I have seen some remarkable acts of generosity:

• A visiting speaker from England (to South Africa) did not receive honorariums when he came to speak to churches. He’d give them. He’d preach around the country and give out large sums or money wherever he preached. I know that one evening before he flew back to England he asked his host (a man I knew personally) if he owned his house and proceeded to take thousands of British pounds in cash out of his pocket, “Here, pay the bank off tomorrow. I am not taking all this back to England,” he said.
• I was greeting a congregation at the door one Sunday morning and a man placed a wad of hundred dollar bills into my hand as he whispered a name of who he wanted to receive it. The thousand dollars saved the recipient of much anxiety having just lost his job. He never knew where the money came from.
• The brand new car I drive was delivered to my house (in the USA) on a truck from the generous hand of my brother (who lives in Australia). The only thing I paid for is the personalized license plate. It reads “BROGFT.”

Please send me your similar true stories.

The challenge remains: Become the most generous person you know.

Your relationship may need some help if:

• You find yourself sighing when you know you have to spend time together especially if you are unable to have someone join you to make the time easier to endure. You are both practiced at making sure you have someone with you to help you get along.
• You are able to predict what each other will say, you finish each other’s sentences, and you think you have heard everything he or she has or will ever say. You talk over, belittle, interrupt, and regard each other with contempt.
• Some of the things you partner talks about can trigger your anger in a split moment. Conversations can rapidly escalate to where voices are raised and foul and derogatory language is used. Cutting jokes or observations about each other are commonplace.
• One, or both, speak negatively about the other to “outsiders,” to your children, to your extended family. One of you says things like, “I wish you’d treat me as nicely and kindly as you treat _____ (fill in the blank)” and it could be anyone from a friend to a total stranger.

*******

If you recognize anything about your behavior from the above markers, please, get help. There is no reason to continue with unhealthy patterns. While there’s life there really is hope.

If at all possible, and, from as young as possible:

Allow your children to be exposed to things multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual. Take the lead and they’ll probably follow.

Expect your children to be responsible for their actions, moods, successes, and for when they miss the mark, especially when it comes to good manners. Assume the lead position so they have someone to follow.

Expect your children to be kind to the ill, the elderly, those alone, those disenfranchised. Initiate, then model such behavior and they’ll think it’s a way life.

Encourage your children to speak their minds, especially if it means speaking up to you. If they can speak up to you with kindness, respect, and forthrightness, they’ll be able to hold their own with anyone, anywhere, and most of the time.

Get yourself out of the way so your children can taste the joy of discovery and learning. And, as much as possible, remain present and engaged as they also discover just how safe you make their worlds. Traverse this paradox while you’re as young as possible and the inner force that propels your sons and daughters into life will find your welcome rather than your surprise or resistance.

I will remind my treasured audience that I am my first audience. Everything I write pertains first to me.

“Yesterday my daughter (14) told me how unhappy she is at school. She says the other girls are picking on her and leaving her out and being really mean. Up until last week she was very happy and talking about her best friends and planning weekend events. This week it has all changed. Do I go into the school? Do I phone her friends’ mothers. How do I fix this?”

I’d suggest you watch things for a while. The change you have seen in the matter of days could also change back – and then all your interventions will come to nothing. Relationships can shift in a matter of days as you have attested. Work on managing your own anxiety rather than trying to reduce your daughter’s discomfort or alleviate her unhappiness. The more she can face herself for herself the better. These are life-long skills best learned as early as possible.

Also, I think it is wonderful that your daughter is free to confide in you. Protect this relationship. It’s a treasure. At the same time try to avoid protecting your daughter from learning the lessons only life is able to teach.   

Don’t skip a step:

1. Wail. Spew as much raw emotion as humanly possible. Do it privately in bouts over several weeks. Rent a room in a rural cabin if you must, but cry every available tear. Un-cried tears will turn to poison and make you bitter, angry, cynical, hard, and sarcastic. Don’t deny your heartbreak. Doing so will create backlash in future relationships. This step may take several weeks.
2. Step one will leave you exhausted. So, rest. When this is reasonably accomplished (it is seldom perfected), purchase several blank journals and leave no stone unturned as you reconstruct your heartbreak on paper. Write as much detail as you possibly. Get your mind off what he or she (or others) did do, or what he or she (or others) did not do. Focus attentively upon your role you played in the romance’s decline and downfall.
3. Read respected books. I love Harriet Learner’s “Dance” series and David Schnarch’s Passionate Marriage and The Sexual Crucible. I also like Cloud and Townsend’s Boundaries. Ask people whom you already respect for their favorite “relationship” writers, then get to work. If you do not consider yourself a reader, become one.
4. If, having followed all of the recommendations thus far, you detect some momentary desire for retribution or revenge, or, if you find yourself wishing for some serious illness to inflict your ex, go back to the beginning of this list and start again. The teeniest morsel of desire for revenge will blind you forever. Get rid of it.
5. Value your integrity above any relationship. Tell the truth about who you are. Decide what you want. Remind yourself that it is you alone who makes decisions about who you will be with, what you will or will not do, and how you will spend your time and resources.
6. Embrace the fact that broken hearts seldom fully mend. Pain is often the companion of deep, powerful love. While hearts do not always mend, you can be wiser in the future than you were in the past. Take a close look at your expectations, boundaries, and your reactions to the unavoidable conflicts that accompany all significant relationships.
7. Move on, but not into a new relationship. Allow at least six months for your recovery from any broken romance, even if the romance itself lasted only three months. Following the breakup of longer relationships, allow substantial time to pass – even a year or two – before you think of embarking on a new relationship.

Take a close look around you. No matter where you are in the world you will see that the people you meet (and the masses you may only see from a distance) are not too different from you. They may speak different languages and dress very differently from you and have lots of behaviors you do not understand, but, in essence they are in many ways just like you. We all want:

• Respect, a place at the table, and acknowledgement and respect that comes with simply being.
• To belong, and for our occasional absence to be noticed and missed.
• Meaningful conversations, authentic affirmations, and affection appropriate to the relationship.
• To be heard and to hear others; to have an opportunity to hold and to express an opinion and for that opinion to be heard and respected.   
• Meaningful work; work that counts, that makes an impact, that doesn’t feel like a waste of time and energy and work that is rewarded with a livable wage or salary.
• To live in peace and to have your belongings protected and your reputation protected and respected.

I have spent this entire past week moving out of the house the boys and I have lived in all of their lives. I can’t decide if it has been a freeing or depressing or a large dosage of both. Book by book, box by box, sock by sock, and memory by memory, I moved through our beloved old house (built in 1885). I have found myself lingering over the phases, recalling things I didn’t know were buried within me. Some memories are funny, some are sad, very sad. All of them together form the backdrop of who we are as a family and a spring-broad of who will each will be in the future, both alone and together. Cries of infancy, giggles of toddlerhood, and the preteen tussles over homework and later yelling matches from different rooms about who has the remote and who let the dog out without checking to see if the gates were closed and questions like “am I the only one who knows how to pack the dishwasher?” echo off the walls. Today I unloaded the dryer for the last of thousands of times and found myself a little tearful, not so much that we are moving house, but because all change demands loss, not matter how wonderful the gains.

Are you walking on eggshells at home, at work, or with a particular friend?

It’s very draining to have to watch your every move lest you offend and have to examine what you want to say in the event your words get thrown back at you for analysis.

Living on edge, or “walking on eggshells,” is probably not good for you.

So, what do you do?

Examine the eggshells. Where did they come from? Try to find the source. Is it you, something in your history, or is it other party? When did it begin? When did you start watching your every word and move with this person or in this situation?

If you are the source and you have noticed this before in some of your other relationships, then embrace the challenge to rid yourself of such behavior. Talk about it to a trusted friend. Find your backbone. Embark on your personal journey to eradicate the self-imposed eggshells in your life.

If the other party is the source, plan to address it. Be clear. Be sensitive. Be gentle, but be strong. Avoidance and denial add to the problem. Naming the issue, getting it out in the open, will bring you deserved relief.

I ask a woman how her life is going and she tells me about her children’s lives. She’s very forthcoming. I hear about their failures and successes and their disappointments and their accomplishments in sports.

So, I ask again how she is enjoying her life and she tells me about her children’s teachers and how dedicated they are and how they go the extra mile for her sons and how much she appreciates it and how happy her sons are at school.

I persist. I ask her if she has any close friends and how much time she spends with her peers and she tells me how her sons’ friendships are a little disappointing to her and that sometimes they get left off birthday party lists and how much it hurts her when that happens and how she wishes adults were more sensitive to her children.

I ask the same woman who happens to also be a wife how she is enjoying her husband and she tells me they “work together” as parents and they are almost always on the “same page.”

I press on. I ask the woman if she has a life outside of being a mom and she gives me that blank look as if I have no idea what I am talking about.

The Mercury

Friday Formula

Greet all people with a smile, even if you’re faking it. It’s not insincerity. It’s being polite. It’s refusing to infect others with your inner discontent. Get rid of your discontent in private, when you’re alone.

Be as clear as possible with plans and expectations so possible hurdles and misunderstandings are minimized. Most people like straightforwardness and honesty more than they like complex surprises that could have easily been avoided. Clarity now usually means fewer confusions later. Try it.

Talk less. Listen more. Ask questions that assist others to talk more. Promote other people’s dreams and desires. Move away from shifting every conversation to focus on you and your interests. Other people are very interesting, perhaps even more interesting than you may be.

Do simple things to lessen the load of others. Open doors, stand back, pick up after yourself, and say “please” and “thank you” a lot. Assume a servant attitude no matter how important you or others may think you are.

Work at being the most generous, forgiving, and kind person you’ve ever encountered and you’ll be amazed at how many generous, forgiving, and kind people you will repeatedly encounter.