On Dropping Plates

“The art of managing a lot of things is to never drop the same thing twice in a row.”

Bishop T. D Jakes said this at the Global Leadership Summit last week. I love thinkers and thinking, I crave the presence of thought leaders, and I am something of a conference junkie, so I signed up to go to this two-day conference hosted by Bill Hybels and Willowcreek Association.

Of course the conference is for leaders and about leaders, and it’s this great blend of the corporate and nonprofit world, public and private, Christian and secular, great and small. But the thing that always surprises me is how much of their masterful leadership content applies to parenting.

I don’t know why this surprises me, since we parents are among the great leaders of the world with the deepest influence to shape and alter lives on a grand scale. I guess I forget the parallels to the corporate leaders because it just doesn’t feel like the same game in the daily grind of library books and cereal bowls.

And so I forget. A lot.

So when Bishop T. D. Jakes sat down for his interview with Bill Hybels, I was not expecting this tremendous gem for running a household.

He said, “I am never going to finish all the things I need to do. Something will go undone everyday. If I do great in the workplace, I miss a dad moment. If I am great with the kids, I miss a husband moment. If I focus on my wife, I miss a work opportunity. I’ll always miss something because there aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done. But the art of managing many things is to never drop the same thing twice in a row.”

How. Much. Grace.

Isn’t that exactly true of all of us? At the end of every day, somebody somewhere in my circle of influence is going to go to bed disappointed. I could wrestle with this and beat myself up and lose sleep over lost time and opportunities, or I could take inventory of what I missed, realize it’s how things go, and simply put them at the top of the list for tomorrow.

Drops happen.  It’s not about not dropping.

Just never drop the same thing two days in a row.

I feel like this is something I can do.