Why You Can’t Make It Alone

At the end of every year, I spend time in the past year’s journal. This helps me get a clearer picture of what happened within that year from out beyond the weeds. 2016 was a great example of why I love journaling. It was a chaotic year that didn’t give me much time to stop and take it all in. We sadly had to make the decision to close a church we helped plant in Florida, move back to Ohio and thankfully begin work again at CedarCreek Church. All the ups and downs were right there in the pages. I fought back ugly crying as I read the pages of last year’s journal, mainly because I realized I did nothing on my own.

I focus a lot on personal development. I’m passionate about it and about helping others realize what they are capable of achieving. This marks my 9th year of a keeping a yearly journal.

I’ve realized within the pages of all these journals that not a single personal accomplishment was solely my doing. It was with the help of friends that I finished races, it was by my wife carving time in our schedule to allow me to write books, it was through friends and co-workers saying ‘that sounds fun! I’m in!’ that we were able to record some music and it was through mentors giving of their own personal time that I could grow in character. Nothing I can accomplish can be done alone. I can’t be who I feel a tugging towards becoming without others pulling it out of me.

In Donald Miller’s book, To Own a Dragon, he tells this story:

“I was planting a couple tomato plants in the backyard. I’d never planted anything before. I was digging a little hole and sticking the starter plant in the ground when the miracle of the process occurred to me. All you do is stick a plant in the dirt, and the sun and a summer’s worth of time turns the tomato plant into a living salad maker. Its DNA is activated by outside forces, so it becomes what it is supposed to become only in the right elements.”

Our ambitions, goals and ideas are the plant. We have to do the work of planting and getting our hands dirty, but we also need the help of outside forces to make these things activate. Our ideas, ourselves, can’t be who they were meant to be without others.