The Pressure to Report
(You can watch this video on our YouTube page HERE)I feel like I’m supposed to come on here and talk to you all about the pressure that we’re feeling in the world to report everything. I feel like this has been coming up a lot in my personal life. And while I may not feel the same pressure to report my feelings and all the things that are going on in the world, I know that the way God always brings it together, it’s the same meaning.
And in the way that I experienced it this week, I had a really rough doctor’s appointment yesterday where they talked about next steps. I had an MRI come back. And I’m so thankful that it came back with evidence and proof of the pain that I’m in. Because sometimes with pain, it’s so difficult to even know where to go after it, plan-of-attack-wise. So I’m so happy that it was a crappy MRI, but the MRI showed some stuff and we had to have a tough conversation about next steps. And, you know, it’s not none of it’s good for me. But instantly I began to process reporting it, talking about it—even at some point, feeling compelled to share an update with people who are praying for me through the season.
There’s this pressure to report. I mean, from reporting to my mom, reporting to Hannah, my daughter, to reporting to my friends’ immediate circle, and then eventually my church group. And what I realized in the pressure to report, which is just fascinating, is the way that God works things out. I reported to my lawyer, and I reported to my nurse case manager, and I checked in, and I had an email drafted before I even left. Just like, here’s the picture, and here’s the thing, and here’s the game plan. And none of those people put the pressure on me to report except me.
First of all, in the pressure to report, I go an entire 24 hours, and I report to everybody else about what’s going on except me. It took until this morning my daughter texted me—which was amazing—hey, Dad, how are you? And it was the first time I thought about how I was.
I feel like this is so important right now in this moment in time because that is just a microcosm of what we just saw happen last week with everything going crazy and everybody having an opinion and everybody feeling the pressure to report exactly how they felt on it and exactly their theory on it and exactly what’s going on. But my question is how many of those people actually checked in with themselves first?
I wonder how many people actually put themselves in the situations that they were reporting on first, and how many people thought about, if it was them that it was happening to first—no matter what mistakes they’ve made in the world, no matter what they said in the world, no matter how righteous, no matter how polarizing. Just the very basic, what if it happened to you? What if it was you? And I don’t even know that people are thinking about how they are first.
And I don’t know that that is a very healthy thing. I mean, I can tell you even from this particular situation that I was more stressed out about other people’s reactions. I was more concerned about how other people would take it. I started even fabricating stories about the longevity of other people watching my story and how it would affect their belief in what I say I believe in, or whether or not they believe me and all these things that just are not true and don’t matter more than me checking in with me and me saying, there’s something that’s difficult that’s happening. There’s something very difficult that I need to fortify myself for first.
And this is something that I’ve worked on for years and something that I’ve been working through for years where I have a tendency to think that I actually have the capacity to help someone else before helping myself. Would it make someone else feel okay before I even address myself? And that’s just not true, not to mention not healthy.
So I’m thankful that it only took 24 hours for me to get back to actually thinking about how I’m doing. Until today, 24 hours later, I didn’t even think about some of the ways that this next news was going to affect my next six months to a year. I thought more about how the news was going to affect people around me.
And I don’t really care what the motivation is. I don’t care if it feels like it’s something that you need to do for others to take care of others, to protect others from your truth, your reality, like in my case, or if it’s something that you’re doing because you feel the burden to share your opinion with the world. Nobody wants to hear it. No one should hear it until you have spent time with it first.
There’s no way that people’s opinions should be going viral if they haven’t even processed it first, because until you understand how it affected you… Most people don’t even realize that they have been traumatized by the impact of last week, by the things that they saw, that they should not see. Do you understand how traumatizing it was?
When I saw someone lose their life for the first time in my neighborhood, watched it happen—that affected me for years. And people accidentally saw it this past week. How are you doing first? That’s what’s important here. That’s of utmost importance here. Process it for you first. You know why? Because you deserve it. You deserve that space. You deserve the space to process the things.
Now parents, you’re gonna know exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about this, because parents, we do it all the time. We always process for our kids first, and you know what? I love to say that that’s noble and righteous, but at the end of the day, you can only get so far with that logic, that mentality, that mindset, because your kids need you to be healthy to understand how they can react to it next. So it still has to go through you first. You and God need to do your work first.
And so responding from a place that’s reactive is not just not healthy for you, it’s not healthy for other people too.
So I didn’t really understand it today, and it was rough. I had a bit of a breakdown, if I’m being honest—not even about processing it for myself at this point, but just to be in a position that seeks direction regularly from God. And to realize that there’s still so much work to do and that I have a tendency to continue, even from my position of reporting, to leave myself out of the equation. I gotta do better so that I can do better. I gotta do a better job of checking in.
You know, what I would encourage us all to do better is resist the urge to say something, anything ever. The Bible says that we should be slow to speak, quick to listen. So may that just be our encouragement today. Slow to speak, quick to listen. Whatever you have to do, slow down the world around you, so that you have a chance to hear what God’s got to say about it first, to hear what you think about it first.
And I’m not saying go on social media and listen to what everyone else says first to formulate your opinion. I mean, really slow down and be like, God, man, this is something difficult. What do you want me to see here? What do you want me to hear here? This is what I feel, God. This is where my heart is broken.
And yeah, I don’t, I don’t know all the details, and all the details start to make it more muddy and less human. We can even do it to ourselves. You heard me say that I was even starting to do it in, like, gosh, there’s so many people that are gonna be so tired of my story that God, I just wanna get to the next part. That’s the good part. That’s the non-pain part. That’s the non-suffering part. I just wanna get to that part, God, so I can say, look what you did, God, look what you did. What are you gonna do it, God? But in the meantime, I’m beating myself to death about something that I physically have no control over.
And the same thing that makes me so happy, that is on an MRI. Matter of fact, I might even show this MRI in the video. It’s so clear that the knee is so bad that it should cause me outlandish amounts of pain every single day captured in way more than 4K, because it’s an MRI and that sees all the way through everything. It’s 40, 20, five k, I don’t even know, bro. It’s crazy. And I’m sitting here. I’m already down the road in the future. Like, I gotta tell people about this. People might actually—I might actually have to ask someone for help again. Oh my God, please God don’t let me have to do that. I don’t want to do that, but I’m writing this doom story about something that I have nothing, no control over.
And the only thing that I should be doing is being like, God, what are you doing here? What do you want me to see here? And if it’s just for me… The pressure for me, the pressure to report to everybody else in the 24 hours past my own devastating news—imagine what the world looks like, and imagine what the world’s going through when all they do is feel the pressure to report.
The ways to look good on Instagram, the ways to take the right angle so they don’t see the body fat, the ways to crop out the… or fill the lines. The pressure to preserve, report and present something that’s not even what you’re interested in or what the world cares about. We care so much about how we look on social media. We care so much about how we present ourselves to the world so that no one knows that we’re suffering, that no one can see that we’re scared. The pressure to report.
What if you just give yourself a break? What if you just said, no, man, I need a minute, I need time with this. I don’t want to be used as part of anyone’s agenda. I just need to check in with myself. Those are maybe the words that I’m gonna give you to use. You know what? I just need to check in with myself about this.
I had a friend do this in the conversation real time the other day, and then we followed up and we had a conversation this morning about it. And so I’m so proud of you, Hector, for doing that where you said, I just need a minute to think about that. You didn’t feel the pressure to report even in a moment, and I did not know what was going into your moment, but I’m so proud of you for the wisdom to say I need a minute.
All y’all, if you need a minute, say you need a minute, and take a minute. It’s okay. It’s okay. The urgency of the situation should not be a reason to make you report faster or make you say anything at all. The urgency of the situation shouldn’t make you say I need a minute, can I have a minute? If I need a month, can I have a month?
And leaders, leaders, leaders, leaders—yeah, I’m talking to you leaders, cause I am one. I am a servant leader. I do serve people in this world. There are people that may never respond to a video that I have an opportunity to communicate with, and who are listening to God sometimes for the first time through what I have to say.
And so leaders, your responsibility is to check in with yourself and your God before you say a word. Period. If you are a faith-based leader, it should be God first, and then yourself. And it should be yourself reporting to God. Period. It should be a conversation, a wrestling, a moment of clarity. And if you don’t have that moment of clarity, you don’t get that word and keep your mouth shut.
That might be the most important thing you do for the people around you, is model that resistance to report, model that I-need-a-minute moment.
I’m so thankful that even in dismissing myself full circle, you can show me something to share with someone else. Cause I know I’m not the only one. God, matter of fact, I had not even connected it to anything that was going on inside of the world until you showed that to me.
So I thank you so much, God, for taking real pain, my real breakdown today, and give me words to share with others that hopefully, God, they can say hold on world, hold on. I need a minute, I need a minute to check in with me and figure out how I am. Before I tell you how you should be, or before I report on how I am.
Keep steering the ship God, keep showing me through my own brokenness how to hear you better, how to hear less of the world, how to get swept up less into the chaos of the world. God, there’s nothing for us in that chaos. God, I know that you are a God of calmness and stillness and peace. You are not a God of chaos.
Chaos should be an automatic timeout. Trauma should be an automatic time out anytime God that we experience trauma, let us just say we need a minute. I need a minute. I need a month, I need a couple months. I need whatever it is that you deem possible and you need necessary.
And let us hear that. And God, I know that you will give us a peace that surpasses all understanding, because you are a God of peace that surpasses all understanding. You are not a God of chaos, you are not a God of division, you are not a God of separation, you are not a God of politics and b******t. You are a God that is peaceful in the storm, that commands the waves in the sea. And we trust you, God. I trust you, God. Please keep leading this country, Lord, into peace and out of this chaos.
Lord, let there be a conviction in the spirits of those who claim your name, those who claim to follow you that says this is chaos, this is division, this is not what God says that he is. So how can I find peace? How can I check in with me, how can I check in with my Dad who calms the waves?
There’s not an example of you in the Bible, God, creating chaos. I just pray Lord for that to just become more and more, and more clear to your kids, including me, me first. God in Jesus’ name, amen.
