Choosing Harvest Over Bitterness

Any time you get kicked in the pants, especially in a case like we experienced in late ‘24 where it comes from behind but connects up front, there’s a temptation to decide “we’ve paid enough,” rather than make the harder choice to continue reflecting, keep serving, and keep your door open for everyone else you can impact who had nothing to do with that scenario. In complete transparency, doing each of those is the only way I’ve seen for intentionally choosing harvest over bitterness - even if that harvest isn’t immediate.

Cindy and I had so many similar experiences prior to that, all of which were significantly smaller in scope and with far less investment. With each of those, none of which have I even referenced in this process, I’m not sure we would have been able to process this one the way we did. Make no mistake, it still hurts. “It’s not personal, it’s just business” may have been enough for the person saying it to write it off on their end but we had never pointed our clients to a sign; it was always personal. We had been through it before and we’ve been through it since. From the beginning of this look at making the best of your bad situations and a few times since, I’ve referenced a saying that’s often hard to digest: “You can only control two things, your attitude and your actions.” I may not always like it, but that doesn’t make it untrue. And each of those kicks in the pants forced me to take complete responsibility for controlling those two things.

Once more for the people in the back: “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” Had we failed to control our attitude and actions, allowing the bitterness from any of these situations to take root, we would have been choosing to sacrifice the seeds within them and we would have stood no chance whatsoever for eventually reaping a harvest. But by controlling our attitude and actions, and purposefully living out our Community and Together values, some of that harvest came almost immediately and that’s compounded ever since.

The other thing that compounds is our experience in developing and refining each of the leadership attributes we’ve worked through here. We’ll look at that more next. First though, here’s the formula you need to commit to memory: Bitterness spends the seed. Reflection plants it. Definiteness of decision after a tough season is often the decision not to close the heart. In short, keep sowing - even if that means sowing somewhere else. With that in mind, pinpoint one area where a recent slight is still collecting interest. Track one step you can take right away toward harvest instead of bitter rehearsal.