April 3, 2020 - What Do I Have?

Main Idea:

Have you just lost a third of your net worth in the stock market?  Do you feel like your business is going bust because of the coronavirus?  Are you afraid that you will lose a close friend or family member to the virus? Do you think that you will end up at home with your 5 & 7 year old for the next 5 years?

Expansion of the Idea:

Our lifestyle changed completely when the Covid-19 virus came to the US.  Very few people realized the extent of the damage it could do.  Almost no one took it as serious as we should have at the very early stages.  But when it took over, we all realized that life as we knew it was gone.  It will come back but it might look a little different.  Either way, we have the next few months of social distancing, economic hardship, stress on relationships, uncertainty, fear and restrictions on what we do.  And we just missed opening day of Major League Baseball.  We feel like we are in a bad dream where we are just going through the motions. 

All of that bad stuff is reality.  And it is natural to focus on the negative stuff.  If we had 100 customers buy something from us in a day and one of them complains about price, that customer will haunt us.  We will worry whether we are pricing our products properly.  We don’t think about the fact that some people are going to complain about something no matter what.  It still sticks with us.

However, there is another reality that we don’t focus on.  This other reality is always there and is probably more real than the negative reality.  We are so blessed we take things for granted.  We overlook a lot because we stress about what we just lost or don’t have. 

Here is my list of what I do have and am extremely thankful for:

  • My faith

  • My spouse

  • My kids and their spouses

  • My grandkids (They are really a little higher on the list.)