 Hi, my name is Mark Ellickson. I'm a hospice chaplain. I'm a country preacher and I've been involved with disaster work in a variety of places. And what I want to talk to you about today is the ability to bounce back. That's called resilience. You've heard that word resilience a lot of places. Maybe you've heard it about an athlete. A baseball player had a bad game or maybe a bad season and was resilient and bounced back and had a better season. A football quarterback threw an interception in the first part of a game and then through the winning touchdown later. He was resilient. Well, resilience is something we need in our ordinary everyday lives, not just football players or politicians, but we need it because we need to be able to bounce back. I'd like to illustrate that little bit with my friend SpongeBob here. I actually have a couple SpongeBob balls that I'd like to show you. And if you were right here with me, I'd be asking you a question. What's the difference between the two balls? And since you're not here to give answers, I'm going to kind of guess what some of your answers might be. I have some people say, well, you're holding the one different. Well, that's not it. I am holding them different. And I flip them back and forth because sometimes someone will say, well, one's in your right hand, one's in your left. No, that's not it. And some folks are really detailed. They like to look at all the little details. Well, let me tell you, these are bought at the same time at the same place for the same price by the same person. And as far as I know, every little number, title, city, eyeball and everything on here is exactly the same, except for the minor human imperfections. So how are they different? Well, it's pretty simple. One bounces back, one doesn't. Now, obviously, you would say one has one is filled up with air, the other is not. And that's exactly the truth. One has that ability to bounce back. That's the way we are. You ever felt like this ball? You know, a little deflated, a little down, it might be just an ordinary life, just the bills that you have, the stresses of relationships, the stresses of your job. And you feel just a little bounce, a little less able to bounce back, and you can't. We'd all like to be like this, where we can bounce back all the time. But we know that just an ordinary life we're like that. But it might even be you've been through disaster, flood, a tornado, things like that. You've faced death or a tragedy in your life. Or maybe there's even been multiplied problems, one problem upon another, and you just have trouble bouncing back. In fact, maybe you feel a little bit like my other SpongeBob ball, like this one. All tore up. And obviously, this guy can't bounce back. Well, that's my first point that I'd like to make with you today. Here's my little way of saying that. Everyone has problems. Now, I know sometimes we think, boy, that neighbor of mine, he doesn't have any problems. But let me assure you, everybody does. We all have problems of one kind or another. And those problems can be small or they can be big. But they affect our ability to bounce back and be resilient. We know that certain problems are more major. Our ordinary problems are one thing. The multiplied problems of death or disaster are another. How can we bounce back from those? How can we do that? See, that's my second point. So let me ask, again, the same question. I have two balls. What's the difference? Yes, we discovered that one bounces back, one does not. But in another way of looking at it, there's no difference at all. This one doesn't have air in it, and this one does. But this one has every single capacity that the ball in my left hand does. They are identical. They both have the ability to bounce back and adapt to be resilient. So what I want to tell you, second, is that everyone can be resilient. Now, I know that that's kind of easy for me to say. I've not walked in your shoes. I've not seen the disaster or the problems or the things that are weighing on your shoulders and putting you down. It's easy for me to say you can be resilient. But I have seen people in disaster. I have seen people in tragedy. I have seen people dying who are able to be resilient. It's the psychologists tell us, and I'm not a psychologist, but they tell us that that is a capacity that's within every human being. The problem is, is that sometimes we don't know how to access it or we try to do it all alone. And we need help sometimes to deal with the problems, especially if you remember those big ones that tear us up. The human animal, who we are, we have great capacity to be healed, to change, to grow, to be resilient. But sometimes we do need some help. I work with a group called Red River Resilience. Try to say that fast three times. And the experts on our group work with psychologists. We work with experts in disaster and other folks. And we developed a small set of facts, F-A-C-T-S. Now I'm not going to ask you today to remember these. I'm going to show them to you here in a second. But I'm not going to ask you to write them down or remember them. What I'm really hoping is that by the time I get done, and I'm going to do this very briefly, that you think, you know, I want to know more about that. And that you go look for more information about resilience, remembering that you do have problems and that you do have that ability to be resilient. So let me talk about these facts for just a second. The facts to help us bounce back. The F is focus on hope, focus on hope. Without hope, without hope for something better, humans can't get very far. We need that hope. We need to believe there's some possibilities. And in your life, there is hope. Even if you're in a great difficult situation, there is hope. There is something you can look toward to focus on. So easy it is to focus upon the difficult things of life, the things that deflate us. We need to focus on those things that give us hope. So F, focus on hope. A, with purpose. Now, it's not hard to take action when you're stressed out, when you're just feel burdened, when you're in disaster, when you're in problems. It's easy to take an act. I am the best of anyone at pacing around. You ever done that, just paced back and forth? The problem with that is it's an action and you get a little exercise, but there is no purpose. Act with purpose. Even if we have an immense number of problems and we might say, there's nothing I can do to solve them all. No, there isn't. But there must be some small thing, some small action that you can take that makes a difference. Take that action. Focus on hope. Act with purpose. See? Connect with others. Connect with others. See, one of the problems is that my SpongeBob fellow here that doesn't bounce back very well, he just thinks he can do it alone. I don't know about you. Well, I guess I do know about you and I'm sure about myself. I need other people. I need my family to connect with. I need my friends and folks like that to connect with. And sometimes I need someone that's an expert. Someone from my faith community, my pastor, a psychologist, a consular, or someone that's wise in certain things to connect with. But I need other people. Seek to be connected with others. When we're alone, it is so easy to let our worries and stresses get even bigger than they really are. Focus on hope. Act with purpose. Connect with others. And tea? Well, tea is take care of yourself. Take care of yourself. I'm not your mom. I'm not your dad. But don't we all know that if you don't eat very well, you get sicker. And if you don't eat very well or get enough rest, the stresses are even harder on you. That if we don't get out and do some exercise, if we don't spend some time in diverting activities and recreation, that we lose the capacity to bounce back from things. You do need to take care of yourself. So no, I'm not your mom or dad. But don't we know we need to take care of ourselves, especially if we're caring for someone else or especially if we're having special burdens, we need to take care of ourselves. Focus on hope. Act with purpose. Connect with others. Take care of yourself. And the S, search for meaning. If you're in some great tragedy, if there's been some great disaster around you, if you've lost your possessions, stresses of life, you've lost your job, there's all these things going on, and you might think, what does life mean? Well, in the midst of your life, there is some meaning. The tragedy, the disaster, the problem, we might say there's no meaning in that. No, but there is meaning in your life. There are things that you value. There are things that are at your core. Look for them. Depend upon them. Find out what they are once again. Focus on hope. Act with purpose. Connect with others. Take care of yourself. And search for meaning. Now, I told you, don't try to write those down. That wasn't my intention. If you think those are skills you want to learn, if you think you want to know more about them, then search on the internet for resilience. Go to the website of the group I work with, redriverresilience.com and find out more about these facts. Turn to someone else and find something. Last, you probably noticed that I didn't have a fancy PowerPoint. I have a couple of balls. I have some papers. And there's kind of a purpose in that. You see, I love all our great technology, but I want you to know that your ability to bounce back isn't depended upon some great technology, isn't depended upon being the most educated or smartest person in the world. You have that capacity within you. You can make it. You can develop those skills. You may need help. We all need help. But you can make it. Today, I want you to know that you can bounce back and adapt to everything that life sends you. Have a good day.