September 2, 2009
by Rod Smith
Draw lines carefully...
Relationships can deteriorate very quickly – and one of the two persons might feel the need to set limits or draw a “line in the sand.”
While this is often necessary, there are a few things to consider:
1. Idle threats are ineffective. If you don’t mean it, or cannot act upon it, your stand will be fruitless and your credibility will be minimized. It will make self definition much harder to achieve the next time.
2. You might not get what you want. If winning is your only option you might want to think things through a little more.
3. Don’t proclaim your stand, set limits, declare boundaries when you are angry or upset or under the influence of absolutely anything. Wait until you are calm. Have your limits well rehearsed. Your partner will expect you to behave as you have always behaved. He or she knows every trick in your book to get (from you) the kinds of responses to which you are both accustomed.
4. Don’t take a strong stand on matters not worthy of the energy. Some things are really unimportant and are just not worth the effort.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication |
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September 2, 2009
by Rod Smith
Take up your life
I am struck by the frequency of letters I receive with a common theme. It goes like this.
“I have a ‘special relationship’ with my boss. He relies on me more than he does on his wife. I know more than she does about his life, business, and finances. It is totally non-sexual. It is because it is not sexual that we CAN talk about anything. He pays me less than he should but I understand. One day he will make it up when things improve. I get jealous about where he spends his time. If he wants a friend, I am his friend. When he wants to be the boss you’d think we were almost strangers. This hurts but I can’t tell him because them I sound like his wife. I can’t leave. I know too much about the business and he needs me. Yet, I am too emotionally attached. Pleas help.”
Bailing out and letting the chips fall where they may is the only option. While the boss requires a course in growing up, the employee ought to learn to get her emotional needs met outside of the workplace. Both are at fault – but the boss, being the one with the power, is responsible for the (mis)shape of the relationship.
Posted in Affairs, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication |
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August 27, 2009
by Rod Smith
You are where the buck stops for you.....
appears to be sadly lacking from many letters I read. Living the “blame-game” poisons vision (until it is destroyed), leads to thinking like a victim (and then behaving like one). It makes people hypersensitive (picky, irritable, short-tempered) in close relationships. Perhaps saddest of all, avoiding personal responsibility takes the fun out of living. I reverse this toxic condition (when I notice it rearing its ugly head within me) through simple, but not easy, shifts in my attitude:
1. I acknowledge that I am where I am because of my own set of choices, my own deep-seated emotional make-up, and my own complex history, and I take full responsibility for who and what I am.
2. While I cannot be held responsible for the choices others have made and which have influenced the trajectory my life, I am responsible (as an adult) for my reactions and responses to their choices.
3. I shall ask the question “what is my role in this?” when facing situations where I feel trapped by unpleasant realities or circumstances.
4. I shall remove my focus from others and what others may or may not have done, and consider my role, my part in how things develop in my life.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Communication |
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August 19, 2009
by Rod Smith
Rock the boat, don't sink it....
– the emotional and relational equivalent of parking in a different spot, using a different stairwell, climbing the stairs rather than using the elevator, or sitting at a different table. This is not to be difficult or to seek attention, but to challenge the well-worn paths that have become too comfortable and predictable for you. Shifting how you relate will be like opening the windows and letting in fresh air.
2. Re-adjust your internal GPS – you make the decisions about how you behave, what you like and dislike, what you do with your leisure opportunities, and the direction you are taking with the years ahead of you. Placing your direction, your likes and dislikes, the use of your time and resources in the hands of others is not an indication of love or friendship. It’s an abdication of personal responsibility.
3. Do what you really love to do. Become an expert in what you love. If you don’t know what you love and are good at, you will assume tasks and responsibilities outside of your set of innate skills. Repeatedly landing tasks you don’t want will bring you no joy. Knowing and doing what you love will make you an asset wherever you are, and, as an added bonus, you will be fun to be around.
Posted in Anger, Attraction, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Victims, Voice, Womanhood |
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August 3, 2009
by Rod Smith
Step up to the plate...
Spousal physical abuse should never be tolerated. Bruises, swollen eye-sockets remind us that both men and women can resort to violent acts on a partner they once declared to love and respect forever. Such acts can result in a call to the police and a journey to the hospital.
Less obvious, but perhaps equally harmful, are the quiet and non-violent abusive acts of people who are abusive through their passivity (indifference), their unwillingness to assume responsibility (avoidance of) for their families.
One can hardly call the police because a man or a woman refuses to play his/her role as provider, supporter, or caregiver for their family, but homes are full of such people, men and women who will not take responsibility for their spouses and children.
Being emotionally withdrawn from our families, for whatever reason, can be as damaging, and if not more so, as deliberate physical acts of violence.
Many a woman might have a husband who never lifts a finger to her in anger, but his refusal to participate in the family, to be the dad and the husband he is called to be, might be as damaging as if he had been physically violent.
Posted in Communication |
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July 30, 2009
by Rod Smith
Thulani is 11 now...
Race comes up often in our family now, but it was kindergarten that officially informed Thulani that he is black. Prior to this enlightenment he’d casually told me, on several occasions, that I was silver and he was gold. I liked that.
After a few more sensitivity lessons at school, and yet in kindergarten, he asked me why I had put Rosa Parks off the bus. He noted, and with authority, that it was a white man who had done this to her and that I was white. I am not sure he paid much attention to my “cows have four legs and dogs have four legs but dogs are not cows” explanation.
Marshall Thulani
When a little younger than his kindergarten induction into the world of race-relations, Thulani was draped in a towel and, stepping from the shower, he glanced down at his naked body, closed his eyes and prayed: “Lord Jesus. Make me the same color as my daddy!” Opening his eyes, he glanced at his unchanged skin color and said, “Oh well. Didn’t work. I like brown anyway.”
“Just as well,” I noted, “you are going to be brown for a long time.”
“You know,” said Thulani in the fifth grade, “I am the only black boy in my class? There are girls. But I am the only black boy.”
“You know,” I replied, “I am the only white man in our house.”
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships |
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July 28, 2009
by Rod Smith
Now 11
days Thulani was home from the hospital I got separate visits from two
real Christian women.
“I want you to know I don’t support your decision to adopt a baby,” said the one.
“Don’t you think we should find him a real family? There’s still time,” said the other.
In their defense, which I was blind to at that point, I should have recognized their legitimate concerns. It’s not that I’d demonstrated an overly nurturing persona, nor had there been any suggestion that I was looking to adopt (because I wasn’t). But the visits were invasive. I was not appealing to either of these women for help, permission, or guidance – and neither was, at best, more than an acquaintance.
It makes me think of the woman I ran into somewhere and much later (I really do forget where and when) who suddenly burst out, quite vehemently, having picked up pieces of our story: “You might have had these boys as babies all by yourself, but let me tell you this, you have never breast fed a baby and you’ll never know that joy.”
Before I could affirm her observation she was gone.
Posted in Anger, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships |
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July 27, 2009
by Rod Smith
ACT, Australia
the seasons in our lives change and the adjustment to that change requires attention and re-alignment. When our children leave home, we really miss them, and relating to them isn’t about meeting their needs but listening and relating to them as adults. They don’t need us in the ways they use to – we no longer have the role we once had. Parenting takes on different aspects – being available for support and friendship while at the same time offering encouragement as we see their lives being lived and the children coming along.
My own “learning curve” as our children got older was to make the decision to focus on the roots of my own anxieties, which came from my own family background. There were issues in my own life that needed healing. I saw very clearly my tendencies to want to control their lives because I thought my way was better. I had made mistakes and I didn’t want them to make the same mistakes.
A challenging task for many parents – especially moms, is ‘letting go’ of their sons and daughters to let them live their lives. It’s being able to stand back and allow them to do it THEIR way – trusting and respecting their values and decisions how they parent, and where they go no matter how radical it might seem.
Loving takes on a whole new meaning. It takes a lot of focus and energy to change the way we see our sons and daughters. Keeping quiet when we could voluntarily give our ‘sound advice’ is hard work. If they ask for input, that’s another story.
I pray a lot for my adult children and also for myself that I may continue to keep accepting them as they are and releasing them to their own journeys.
Readers wanting to write directly to Jean may do so at: Jean@TakeUpYourLife.com
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family |
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July 27, 2009
by Rod Smith
You can do all five today...
1.
Forgiveness – not necessarily “forgetting” although forgetting is a bonus, but fully forgiving everyone, everything, and all the time. I am not suggesting you stand in line to be repeatedly hurt.
2. Generosity – offering of your resources, gifts, and skills to others for a fee, or no fee. Both can be expressions of generosity. Just because you pay for something does not mean the source is not generous. Remember, and I’d give credit if I knew where I heard it, “If you get something for nothing someone is getting nothing for something!”
3. Hospitality – offering your home, car, and your resources (wisely) to others empowers everyone in the equation. It is a bonus if you can do it for an enemy or an estranged family member. This is radical hospitality.
4. Humor – offering others your ability to see and to express the lighter sides of life. Anxious people (organizations, churches, schools, businesses) become convinced that seriousness is more productive or more important than playfulness. In truth it is quite the opposite. (Please read Ed. Friedman: Failure of Nerve).
5. Awareness – developing healthy awareness of the impact your life has on others, the environment, and the future.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family |
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July 17, 2009
by Rod Smith
Take up your life
and some circumstances make it tougher. Here are three variables for discord and three that will provide a platform of greater integrity:
MAKING IT TOUGHER
1. The baby arrives embodying the hope of salvation from the dismal, ordinary lives of the men and women in the immediate family. “She gives us all a reason to live,” said grandmother* to friends, the baby ensconced in her tender grip. “This one’s going to turn out right. I will make sure of that,” she says only to herself. *Insert grandfather, mother, father, and you have fertile soil for discord and emotional entrapment.
2. The baby arrives and grandparents are well off, while the parents are in a tough financial place. Of course the parents want the best for the child and “stuff” is both needed and given. Even though the grandparents’ generosity might be benign – the platform is healthier when the child arrives and lives within the parents’ budget and is not “subsidized” by extended family. Of course I do not mean “normal” sharing of celebratory gifts.
3. Families can and often will unite or “let bygones be bygones” when a new baby enters the family (especially a first grandchild) but unresolved discord will again surface and the baby will be the (unintended) recipient of unnecessary baggage, having been unable to deliver the family from its conflict.
Three conditions that will provide a platform of greater health and integrity when a new baby enters an extended family:
MAKING IT “EASIER”
1. Naming rights are the sole domain of the parents, and the parents are absolutely free of all expectations to name the baby after anyone living, dead, real, or fictional at the request of, or under pressure from, anyone in the family. [Perhaps you would believe how often this is an issue. “In THIS family ALL the first born boys are named after MY great-great uncle who was the first man to ….. (insert achievement here) ….. so do you want to be IN my will or OUT of my will,” says dad with a warm smile.]
2. The extended family provides meals and support for the new mother and father but does not take the new baby from the parents so “you can get some rest” or “here, I’ve done this before, let me do that for you.” While favors and offers of help can be very necessary and very kind the greater help is to clear the deck of extraneous tasks so the mother and father may be free to be absolutely present with the baby as much as possible. [“Here, I’ll do the shopping for you so YOU can be with the baby,” says auntie, rather than, “Here, I’ll take the baby so YOU can go shopping.”]
3. The baby arrives and joins the family much like (forgive the simple analogy) a car joins the flowing traffic on a well-run busy freeway system. Babies are better off when people are already enjoy fulfilling lives, where the baby does not become the center of the universe, where the child joins, and things continue, rather than bringing life to a standstill for everyone, and then becoming the focal point around which all meaning and purpose is derived.
Posted in Blended families, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family, Friendship, Grace |
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