{"id":216,"date":"2009-10-07T08:46:12","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T13:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.185.166.32\/~davidfoster\/?p=216"},"modified":"2009-10-07T08:46:12","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T13:46:12","slug":"why-we-suck-at-good-bye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/why-we-suck-at-good-bye\/","title":{"rendered":"Why We Suck At “Good-bye”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>\"\"In the news this week are two different stories that make the same point.\u00a0 One has to do with Brett Favre<\/strong> and his brilliant comeback on Monday Night Football.\u00a0 The other has to do with Bobby Bowden <\/strong>and his movement toward the shadows of his career.<\/p>\n

Here are two men in the public eye, two professionals in the sporting world, who have lived unquestionably at the top of their game, both at the end of their careers in very different ways.<\/p>\n

Bobby Bowden who is waving at his oncoming 80th<\/sup> birthday, is now being rumored to being forced out at the end of the season because the team is not winning and playing up to their usual standard.\u00a0 This has been true for several years, and Bobby doesn\u2019t seem to get the message.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, here is Brett Favre who this Saturday will be 40 \u2013 ancient by football terms and yet still playing at the top of his game, as good as any quarterback in the NFL except of course, Peyton Manning.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the point of these two very public people?\u00a0 They are both facing good-bye<\/strong>.\u00a0 And they are facing it very differently.<\/p>\n

Brett Favre played a great game, but he\u2019s at the end of his career.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t that many great games left.\u00a0 He\u2019s going to have to leave something that defines who he is and really all he\u2019s known his entire life.\u00a0 He has to transition. He has to take who he is and what he has become and begin to see himself in a different light, doing something different, making a contribution; not just in a different way, but in a different field.<\/p>\n

Bobby Bowden, on the other hand, is facing not only the end of his professional career, but close to the end of his natural life.\u00a0 Those are two very<\/em> different transitions, but still very real<\/em> for people like you and me.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I signed the papers to sell my parents\u2019 home.\u00a0 It was incredibly sad.\u00a0 Not because it wasn\u2019t a good thing, it\u2019s just that I\u2019m saying good-bye to not only my mother, but my father, and also my brother again<\/em>, even though they passed on many years ago.<\/p>\n

Here is the point.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to have to get good at good-bye<\/em>. <\/strong> We\u2019re really great at hello<\/em>.\u00a0 We love the start of things and the potential they bring.\u00a0 But no matter how good they are, they still end.\u00a0 You have to be willing to let go and believe that at the end of a good thing is a better thing waiting to be born.\u00a0 It happens to us all.\u00a0 We get older.\u00a0 We finish careers, jobs, sometimes even marriages and relationships.<\/p>\n

God has given us the gift of good-bye<\/strong>.\u00a0 What does that mean?\u00a0 It means that at the end of every good-bye<\/em> is a hello<\/em>.\u00a0 There is no good-bye without a hello.\u00a0 God sees to that.\u00a0 I trust that whatever hello is waiting over the next hill that I can\u2019t see, will be something born of God\u2019s grace and delivered by His generosity.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re holding onto something that\u2019s over, let it go and be willing to embrace the gift of good-bye<\/em> so that you can receive the gift of hello<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the news this week are two different stories that make the same point.\u00a0 One has to do with Brett Favre and his brilliant comeback on Monday Night Football.\u00a0 The other has to do with Bobby Bowden and his movement toward the shadows of his career. Here are two men in the public eye, two … Continue reading “Why We Suck At “Good-bye””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}