. When her suffering ended on March 26 of this year, I was glad for her. I was sad to see her go. We were more like siblings than mother and son.
Some folks think that losing someone who is 94 is easier, because she lived a long life and nobody lives forever. I am a witness to the fact that this is not true. The opposite is true. The longer you have somebody, the more accustomed you are to having them around. Fifty-one years of supporting my mother was more than a relationship. It became a lifestyle. The call at the same hour. Laughing about things only she and I knew. Negotiating with her about her choices for health care. Those were not items on a list. They were the shape of my days.
The gap left by her departure is immeasurable. There are times when I feel like doing nothing. And that is what I do. Nothing.
The second change is that I turned 75.
I allowed my wife to organize a birthday party for me, for the first time. I don’t like parties. I don’t like birthday parties. I definitely don’t like birthday parties for me. I think I allowed it because I am so grateful to be alive, having buried a father who died at 47 and so many friends this year. I think I also allowed it because the gap my mother left required a decision from me about how I would fill it. I was feeling like it is time for me to make transition decisions on purpose, rather than let life play itself out and impose itself on me.
Since retiring from my job as a pastor, I have been busier than I have ever been. And I am busy doing the things I enjoy. Serving on corporate boards. Preaching in churches around the country. Consulting with organizations that request my advice. Helping people achieve financial freedom. But 75 arrived, and the party made it undeniable. I ignored and postponed my 70th because of the pandemic. This one I could not ignore. It felt like an inflection point and not simply a birthday.
So the thoughts, the plans, the dreams and the realities have kept me quite reflective and pensive. I imagine there have been times when some have wondered if I am okay. There have been times when I have wondered if I am okay.
I have made an appointment to speak with a counselor. This will be my first counseling since I met with my high school guidance counselor. I will explain my relationship with counseling in my next post. For now, I am pacing myself through this stage of my life, taking the weight of these changes seriously, and grateful for what longevity is giving me.