What kind of week will you have? What kind of person will you be this week? Ask these questions and most will say they don’t know or reveal a Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) attitude.
It is possible to plan.
Here’s my five-point plan for this week:
I will do something every day that is an act of self-care and self-love. It is impossible to love others without also loving myself.
I will occupy the driver’s seat of my life. Abdication of this adult role to others – except under extreme circumstances – is the definition of selfishness.
Within the framework of my predetermined values and boundaries and my callings, I will be a highly cooperative person, a team-player, an encourager.
I will listen without waiting to speak knowing that every person has a voice worth hearing and something to teach me.
I will commit at least one specific act of unexpected generosity, one that costs me time and/or treasure, each day. This is to train my seeing, thinking and responding to others so that generosity becomes an ingrained way of life for me.
I’d love to see what you are planning for your week. Email me your 5 or 3 or 7 point plan.
[—- To all the powerful and wonderful women in our lives. For me they are: my sister, nieces, my sons’ girlfriends, friends, and colleagues in so many places around the world and the Women who made me a dad —]
Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself in her marriage, to motherhood, to taking care of her family, but is able to develop a strong sense of herself and hold onto herself, even while being a loving wife, mother and friend.
Enriched is the woman who does not tolerate tolerate poor manners — or being taken for granted, being sworn at, being victimized verbally and physically — from anyone: not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, parents, but who appropriately, and sufficiently values herself so that she does not accommodate those who do not treat her very well.
Enriched is the woman who is fully aware that she never has to participate in sexual activity that she herself does not want, who knows that her body is her own and private temple which she shares, even in marriage, only when it is by her own sacred and deliberate and joyful and joyful choice.
Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination and intimidation, and passive-aggressive behaviors, whose relationships are pure and open, and within which she maintains a strong and valued voice.
Enriched are men who know such women, women who show up, speak up, and, as most women do, make things even more beautiful than they already are, see beauty all around and encourage all whom they know and love.
It can be a line of a novel or verses of a psalm or a thought expressed by a friend.
Psalm 139 has been doing the rounds in my head lately……here are a few of David’s thoughts about David, David’s experience:
“For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s Womb.” “….. your eyes saw my unformed body.”
A dad showed me a wallet photograph of his son, a beautiful, beautiful child, perhaps 8 or 9 years of age.
The dad was quick to express deep shame, even before telling me the child’s name, that he’d not married the child’s mother. He repeatedly said, his demeanor warped as he talked, he had sinned. His shame appeared to permit the dad very little room to ENJOY his child.
“How long will you punish yourself?” I asked, “when will you free yourself to really enjoy your son?”
Blank stare. Silence. He stared perhaps at the realization I would not join him in layering shame he so liberally embraced. The silence was perhaps needed to process the idea that his son, the “evidence,” could be enjoyed at all.
I experienced something similar with another person – when my sons were much younger – who questioned the validity and the Hand of God in my own family.
This godly man, and by all appearances quite a fine one, could not see my two adopted sons — a term I only use when pertinent to a particular context – as incredible gifts from an amazing kind, generous, extraordinary God. He harrumphed, could not celebrate my sons and me and was stuck with how my sons and I came together.
“Not God’s intent,” he concluded and EXPRESSED to me.
His theology trapped, then choked and strangled his capacity for any semblance of joy at our blessings and apparently he’d have preferred me to join him.
In both cases I saw “theology” or “church culture” or whatever suppress the joy of parenting and the joy of living.
It’s the goodness and kindness of God that leads to repentance — I think I’m just beginning to understand Romans 2:4.
I declare again, as I have many times in print and from the pulpit, every time a child is born we ought all stop whatever we’re doing (imagine it with me!) and fall to the ground, worship, and give thanks and then rise up and join hands and celebrate the miracle that is every birth.
May David’s insights about David as expressed in Psalm 139 become your insight about you and my insight about me.
There ARE NO ILLEGITIMATE children.
There are no unplanned pregnancies.
No child anywhere is an error.
May I remind you, even Jesus’ peers questioned his legitimacy.
Finding out your child has NOT been invited to an event that all the other children are attending can be very painful. Do you say something? Do you fight it? Do you let your child know? I’d suggest you talk about this before it occurs or as soon as possible if it does:
• Acknowledge the hurt. Very few things are as painful for a child as finding out about a birthday party that’s already occurred among friends. The pain is real, appropriate, and expected no matter how logical the explanation or innocent the oversight.
• Failure to include your child may have nothing to do with your child (or you). But, examine yourselves. Is there anything your child is doing, or you are doing, that makes it easier for others NOT to include your child? At least face the possibility others may consider you or your child difficult.
• Suggest your child address the omission as politely and kindly as possible with the friend. Of course age is critical here – but a stronger backbone will result!
• Encourage your child to understand the difference between hurt and damage. He or she may be hurt, but it is unlikely the experience has the power to impart damage.
• Encourage and engage in zero payback or retribution.
I have thought a lot about how family members are linked – connected: nourished, or drained? – and checked out exactly how it has been for me in the past 24 hours I have talked to my sister (Cape Town, South Africa), to my brother (Christchurch, New Zealand), to my older son (in New York, USA) and to my younger son who lives with me in Indiana, USA.
When my sons call or text and want to talk or tell me something I experience an immediate and involuntary sense of urgency. Duty or protection mode kicks in. Part of me – a small part – wants to drop everything to hear from them. It is a physiological reaction and I feel it. Almost instantly thinking takes over and delivers context and reason and I relax. “Just checking in, Dad,” from New York, and, “Can you pickup curry for dinner,” called from downstairs nourishes me through the invisible connections my sons and I enjoy.
When my brother and sister phone I am always nourished and encouraged. There is no “alert” within. I like to think it is the same for my siblings when I reach out to them.
I wrote yesterday about how we are connected with people in our immediate, extended, and family of choice. These connections, at best, nourish and inspire us. At worst, they drain us and drive us crazy.
The challenge remains for each of us to take responsibility for how we connect (relate, respond, initiate) in order to have relationships that nourish both others and ourselves.
I referred to “over-connected” people. This is when people are fused, joined at the hip (even though there may be oceans between), where day-to-day operation is so entwined it seems impossible to discern where one person ends and the other begins. Any urge for space will be interpreted as rejection. A kind, gentle, assertion toward appropriate separation will do both parties good. This kind of dependence can be of a financial nature.
“Under-connected” people distance themselves to the point of indifference where neither person is nourished and both can be “starved” through lack of contact. This can be the result of some unresolved matter hidden under some forgotten carpet. A gentle approach and request for appropriate connection may result in rewards for both.
“Cut-offs” (I’ll never talk to that person again) can unsettle both parties, often awarding the “victim” the power over he or she who severed the relationship. Mutual humility may be the only hope.
Your family – blood-, marriage, relatives-by-choice, adoption, and any other means people become family – is vastly more than a list of people on your group-chat or birthdays to try and remember or the ready-made crowd for weddings and funerals.
The hundreds of links (a family of 4 has 16 relationships) in your network – your family – and how you are linked (just right, over-connected, under-connected, loosely-affiliated, cut-off in anger, the “I’ll never talk to him/her-again” kind of connection) is of crucial importance.
How you are connected will either sustain and support and nourish you or drain and exhaust you. And, there is no escaping. Severe disconnections can wield a driving power even in a so-called non-relationship.
We are all “linked” and positioned in a variety of ways within the same extended family and so a family can nourish and support while, at the same time, it can rip to shreds and bleed someone dry.
I’d like to avoid this dramatic contrast but simply look around — listen to people’s family stories — you’ll see it is so.
We are each integral to the health (and un-health) of our family.
We are each a cell-within-the-whole.
The healthier we are, the more “just right” our connections, the more we will be nourishers and be nourished within the unique group of people we each call family.
The healthier I am will lead to a healthier “we” even if it results in hardship* along the way.
* attempts at greater health will be met with resistance from those around, especially those who’ve “benefited” from unhealthy habits and patterns.
difficultrelationships.com 