Monday, the weather folks predicted extremely high winds and potentially dangerous conditions for Tuesday. In the line of public school work, there are folks who have to make difficult decisions about whether or not it is safe to have school.
There are long-standing jokes about how, in the south, if there is one tiny snowflake we call off school. Now we’ve moved from a tiny snowflake to calling off school in the rain.
Really? The rain.
The trolls were hard at work complaining about this situation on various social media platforms.
Take a step back, however, and perhaps look at the entire situation.
A friend of mine is over transportation/facilities for a school system in upstate South Carolina. One small part, yet HUGE part, of his job, is to provide safe transportation for thousands of students to school.
He, along with administration in multiple other school districts, had to make difficult decisions on Monday regarding the status of school on Tuesday. Their answer? To close schools.
Folks were livid. That’s understandable, right? Needing to find last minute child care is not an easy task.
But was the anger really necessary?
It was an inconvenience. But not an inconvenience caused by someone’s whim. It was, instead, a decision made with the safety of thousands of people at the center.
Emotions. They get the best of us. We experience things throughout our days and they evoke our emotions.
What if our day-to-day life is like a bus?
The human, rational, thinking part of our brain is the driver. Our emotions are the passengers on the bus. If we aren’t careful, our emotions take over the driver and lead the bus down some difficult, treacherous, paths. Before we know it, our bus is completely off the road, sometimes rolling down an embankment, crashing into something and causing a ton of destruction (in our relationships, mental psyche, etc).
Scripture often talks about our heart. Recognizing that sometimes it causes us to have difficult pathways. Check out these words written by the prophet Jeremiah . . . .
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
8 They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.”
9 The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
We may not be able to understand it, but we can learn to manage it.
I hope you’ll join me on this journey. If you know someone dealing with difficult emotions in life right now, share this meditation (and message series) with them.
Oh – by the way – remember my friend who oversees transportation, he had a powerful quote about the decision to not have school yesterday . . .
“A lot of our bus drivers are young. If a 45 mph wind comes while they are driving, that is a setup for disaster.”
Aren’t we glad he (and many others) made logical, rational decisions rather than decisions fueled by other people’s emotions?
Grace and Peace,
Andrea