May 17, 2012 - Build It Right

I found this story in one of my leadership devotional books and I love it! I want to use it to speak to our need for having accountability in our journey. Accountability takes courage, but it also takes humility. Letting someone know where you're weak and having a friend stand with you and pray for you when the "winds" of life come to attack the core of who you are is critical. I do want to look at this from both sides though. Simply telling someone where we're weak cannot become our "release." I can confess that I'm struggling, laugh it off, have someone console me, and keep moving around the same issue. I did that for so many years with no REAL intent to FIX THE PROBLEM! Having someone to confess your issues to is designed to STRENGTHEN your resolve. Our health is a battle (You know that or you wouldn't read these each morning) and when in a battle, just absolving someone's mistakes is probably not going to save their life. Your partner, friend, coach sometimes needs to take your confession and help you make a stand! They need to challenge you to see the truth and STICK to the plan. That takes someone with courage who loves you more than you love yourself sometimes. The Bible talks about the slap of a friend doesn't it? Their accountability is designed to get the structure of your thinking back to a SOLID place. Remember fam - this is NOT a fad we are choosing for a season but a NEW structure with all the joints and bolts and foundational components secure. The winds of life WILL BLOW strong against our resolve, but having the determination to do what's right to "go the distance" CAN keep us to our course. Hope you see your journey in this story. I saw mine. I NEED you. PK When New York's Citicorp tower was completed in 1977, many structural engineers hailed the tower for its technical elegance and singular grace. One year after the building opened, the structural engineer William J. LeMessurier came to a frightening realization. The Citicorp tower was flawed. Without his approval, joints that should have been welded were bolted. Under severe winds that come once every sixteen years to New York, the building would buckle. LeMessurier weighed his options: Blow the whistle on himself. Suicide. Keep silent. LeMessurier did what he had to do. He came clean. He confessed the mistake. Plans were drawn up to correct the problem. Work began. And three months later, the building was strong enough to withstand a storm of the severity that hits New York once every seven hundred years. The repairs cost millions of dollars. Nevertheless, LeMessurier's career and reputation were not destroyed but enhanced. One engineer commended LeMessurier for being a man who had the courage to say, "I've got a problem; I made the problem; let's fix the problem." You may be at that point where you realize your life is like that flawed building. Although by all appearances you are strong and successful and together, you know you have points of weakness that make you vulnerable to collapse. What do you do? ****** I added this to the story******** Wrong health choices can corrode the very foundation of our lives. How do we respond? Make the hard choice to restructure our lives and fortify it with correct daily choices, or turn our heads and face the destruction of our "building" later in life? We ALL know the benefits of a fabulous health journey - let's fix the problem.