Old Dogs, New Tricks

I was reading a Harvard business article. It was advising people to do something really radical: ask for advice and admit when you're wrong. Two sage pieces of wisdom, going way back to the dinosaurs, masquerading as cutting edge swag. But hey, when it works...

I have a friend, she is the same age as my youngest child. She just had a baby and messaged me yesterday, asking for help with some decisions they are making concerning their child. I pulled up those old files in my brain and told her what we did. What a wise mother! Rather than rely on what the latest magazine touts, she taps into several older mothers who she respects, gets free advice and makes use of the paths that have been carefully traversed before. Not to mention, she makes these old birds feel pretty useful.

I am a realtor. I got my license back in '07, right before the housing industry fell apart. My husband and I had incorporated -- he was going to build houses and I was going to sell them. I had ten darling Southern Living house plans lined up with ten specific building lots. We were going to bring adorable bungalow-ism to Douglasville.  My Dad and I had just signed on with a new, tiny firm that didn't have its sea legs when the crash started. When strange terms began invading real estate  (like "short sale" and "foreclosure"), and the terra firma began to crumble out from under us, I had nothing to cling to. Daddy decided it was time to retire, my broker decided he had to get back to painting cars and my husband got a life-threatening illness. I started painting rich peoples' houses. They all decided to fix up their properties since they couldn't sell them. There was always a little confusion when the fluffy white girl showed up to paint (they seemed to expect someone else -- different gender, nationality, etc), but I am grateful that God gave me the will and the opportunities to do it. My realtor card slipped quietly into the background and I did what I had to do. Fast forward a few years and I find myself drinking coffee with a handful of wily realtors who made it through the mess. The best thing that I do is to sit and listen to them, ask questions, pose scenarios. There's nothing like a seasoned, divorced realtor to bring some salt back into your world. There is not one encounter where I don't learn something new. I had no clue I would be learning so much, this late in the game.

There are trajectories and plans that people make: finish high school, go to college and maybe grad school, get a career, make a family, work for x-amount of years, retire and move to Florida. Real life is rarely like that. Ken and I have had several makeovers in our lives, looking nothing like a planned orbit. More like rabbit trails leading off other rabbit trails, but always with God and our family at the center of it. We could have been more intentional about a lot of things, but we were definitely laser-focused on taking everything to the Lord, hoping to glorify Him through our mess. Maybe it was about throwing ourselves on Him, from one crisis to the next. Yeah, that's more like it. Meanwhile, we've depended on the advice and wisdom of our opinionated and astute parents, pastors, elders, and grandparents over the years. I don't know how we would have made it through without such guidance. 

Harvard's fancy article about admitting when you're wrong and seeking advice: not so new and not so fancy, but still right on the mark. Listen up. You might learn something.