ITL190: Finding Perspective and Purpose After Unthinkable Tragedy
In the Loop with Andy Andrews
Matt Lempert
4.9 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2015
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode, I answer a very emotional listener question from the friend of a football coach who has lost his son.
Everybody has a worst time in his or her life.
- I can’t imagine that it gets any worse than losing a son or daughter.
- I have some understanding of the shock and grief; my parents both passed away at a young age.
- My mom’s passing was long and drawn out, and my dad’s was a call in the middle of the night.
- While your memories and longing will never go away, the awful grief that you feel right now will pass.
Since your friend is a football coach, let’s consider eternity to be the length of a 100-yard football field.
- You were with your son for 19 years.
- Let’s assume that you’re 40 and will live another 40 years.
- That 40 years is not even a blade of grass on the football field of eternity.
This sounds odd to say, but if my parents had lived a normal life span, I wouldn’t have ended up doing what I do.
- Everything that has happened in my life came about after being forced into a position where I had no options.
- I believe you will find so many people and families that will be transformed not only because of your son’s life, but because of your son’s short life.
- You will find a purpose in this.
- You will find a time when you will be oddly grateful that you were allowed the opportunity to deal with and learn from this.
Please tune in to the full episode where Andy references a previous In the Loop about finding peace when dealing with death and mentions some extremely inspirational songs he recommends listening to daily when times are tough.
Questions for Listeners
Do you have a question? Call in and your question might be featured on the show!
- Phone: 1-800-726-ANDY
- E-Mail: InTheLoop@AndyAndrews.com
- Facebook.com/AndyAndrews
- Twitter.com/AndyAndrews
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to In the Loop, a unique opportunity to see life from a different perspective |
| 0:06.5 | with New York Times bestselling author, Andy Andrews. |
| 0:10.4 | Now here's your host, David Loy. |
| 0:12.9 | Hi, and welcome to In The Loop with Andy Andrews. |
| 0:15.8 | I'm your host, David Loy. |
| 0:17.2 | Yes, you are. |
| 0:18.3 | Andy, thanks for joining us once again. |
| 0:20.1 | Glad to be here. You say that with almost, I don. Andy, thanks for joining us once again. I'm glad to be here. |
| 0:21.2 | You say that with almost, I don't know, are you surprised to see me? |
| 0:26.6 | No, no, I'm not surprised to see you. I'm happy to see you. I love doing this. This is, I mean, |
| 0:32.4 | we've said it before, but this is maybe my favorite thing that I do, that I get to do, you know, that's, it's a different thing, |
| 0:42.4 | and it's the only thing that I do that's not even remotely prepared, which I'm sure people listen and go, |
| 0:51.4 | yeah, we know. |
| 0:52.4 | Well, and it's the one thing that we do consistently where you get to engage in conversations. Most everything you do, writing a book is a one-sided thing for you. People go tell their friends about it and have conversations about it, but they're not necessarily talking to you about it. When you go in and consult and talk to teams and companies, you're, you're having conversations |
| 1:12.1 | with them, but you're on stage. That's one person talking to a large group of people. |
| 1:16.2 | Here, we're addressing one-on-one people's issues, people's questions. This is a conversation |
| 1:21.0 | that takes place, and I think that's a unique element that people usually usually I like doing that usually I'm |
| 1:30.1 | comfortable doing that I'm not I'm not real comfortable with this one today yeah |
| 1:35.6 | and it is a little bit different that's what I was going to say is that we and I |
| 1:39.5 | usually don't know what we're doing before we do it you don't and we usually well a lot of times here we're jovial we're happy we're doing before we do it. You don't. And we usually, well, a lot of times here, |
| 1:45.3 | we're jovial, we're happy, we're addressing unique questions in people's lives, but every |
| 1:50.6 | once in a while we do get some tough questions. And we are never going to back away from those. |
... |
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