March 14, 2017
by Rod Smith
It is not only some exotic insects that eat their young. I’ve seen parents do it quite regularly. It happened to my friend when we were boys. His mother ate him. She tried to eat me too but I got away. I ran as fast as I could and after I did that once she left me alone. After I ran away that first time I could visit without her making a meal out of me. She knew I knew what she was up to and furthermore, I knew she knew I knew. Before all this “knewing” gets ridiculous I know that because of what we both knew I knew, she didn’t like me much which was okay with me. If you don’t like someone very much you are unlikely to eat him. Knowing made me safe – which I think it usually does.
Mrs. RunAwayBunny (I call her that just for fun) didn’t eat her son all in one bite, it was just slow, steady mouthfuls. Every time he expressed a view that wasn’t also her view, he got tongue lashed. She chewed him out when he showed any desire for independence or if he laughed at anything she didn’t find funny. Then one day it finally happened, she swallowed him altogether. His pinkie toe of his left foot was my very last glimpse of the real him. All this adoration and love wasn’t very pretty.
Of course she “loved him to death” and because he was “so adorable” she could just “eat him up.” So she did. She did spit him out after a few days much like I imagined the whale regurgitated Jonah. Unlike Jonah, my friend stopped thinking, seeing, feeling, and speaking for himself. Something happened when he got swallowed up, I guessed it was getting so near to the womb he’d already left, that stopped him up or it was something to do with getting too much mother juice. She loved him into what she wanted, into seeing things through her eyes, and when he did, she thought these triumphs were remarkable signs of just how much he loved her. She measured his love by how much of him she could occupy even though it was “Mrs. RunAwayBunny” (I’m liking her name more and more and you’ll know why if you’ve read the story) who wanted to occupy him. If this confuses you now you must know how much it confused me then.
We still rode our bikes together and we sometimes still walked through the forest at the bottom of the yard but after she ate him and coughed him up like a cat and a hairball it was like riding my bike with her and walking through the forest with someone who was always careful and afraid. After she loved him to death he wouldn’t cross Blackburn Road when there was no traffic without being terrified.
Yes. One day, as I told you, and because she loved him so completely and she was always willing to sacrifice her needs for him, she ate the boy out of him altogether. I know. I was there. I watched it happen.
Posted in Addictions, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Difficult Relationships |
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March 14, 2017
by Rod Smith
I ask a woman how her life is going and she tells me about her children. 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 and 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 in and 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.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers |
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March 12, 2017
by Rod Smith
When it comes to my sons, I remind myself of these things:
- Their lives are larger at their ages than mine was at their ages. Of course, they’re starting late and the world is a very different place. Their platforms are more complex, and more dynamic than mine was and, I admit, I am somewhat limited in my ability to identify with it. This means I should not be taken aback when I am blinded to possibilities and experiences they see and want to embrace. Rejecting an idea or a possibility simply because I couldn’t envision it is a good way to widen a gap than is mine, and not theirs, to bridge.
- While the world is a very different place than it was in my formative years, some things remain unchanged. Good manners, using please and thank you, looking people in the eye, standing up for adults, dealing honestly with money and time, working hard, and displaying empathy in the face of those who are suffering – are values that cannot be discarded just because the world is faster paced than it once was. One of my jobs as a parent is to encourage, even enforce some of these things if necessary.
- I am enough for my sons and the only dad they will ever need.
Posted in Adolescence, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Parenting/Children, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Triangles, Triggers, Voice, Womanhood |
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March 8, 2017
by Rod Smith
1. His or her solvency (credit score) is more important than if he sends you flowers or she showers you with gifts and compliments.
2. The state of his or her relationship with his or her parents is more important than how he or she dresses or what he or she drives.
3. How he or she treats and respects a former spouse (and children) will tell you exactly how he or she will one day treat you.
4. How he or she handles truth and matters of integrity are unlikely to change. If he or she is lying around you he or she will also lie to you.
5. How he or she behaves in heavy traffic, in a restaurant with poor service, how he or she handles credit, alcohol, and illegal substances, are windows that give glimpses into the “real” person.
Posted in Addictions, Affairs, Blended families, Boundaries, Difficult Relationships |
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March 4, 2017
by Rod Smith
The Mercury / Monday (3-6-2017)
Do you love your life – or at least most of it?
I hope so. It must be terrible to wake up every day having to face a job you resist in order to provide for people who find you difficult and in whom you may find repeated displeasure. I feel ill thinking of it. It gives me a heavy feeling that I would hate to have to haul around all and every day.
Perhaps you have no job and that may be the source of at least some of your displeasure.
Perhaps you have no family or zero support from family you do have.
I am very aware of how much family and friends form the scaffolding of my life, making so much difference to me when things are tough.
No matter what your circumstance – and I declare this as loudly and forcefully to myself as I do to you: you are what you’ve got. You are your most powerful asset, and, you’d better make the most of it.
Someone wiser than I – and I’d give full credit if I knew the source – said, “we see the world, not as it is, but as we are.”
I’d suggest we also love others, not as they are, but as we are.
Peace. Have a fabulous, loving, and aware week.
Posted in Addictions, Anger, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace |
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March 2, 2017
by Rod Smith
- My heart goes out to children who live in unsettled houses. Houses where the abuse of alcohol or drugs dominates everything. Houses where rage rips people apart.
- My heart goes out to children whose parents were once together and now are apart. Although the child may have received loving messages about how they are loved despite what mother and father do it still makes no sense to the child.
- My heart goes out to children who are fighting a deadly disease and to the siblings who are fighting it with them. The necessary lack of certainty bolstered with statements of faith, all within the same adult sentence, can be confusing. It’s at least as confusing for the child as it is for the adult trying to comfort them.
- My heart goes out to children whose boundaries are ignored and violated and whose voices are ignored or silenced. Such children might as well be invisible to those commissioned to love and protect them.
- My heart goes out to the child who must assume a defensive stance because of race, gender, or language.
- My heart goes out to children who are hungry in a nation of plenty, those born outside the dominant culture, those whose troubles are the fruit of a troubled nation.
Posted in Adolescence, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Parenting/Children, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Voice |
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February 27, 2017
by Rod Smith
Ten signs of the presence of spiritual abuse, manipulation, domination, or intimidation.
Spiritual Abuse (always on a continuum) is occurring when a pastor, leader, or even a friend:
- “Hears” God for you. God apparently “goes through” him/her to speak to you. This requires a sense of superiority – from him or her and is often framed as being “more mature,” and a sense of being “less” from you.
- Alienates (shuns, ignores) you if you do not adhere to his/her guidance, leadership, or authority. This is usually VERY subtle – so it is easy to deny.
- Suggests that rejection of his/her “higher understanding” is done so at your spiritual or even physical peril. You will hear things like, “Be careful. You will move yourself from the covering and protection of God if you don’t listen to me.”
- Rewards your obedience with inclusion, and punishes your questioning or resistance with withdrawal. Compliance gets stroked; resistance gets struck.
- Demands “cathartic” honesty. Unless you spew out every detail of your life you must be hiding or withholding something and that “something” will, of course, impede your spiritual development.
- Lavishes you with praise, acceptance, and understanding when you are “good” and “pushes” you away when you are “bad.”
- Is apparently fixated on the use of titles like reverend, pastor, elder and cannot appear to relax in the company of “ordinary” mortals. The issue is not in the use of legitimate titles (or robes or religious garb) – it is that identity seems impossible without the titles or the trappings.
- Leaves a trail of cut-off relationships. Usually in the trail are those who refuse to bow, to submit, to stand in awe of, to be thoroughly entranced by, the will of the pastor, the leader or the friend. Always regard with suspicion or caution leaders who are cut off or alienated from members of their family, especially their parents.
- Lives from a “for me/or against me,” “black/white,” “all/or nothing” platform of “relationships.”
- Genuinely sees God’s Call so zealously, so fervently that any signs of resistance are seen as the expressions of The Enemy or an enemy – thus, relationships are expedient (disposable) in the light of getting on with God’s work.
The perpetrators of abuse apparently fail to see that reconciliation, and forgiveness, “space,” and room to move, and room to respectfully disagree (boundaries, morality) are all part of the glorious work of the Gospel.
Freedom begins with recognition. Recognition must result in action.
Stand up to those who misuse their positions of leadership. Spiritual abuse serves the welfare or neither the perpetrator nor the victim – quite apart from the disservice it does to the church.
All authentic holiness, spirituality, Godliness, is LOCAL. If it’s not present and respectful in the most immediate one-to-one relationships (spouse, child, secretary, mail-carrier, in the traffic, at the airline check-in, with the dog) it will not be authentic in the one-to-many relationships, no matter how many thousands or tens of thousands make up the many.
Posted in Addictions, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Manipulation, Recovery, Responsive people, Sexual abuse, Spousal abuse, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Violence |
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February 26, 2017
by Rod Smith
A conversation means we both speak. You speak, I listen; I speak, you listen. We take turns. We build on what each of us has said. We ask questions related to content already shared. It’s really quite simple.
Appearing to listen while you are really waiting to speak is not listening.
The split-second you decide you know what I am going to say or think you have heard it all before is when you stopped hearing.
When I am talking and your eye contact is with your phone you are not listening. And, no, this is not the new form of multitasking. Listening takes focus and respect.
When I tell you something, respond to what I have said. Following what I’ve said with your bigger, better story, related or unrelated, reduces conversations to competitions.
Unless you are genuinely affirming people we both know I’d suggest we leave all others out of our conversation.
Our routine one-liners and well-worn war stories serve as shields. If we are really going to talk we either have to get them out of the way early on in our dialogue or we have to agree to focus on content neither of us has shared with each other before.
Posted in Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Responsive people, Triangles, Trust, Voice |
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October 16, 2016
by Rod Smith
“I read about rebound relationships – please explain.”
The term is used to describe a relationship that is in reaction to a breakup or a loss where one or both parties enters a relationship before finding “closure” on the immediate-past relationship:
- Falling in love (or into a relationship) to fill a vacuum rather than because of who the new person is.
- Falling in love (or into a relationship) because the grieving or abandoned person has apparently nowhere else to go.
- Falling in love (or into a relationship) out of anger, revenge, or to prove a point, in the wake of a troubled breakup.
- Falling in love (or into a relationship) out of a sense of novelty rather than because of who the new person is.
- Experimenting with someone and dating as a sense of loss dissipates without being honest about intentions.
- Entering a relationship because being alone is too frightening or shameful to contemplate.
- Falling into a new relationship thoughtlessly and therefore showing little or no respect oneself or for the new person.
- Entering a new relationship when the past relationship has not fully ended.
Posted in Affairs, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Long distance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Womanhood |
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October 16, 2016
by Rod Smith
Secrets to working relationships:
- See every opportunity or challenge as a potential to learn something new or to grow in new ways. No matter how many years experience you have there’s always room to learn and to grow. Your teachers may often be half your age. Get used to it.
- See every conflict as an opportunity to learn more about grace and forgiveness. This is not some odd subservience or rolling over and playing dead. It’s acknowledging your possible part in any conflict and the willingness to learn from it – even if you didn’t cause it.
- Do what you can to cooperate even with those who are not necessarily in your camp or on your side. Building bridges is usually better than burning bridges.
- When you are wrong or make a miscalculation or a misjudgment or you over react to something admit it and make things as right as you are able. The truth is always better and easier to deal with. Nothing can be solved if you are protecting image over integrity or accuracy.
- Volunteer wildly, but stay within your skills and talents. Things work better in organizations when people do the jobs they are hired to do and resist “bleeding” into other areas they are not necessarily skilled to work in – even as a volunteer.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Manipulation, Reactivity |
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