Inspiration behind No Deletes

Can you think of a sound that you wish you could never hear again? I can; it is the sound of my oldest daughter, Hannah, hitting the back of her head on our concrete porch.

It was the first warm day of spring that year.  My wife had just brought Popsicles out to our back porch table for four children under five years old. You would have thought we had four hungry wolves attacking their first meal in days. It was a Popsicle frenzy and our girls and their friends couldn’t get that frozen goodness to their lips soon enough.  No one is sure how it happened but Hannah, who was 4 at the time, got knocked backwards and her little head smacked into the concrete. It sounded like thunder on a hot muggy Georgia night.

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My wife jumped into mommy ninja mode. In one swift motion she cut a path to our daughter, scooped her up, brought her inside, laid her on the couch, and called the doctor. Yes, mommy ninja can do all that and more. I started taking care of Hannah while my wife was on the phone. Next thing you know, Hannah threw up and became very sleepy, but the doctor felt like Hannah would be OK and it was fine for her to rest. The doctor warned us that if Hannah threw up again, we needed to take her to the Emergency Room ASAP. Once my wife got off the phone, we put Hannah to bed.
Being the calm and collected parents we were, we only checked on her every other minute.  We would sneak in and rubbed the knot on her head. I guess we thought if we rubbed it long enough it would go away. We woke her up after an hour and she was doing great. We woke her up again before we went to bed, and this time she threw up for the second time. I had to know if she was OK so I loaded her sleepy little head in the car and took her to the Emergency Room. We got checked in and waited with the late night clientele. Eventually, a nurse called us back, checked her vitals, and put us in a room. Hannah did a great job. She was so tired, but everything was new and different for her. She had never been in the emergency room before. She tried hard to stay awake wanting to experience everything. A parade of people came in to check on her always poking and prodding. It was determined that she would need a CAT scan. I thought “OH NO” she has been through so much, already! They took us to the CAT scan lab and strapped her down and boxed her head in to keep it still.   I just knew she would freak out and start crying.  She was tired and confused, plus strange people were doing strange things to her in the middle of the night.

Apparently, what I did not realize is inside a CAT scan machine there is a tiny happy person that gives little children a cup of espresso because Hannah came out smiling and wired! She started talking a hundred miles per hour. “I love you, mommy, my sister, grandparents, great grandparents, our house, our neighbors.  She was going nonstop I was just trying to keep up with her at one o’clock in the morning. The first thing I thought of was a game called “Neat and Delete.”  We do this often at dinner and it goes something like this, each person takes a turn sharing one neat thing about their day and one thing they would like to delete. (I suggest playing it with your family.) So I asked her, “What is your neat, Hannah?” She spoke right away, “The CAT scan.” (She was four.) And then came the delete. I knew it would make me cry!  She had been through so much already and her insensitive father asked her to re-live it all by asking her about it. WHY did I ask her to play this silly game in the first place! OH NO here it comes, she looked at me with her big brown eyes and without missing a beat she said, “Daddy, I have NO DELETES.” I was overwhelmed, she had been knocked on the concrete, thrown up, kept awake well past her bed time and poked and prodded by every nurse in the hospital but her attitude was, “I have No Deletes.”

I have been coaching people for years and when it comes to life plans and personal finances many of us have a long list of Deletes. Well, I can’t because… I don’t have time to improve my outlook right now… Change is hard… There is no way we can create and live on a budget… I will have to give up too much… At that moment when my daughter said, “I have NO DELETES daddy,” it was as if God said, “You need to show people that there is a way for them to have a No Deletes mindset that honors Me.”  You and I are just like Hannah, we can have a No Deletes life.

That is where the name No Deletes Coaching came from. Come join the mission and learn how to have a No Deletes lifestyle.

The rest of the story

When I share the story I often get in trouble because I don’t finish Hannah’s story. She did spend a few days in the hospital with a slight skull fracture, but she is perfectly fine now, a sweet and happy girl.