I'm defining Sacred assignments as those things that seem to keep you up at night, those ideas, thoughts, or to-do’s that seem to have potent energy behind them. We may know they’re important but still we keep moving them to the later list. We’re just too busy to do them now. We make everything else a priority and sometimes avoid the very thing that we came here to do.
Have you ever had something just pulling at you - call this person, take a different way home from work, get that business plan done? We may never know what's behind it.
We can't even assume the importance one little phone call can make. Sometimes that call can be a life-changer for that person, and you may never even know it. Driving a different way home may save a person's life. I have an example of that. While going to pick up some lights with Gerard, when leaving the store I just felt we needed to go home through Wilbraham, the long way. I didn't know why at the moment, but knew. We went the long way only to find out there was a man falling in the street in very heavy traffic. Was he drinking or on drugs? We weren't sure, but we had to help as he was dodging cars.
Gerard pulled over and went out into ongoing traffic to help. I heard the man say he had Parkinson's disease. As he kept stumbling into the street and hitting the surface of the road, Gerard helped him to the sidewalk. The man kept fighting with him that he didn't want help and kept going back into traffic. Gerard kept going with him trying to slow traffic down while getting beeped at and thrown the finger, people assuming the man was drunk. While I was in the car I called 911 and no one answered. It took 10 minutes for them to call me back, only to tell me they have no help to answer phones. While people zoomed by, a nurse stopped and came over to my car and asked what was going on. I told her and she offered to help as both of them were in the street trying to get him out as the man said leave me alone. Was he doing this on purpose because he didn't want to live with this? Gerard and the nurse would not leave his side. Finally, they got him to the sidewalk where he found a tree and sat down under it still struggling to get up. Then the police arrived to help him and took him home. I thought to myself that's why we had to go a different way because if we went our usual way home, we would have missed him.
You may never know how you affect others through these Sacred Assignments but the next time you feel a nudge to do something, even if you don't know why do it. You just might save someone's life!