A birthday or a traumatic event can trigger one to reflect on life, reconsider what’s truly important, and how to make an impact in the world. For me, recent days contain both. Add nearly four months of stay-at-home quarantine, responsibilities supporting front-line healthcare workers, and obligations to educating our children, taking a longitudinal perspective couldn’t be more critical.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Mark Twain

Three of the four members of our family have birthdays in the coming days. Dubbed in our household as “Birthday Week”, we ceremoniously usher in the week with joyous non-stop celebration. This year will be a little bit different as we try find safe, socially distanced options to mark the occasion. To add to the limitations, my daughter is healing up from emergency surgery and beginning a long road to recovery.

It was Father’s Day last Sunday and we had just finished up a homemade breakfast together. My husband and I sat at our kitchen table as he gave the blog post I wrote the day prior a quick proofread and we reminisced about the early chapters of our courtship and marriage. https://maryenquist.com/2020/06/22/building-blocks-of-life/

Our sweet 8-year-old daughter, Natalie, came in from the backyard after taking our new puppy out. As Natalie pushed the door shut the bottom windowpane shattered, cutting a deep 7-inch-long laceration in her left arm from her palm to her elbow down to the ligament.

Both steps away, my husband and I sprang into action as I clamped her wrist to stop the bleeding and held her arm together and Matt quickly gathered our son, our puppy, and a few sets of shoes. We raced down our front steps and drove immediately to the nearest Emergency Department. There wasn’t time to wait for an ambulance.

In the coming hours, I would need to physically restrain and attempt to calm my daughter to minimize thrashing as Natalie endured a gruesome emergency surgery performed while she was awake. Maintaining eye contact, stroking her hair, and telling her I loved her, Natalie’s eyes pierced through me as she screamed in pure terror and pain.

It’s a moment I have relived several times since Sunday and imagine I’ll remember the rest of my life. I felt powerless. I prayed harder than I have ever prayed that she be safe. Nothing in that moment felt more important than being her mom and just getting her through the immediate next step.

I feel blessed by the goodness that life has brought me thus far. Yet being confronted by the fragility and uncertainty of each of our lives I want to recommit to reflecting on my life’s journey and putting all the pieces in perspective.

About four years ago, in a leadership exercise guided by Mette Norgaard I was given a scroll tied up with ribbon. Mette instructed us to mark the center of the scroll with the current year, noting the date, our current age, our spouse/partner’s age (if applicable), the ages of our parents (if still alive), and our children (if we had them). Next we were instructed to carry out the timeline and these notations for fifteen years on either side, projecting forward in three five-year increments as well as back in time by three five-year increments. At this point, it was a simple math exercise.

For some of my colleagues, fifteen years in the future brought them to and beyond the remainder of their career. This forced reflection on the legacy they would leave and what they might do in retirement. As the youngest member of the group, I was one of just a couple of us that would still be in the workforce and perhaps at the height of my career in that time frame. On a personal level, it also brought me to the point where my children would be out of the house.

Once we had charted out the years and various ages, we were asked to think about and document looking back on both our careers (above the line) and our personal journey (below the line) noting major milestones, achievements, lessons learned, and considering the company we kept in each chapter. Such work illuminated patterns, progressions, and formative crucible moments. The last fifteen years contained my marriage, the births of both of my children, the four marathons I have run, and the majority of the early years of my career to date. It was kind of fun!

Then our attention was directed to forecasting the next fifteen years. We all found this portion of the exercise to be significantly harder. Seeing the ages of both my parents and my children laid out in five-year intervals triggered a profound sense of the finite amount of time I had available with each. Considering my own journey, I projected a cycle of renewed health and wellness as I hit my stride in my role, predicted the retirement of the Senior Executive I was working under at the time, and laid out opportunities for advancement that were likely to follow.

Being responsible for strategic planning, I thought through our project portfolio and marked out projected milestones we were contemplating with new buildings coming online, strategic service lines expanding/shifting to outpatient, and potential consolidation within the market. The next five years were markedly easier than the ten to fifteen year horizon. It was a profound exercise that was completed over several sittings. In pulling out that scroll recently, my five year projections with eerily accurate. I have yet to create a new scroll, although I do hope to do so this summer.

Few of us could of predicted COVID-19 and the implications that would have to our industries and lifestyles. I didn’t incorporate impacts of projected economic cycles, nor presidential elections. I couldn’t have foreseen all that is happening within society, the deep division, and the need for such change and healing in our country and for our planet. The scroll exercise isn’t intended to be a panacea for planning out all contributions each leader can make. Still there is power that comes in intentional reflection not only in the here and now, but longitudinally on where we’ve been and where we are going. The noise of the day-to-day and busyness of our weeks that fade away with a clarity that allows us to see some predictability and highlights the big picture decisions we make regarding the trajectory of our lives.

Looking at my scroll was a reminder to me that those “career milestones,” while wonderful, were not the most important projections on the page. I did receive the title I had hoped, but that wasn’t what I was most proud of looking back over the last five years. It was a means to an end. The precious time and memories created with my family and children meant the most to me. I am most proud of the impact I am making in my organization, the communities I serve, and the lives of those I can influence through the leadership positions I hold.

None of us can solve all of the problems our communities, country, and world face, but all of us can make a difference. As I celebrate my birthday this Thursday, I hope to approach the year ahead with more clarity, motivation, and goodness than any orbit around the sun to date.

Happy Fourth of July to all! If you think of it, send up a little prayer or warm vibes to our Little Miss that day as she turns nine!