“My son and his wife seem to be really struggling with their relationship. They have only been married 7 years. I have tried to help by suggesting they each don’t work so much and that they don’t spend so much time on their phones and take little walks together. They sometimes go separate ways for weekends and holidays. They have never said there is a problem. I offered to dog-sit while they go out and spend time together. I don’t know what else to suggest. Please help.”

There is no doubt you are well intentioned and desire what is best for your son and his wife. I suggest you make clear to them how much you care and then trust them to find their unique path as husband and wife (or not).

It is not that I do not share your hope that your son and his wife’s marriage survives and thrives – but they may well be already thriving.

The issues you identify (if they are issues) are seldom solved by walks together or more time spent away from work and more time together. Something deeper is revealed in their behaviors that must be addressed – if these are problems to the couple.

Your son and his wife may be happy with things to remain just as they are.

• The world is broken: may I do my part and in my sphere of influence offer my contribution, be it large or small, to participate in its healing. 

• The world is exciting: may I participate in what it offers by engaging in community events and by serving others. 

• People are lonely and I too am often lonely: may I do my part and reach out to others and be a good listener.

• People are usually fabulous, hilarious, creative: may I embrace some of the many opportunities that come my way to meet new people.

• People are struggling in all manner of ways: may I do my part, large or small, and be generous and in creative and helpful ways, ease the burdens others have to bear.

• Possibilities are endless: may I have an eye for new ways to do “old” things and see potential others are yet to consider. 

• People can be hard and ruthless and unforgiving – may I be gentle-hearted and kind, equipped, ready and able to offer appropriate grace.

Families reveal strengths and faultlines, unity and divisions, humility and arrogance, during periods of change and challenge.

All families are tested from time to time as people grow, struggle, succeed, fail, and recover.

Births and naming of babies; deaths and funerals; adoptions; engagements and weddings; divorces, addictions and recovery from addictions, will put test to immediate and extended families and reveal their resourcefulness and metal.

Life changing events test and expose family metal – what the family is “made of.” 

Family metal is strengthened when individuals take care of themselves within the family, no matter what the family may be facing. 

You demonstrate your metal when you speak up for yourself and are clear about who you are and what you want. 

You show your strength and your integrity when you dismiss rumors and call rumors what they are even if rumors come from the mouths of those whom you most love. 

You add to the family strength when you listen to all sources of division without siding with any.

You demonstrate your integrity when you learn to move from reactivity and knee-jerk flare ups to thoughtful and caring responses.    

You become a source of healing and transformation when you take care of yourself even in the midst of family stress and trauma.

Do you remember your wedding vows and have you ever gone back and read them again? 

Having declared your intent at your wedding, the officiant probably said something like this — I’ll use Janet and George for ease in the hopes you’ll do the obvious and replace them with your own names:

“Janet and George since it is your intention to marry, please join your right hands, and with your promises bind yourselves to each other as husband and wife:

Please repeat after me….

I, George, take you, Janet, to be my wife; and I promise, before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful husband; in plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.

Janet, will you repeat these vows after me: 

I, Janet, take you, George, to be my husband; and I promise, before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful wife; in plenty and in want; in joy and in sorrow; in sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.”

This many years later, be it 2 or 20 or 60 years later, how are you doing when it comes to keeping those sacred vows?

If your story is beautiful and brave or sad and brutal, or a mix of all….

Please let me know. I want to hear from you.

Writing newspaper columns — serious topics, local issues, attempts at humor — is one of my passions. 

Humor in print is not easy.

My one son affirms without hesitation that I am neither funny in person nor print. The other is rather Switzerlandish in his assessment.

When I wrote for the Indianapolis Star — which I did for several years — some of what I considered my funniest columns elicited viscous hate mail.

When the Queen of England — remember her? — had been on the throne for 50 years, I wrote  that that was a long time for anyone to sit on anything, especially a throne.

That line evoked angry responses even though it made me giggle for days.

I still think it’s funny.

My 700 words on how to make a perfect cup of tea almost got me tarred and feathered. Compromising, permitting the use of teabags, got readers riled up but suggesting the milk goes in the cup first was beyond the pale.

“Scandalous,” wrote one ruthless reader.

When I dubbed New Zealand’s typical cuisine as “beyond bland” I got emails from a dozen time zones away hurling very polite insults.

Kiwis are awfully nice even when trying not to be. 

A seasoned Indianapolis Star columnist sent me a note saying I am funny but my readers are not.

That helped.

I forget the content but one Saturday morning – my Indianapollis Star column ran on Saturdays – I received this at the crack of dawn: YOU ARE SLOW AND STUPID. 

The email bore a name and phone number. 

I called the reader whom I knew to be awake since he’d just emailed me and told him I had just read his email and thanked him for his readership. He said the only part he got wrong was the slow part.

In response to a recent local murder of a wife by a husband I wrote a column headlined “Could He Kill You?” 

That morning I opened my email to an all-caps death threat.

Later, on leaving my home, I found a bowl of beautiful flowers and a handwritten anonymous card at my door. 

“Thank you for today’s column. You may have saved my life.”

“Spirituality” is hard to define and to pin down.

What does it really mean? 

Who is really spiritual, who is not? 

What does it mean to say “she is a really spiritual person”? 

When I hear things like, “Mary is dating this really spiritual guy” I can’t help imagining someone who floats or speaks in soothing tones about things eternal and does so with dreamy, distant eyes. 

I’d suggest our spirituality, yours and mine, may be focussed upon matters eternal, but if it is authentic, it will be anchored firmly in the immediate. 

Our “spirituality,” like it or not, becomes evident in all of our relationships, from intimate to platonic. It is seen and felt and known, here and now, in all of our relationships and attitudes.

You know you have met a “spiritual” person when he or she treats all people with dignity and respect.

You know you have met a “spiritual “ person when you meet someone for whom kindness and care are default positions whether a person encountered is “useful” to them or not. 

You will know you have met a spiritual person when you encounter someone who is unfazed by the perceived rank or power or wealth of others and who regards all human encounters as holy.

The observation that one person can never quite know what another is enduring has been vividly true for me this week. In the past few days I have had one-to-one encounters with:

A woman in her late sixties who works night-shift five nights a week, who, with her sister, has given a home to two young children (6 and 10 years old) who had to be forcibly removed from their mother’s home in a city several hundred kilometers away.

A man who works two jobs but must also sell his plasma at the blood bank three times a week to make ends meet. 

A woman whose son, 3 years ago, ended his own life at 15-years-old after having spent a good day with his family and gave no hint of the pain he was apparently enduring.

A woman who moved five hundred miles away from her husband to keep herself and her two young children safe.

A teenager who watched both his father and an uncle killed in a violent inner-city exchange of fire – who then divulged when I asked him that he himself “always carries” a weapon.

A teenager who revealed that every time he leaves his house he takes all his valuables and papers with him just in case he’s told by a relative he can’t come back.

Preparation is everything if you are headed for a crisis or think you may be. Here are a few things to think about to get your head ito the right frame of mind:

• I will not panic, sell the house, or make any drastic moves.
• There are a variety of options I have not considered and will not come to mind when I am under stress.
• How I respond to this crisis (confrontation, change in direction) will  be more important than the issue itself.
• What I am facing is probably not about specific people; rather it is about the environment that has developed among various people.
• No matter how tough things get I will not resort to lies, making others the scapegoat for anything.
• I will enter every conflict with the intention of facing and resolving problems, finding resolutions and forgiving my foes.
• I will enter tough meetings or conflicted circumstances with a spirit of humility and a desire for healing and reconciliation.
• I will promote love and understanding, even at the expense of appearing weak.
• I will be responsible for myself, and responsible to and not for others.
• I will not resort to insulting or humiliating others in order to support my position or strengthen my case.

“I never thought that at 68 years of age I would be writing to you for help with family matters. I guess there would be hundreds of people in the same boat as I am and at some stage must reach out.”

I was thrilled to get this letter, not because someone is experiencing family difficulties. I was thrilled because the writer has reached a point where he sees “reaching out” is possible, necessary, and healthy. 

The writer is apparently also aware that family issues are common. He sees there is no age at which a person cannot reach out for help.  The writer’s tone expresses that there is no benefit to attaching shame to experiencing family difficulties and he apparently sees that his family is like many other families around the world, a thought that many people want to resist.  

But, “I never thought that at 68,” is the portion of the letter that caught my attention. It reveals a common childhood illusion that adults have got things worked out, that adults are on top of things, that there is an age at which everything about life comes together. 

I recall having similar thoughts as a tennager. 

Did you? Has it all “come together” for you?

O memory of painful time,

Are you seed or stone?

A dark and deadly tomb,

Or seed with life to bloom?

Only if I say, “I want you,”

Will I really know.”

O sprouting seed, are you angry?

At the dark and choking dirt? 

What grates your tender shoot,

And blocks your chosen route?

Only if I say, “I forgive you,”

Will I really know. 

O tender shoot, are you bargaining, 

Demanding sun before you grow?

Or would you rather as the sun

Pour warm love on everyone?

Only if you say, “I forgive you first,”

Will I really know. 

O roots, do you wander depressed 

Searching in drought for tears?

Or do you need more sun?

To dry the tears that run?

Only if I say, “Forgive me,”

Will I really know. 

O golden wheat, can you accept 

The gifts of pulsing seed?

Are you wheat or golden bread?

Are you bread or Christ instead 

Only if I say, “Thank you,” 

Will I really know.

“Unless a grain of wheat

falls to the Earth and dies 

it remains alone, 

but if it dies 

It bears much fruit.”

John 12: 24

Poet unknown