Silver Lining | Kyle McMurray Coaching, LLC

Episode 75

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:15 — 5.4MB)

Have you ever posted something on social media and wanted to retract it? It reminds me of the expression, “You can’t put toothpaste back into the tube”? Well, this was definitely one of those moments. This was something that was a meme, someone else had already typed it out for me and it had a picture background. In that moment, it satisfied a voice inside, that felt like it needed to be heard. And I re-posted it. Oh, I don’t regret re-posting it, not at all. It blew up with conversation. We’ll talk about it today on Living the Freedom Life. This is ep 75 “There’s a Silver Lining in that Dark Cloud Looming”

You can scour my Social Media pages to see it if you want, it’s okay, but when I re-posted this meme, I didn’t think much about it because what it communicated to me in that moment, I felt it needed to be said again. This podcast episode is not an apology for posting it. . . at all.

Now you really want to know what it was don’t you? Don’t worry, it wasn’t that big of a deal. The lesson I learned behind it, was.

The situation was definitely growing into a dark cloud looming. The comment threads on this post were getting heated, in a couple of different conversations.

A little while afterward, I got a private text from someone. This was that thin line of sunshine that provided back light for the silver lining to appear, and changed the entire situation.

This person was asking questions, so that they could understand what my thoughts were behind this post. They didn’t make the connection with me being the original person who posted it.

No, They didn’t blast me in saying “What were you thinking? That is so offensive.” No, they restrained.

While technically, I wasn’t the original author of the post, it was still posted on my wall. Therefore, by association, I accepted full responsibility by posting it. This person was asking questions in order to understand instead of using interrogation tactics and hurling accusations and threats like we so often see being done in today’s typed culture. Some people just like to argue and stir the pot. Some people like to pick a fight and it shows.

This person knows me well and pointed out some things

The verbiage didn’t sound like me. On the surface, it was a little obvious, if you know me.
What was communicated didn’t sound like me. A lot of times, what is communicated has very little to do with what’s said. So, there’s a big difference between point number 1 and 2.
The heart behind it didn’t sound like me

Once people started commenting on the post, I began to respond to their comments. This person also pointed out that it sounded like a completely different person was responding, than who posted the original post. They said it sounded like two different people, or the profile was hacked.

After more questions and discussion, we ended the conversation feeling more connected and both of us knew we were on the same page. Afterwards, there was one of those moments where you just sit back and meditate…and find yourself grateful God put that person across your path today.

It taught me a few things I want to share with you today.

Our words have meaning
1. It’s easy to lose sight of this truth because it’s so easy today to express ourselves and we fail to see or sometimes care about the consequences.
When we realize how much meaning they have, it takes discernment to say them. In other words, the Bible teaches us to speak truth in love. A lot of times, we let one outweigh the other. If we speak truth, we forget love, on the other hand if we speak so much love, we sometimes forget truth. We are called to have an equal balance of the two.
1. On one side, you delete a long typed out message or come back. Sometimes that’s a good thing, that is what we call “The Lord’s Protection”. But there are other times where we shy away from saying the truth. We need to realize that our words have meaning, and it takes discernment to say them. Just because it’s truth, doesn’t mean We’ve been the ones selected to say it. There are times where we can love someone so much to refrain from speaking truth, that we are unknowingly, enabling them for harm.
What we communicate is sometimes very different from what is said.
1. Just because what was said wasn’t what someone heard, doesn’t mean they weren’t listening. It may mean that we weren’t communicating the same thing as what we were saying. If you’ve ever been called by your middle name, you learned at an early age about tone, body language, facial expressions and everything else that has to do with communication and it really didn’t matter about the words, did it? What we communicate is sometimes very different from what it said.

When something challenges you today, don’t be satisfied with just finding out the surface level of why. Go deeper. Find out what the engine of your why is. What drives your why? We are rarely able to do this ourselves. It usually takes an outside source. That’s another reason why we are made for community. We need other people.

When all we see is the Dark Cloud looming, we need someone else to come in and provide light from a completely different perspective and give us that silver lining. Until next time, Living the Freedom Life, this is Kyle.