Divorce knocked the passion out of me. It's sneaky that way. You wake up one day and realize that you have absolutely no idea what is happening and no idea where you are supposed to go. You just know that you are in an empty house without a fire or wood to even start one, but mouths to feed. Confused, devastated, hopeless you drag yourself from where you were to discover new territory. You now have the task of creating a new homestead for you and your kids. But as much as you try, you cannot get the damn fire started. I wasn't a Girl Scout, so making fires is beyond my expertise. (If I was stranded on an island homegirl would be freezing but fit because my diet would be limited to raw fish.)
After months of no success, you finally see the beginnings of a flame. And with everything you have in you, you protect that thing to keep it from going out.
That thing is passion. The passionate energy that it takes to pick yourself up after a devastation and carry on. With or without help. With or without wood. Passion is "any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or
hate" on dictionary.com.
I think it's curious that EMOTION and FEELING are what makes us productive...passionate. Emotion is unreliable and testy...or so we've been told. We are taught to either stifle emotion or learn to not have any. The only really acceptable emotion is Joy, like in the "Inside Out" movie. My favorite thing about that movie is that it took Sadness to reconcile the situation.
Brady and I have had moments where we both just cried because divorce is just sad. I told him that it was OK to be sad and that it probably wouldn't stop being sad. But it was important for him to recognize that this isn't a great situation and to deny sadness would mean the situation would not be reconciled in his heart. And so we cried and were sad together. Sadness saved the day. And it was Sadness that once again started the fire of our new home.
The flood waters that devastated homes and businesses in Texas sent most Katrina survivors into that time when we were lost and without direction...passionless. You can feel it in the way people are behaving...you can sense it in the grocery store. The cashiers, the customers, probably even the produce is emanating the memories of the flood. You can see it on the news when the local anchors and weathermen/women reported the news. You can feel it even on social media...the sadness and overwhelming loss of control. I can't even look at pictures of the flooding from Harvey. If I did, I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room and I had forgotten how to breathe. Strangers were joined by this one feeling. Our city was bound together by Sadness once again.
So if emotion is necessary to ignite the fire of Passion, it is therefore also a necessary component of energy. It's what separates the successful from the unsuccessful. Chew on that for a bit....EMOTION drives us to produce.
This is a common theme in business also. We do not buy because of the product itself but because of the WHY behind it. I love Plexus because it has changed the kind of mom I am and whether or not I can provide for my kids alone. I love Jesus because I would be lost without Him. I buy dry shampoo because it gives me more time to spend on what is important...not my dang hair.
Passion makes me want to buy some marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. Passion is a big ol' smore. Without it, my fire would never have gotten started (and I'd still be eating raw fish).
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