I is for Impact

 

Continuing on with our April A to Z blogging challenge:

I is for Impact

At 63, I hope that I have made and am still making an impact somewhere in this world. I do know that I just have to keep on keepin’ on! I once again googled for a dictionary definition of impact, and this is the one I’ll use: “have a strong effect on someone or something.” But before I get too serious, I must tell you another meaning of impact: “an impinging or striking especially of one body against another.”

I grew up on a street with 17 other school age kids. One block – 17 kids! We had some epic times – from swinging in our swings as high as we could go to playing Miss American with picnic benches as our runways to hours upon hours of building Barbie abodes. Some of those 17 kids were boys so sometimes we played more active games. We played hundreds of games of kickball (I love kickball!) and hundreds of games of “baseball.” “Baseball” is in quotes because it wasn’t really baseball. We did use a bat, but I think we hit a tennis ball. Anyway, we were in the middle of one of our games and Mark Watkins and I were both running for the ball. He and I collided into one another (IMPACT!) and as we fell . . . I fell on his leg AND BROKE IT!! Oh my goodness – I never lived that down. I wonder what happened to Mark Watkins and I wonder where he is these days?

Let’s move on to the more serious meaning of impact (even though I’m sure Mark Watkins thought that a broken leg was very serious!!). There are three places where I might be making an impact. I teach a large adult Sunday School class and I realized this week that I’ve been teaching in that class for almost 30 years – it will be 30 years this fall. I am a Tuesday night facilitator with young adults. I have two granddaughters. I hope that the way I live my life and the way I teach/lead/love will have a strong effect on someone at some time or another.

Where do you think you have made the greatest impact? In your family? In your career?

Here are some examples from my life:

Gran with her two granddaughters

Here I am teaching
Sunday School and the
print is too small for you to read
in the instagram post, but
Mark was making
an impact, too. I had
a short in my computer cord and
he was literally holding it
together so I could teach!!

These are both old pictures of our Tuesday

night group but I showed you the most

recent one just a day or so ago!

Some of the young adults who have married
and moved on have written us notes
telling us how much we impacted
their lives. We try to love them as our own.