The capacity to FORGIVE is a divine gift. It can precipitate healing within people and among groups of people. The person who initiates acts of forgiveness is usually (but not always) the one who reveals greater strength. He or she may be the one carrying the deeper burden. It is the stronger person (usually) who is first to forgive, and both parties – the forgiver and the forgiven – benefit from the act if apologies are expressed and accepted. When I choose to forgive I seldom have anything to lose, and usually much to gain.
I know I harbor resentment when I am uncomfortable being around a particular person and would rather avoid him or her. I know I am holding onto hurt when I have little or nothing positive to say to or about someone and when I find it hard to think positive thoughts about someone. I will forgive as efficiently as I find it possible and can muster the strength from within to do so.
I will forgive when someone’s actions toward me (real or perceived) seem sealed into my consciousness and I can’t let them out of the prison within my head. I know it’s time for me to forgive when I feel haunted by someone whose acts against me will not let me go. Forgiveness links me with the divine, heals fragile families, calms hurting communities and restores hope within broken people – and – sets the forgiver free.
Our daily walk takes us through this forest — a 5 minute walk from our home
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.
No matter how good or qualified your therapist — therapy will be of no help:
If you’re seeking help with your intimate relationship but you’re living with your mind made up, bags packed, and a heart full of blame and complaints.
It’s therapy, not arm-wrestling.
If you’re having an extramarital affair and you want to improve your relationship with your spouse so your divorce can be cordial.
It’s therapy, not help with deception and manipulation.
If you’re coming to change or influence a relationship you’re not directly a part of, for instance, you want to fix your son’s marriage or you want you husband to call his mom more often.
It’s therapy, not human chess.
If you’re committed to treating your adult sons and daughters as if they’re children and wonder why they resist visiting or phoning you.
It’s therapy, not guilt-tripping.
If you’re hoping for help to change the political views of people with whom you do not agree.
It’s therapy, not magic.
If you want the lazy to be hardworking, the harsh to be gentle, the stingy to be generous, and the unforgiving to find mercy.
Men and women who discover such radical transformation do so because they grow tired of their selfish, rigid, alienating and arrogant ways, and, in humility, find the courage for change.
It’s not therapy, it’s when desperation meets the Divine.
Blending families, smoothly and successfully, is not easy.
Each family imports its own set of norms and expectations into the new family configuration and these norms and expectations will inevitably clash. Each person, too, brings expectations into the new family quite apart from what the rest of what his or her original family brings to the party. There will also be remaining scars from the sequence of events that made blending two families possible in the first place.
Blending families calls for super-maturity from the marrying or newly married adults.
They are called to lead in such a manner that all the members of the newly constituted family’s voices are heard and opinions are respected, irrespective of age.
The adults will be wise to avoid blaming others like a former spouse or former in-laws for the inevitable difficulties that will arise.
The adults will be wise to avoid disciplining other people’s children, even if he or she is newly married to the children’s mom or dad.
The adults will be wise to avoid believing the children – no matter what they may say when wanting to please the parent – want this new family as much as the newly married adults do.
The adults will be wise to speak well of the parents who are excluded from this new blended family.
I’ve seen women and men painstakingly pick up pieces of their lives after a broken marriage.
This is necessary, natural, and understandable. Deep love, when it ends, at least for one party, is scarily disorientating.
Some never recover. A broken heart can really cause a slow (or a quick) death.
Perhaps you are you tripping over evidence of a terminated relationship. Letters, photographs, or books seem to appear from nowhere and evoke fresh pains or salt for the wounds.
A purge may be necessary, but it’s not for all.
The loot may be all you have. It can become a crucial stepping-stone to greater health. Or it can be a debilitating anchor.
I’ve been confused about why some friendships have ended. I examine memories for clues to what, how, and why things went wrong.
There are times this is unnecessary.
My damaging role is painfully clear.
The pain I caused is deep for others and obvious to me. And, my own and deserved pain is utterly near.
What do we do with our pain – deserved or not?
Options are unlimited once confession occurs.
Confession, of course, does not mean mutual forgiveness is inevitable. It’s not.
Options broaden with confession and commitment to learn from the past.
I am very aware that people don’t analyze their connections in the manner I’ve described below. We’d have healthier communities and families if we did!
Will you search with me when I am searching, stand with me when I am standing, and drop to your knees with me in prayer if and when I need it? I will try to do the same for you.
Will you stand up to me with firmness and kindness when my many blind spots are blocking my thinking? I will try to do the same for you.
Will you join me and examine our connection (as casual acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, partners, or spouses) so that we remain mutual and equal and respectful no matter the degree or significance of our connection?
Will you take time to listen to me? I will try to take time to listen to you?
Will you allow me my quirks and eccentricities and try to regard them as interesting rather than regard them as things you wish were different about me?
Will you seek my highest good as far as you are able given the knowledge we have about each other? I will try to do the same for you.
Will you try to be as unafraid of me as I try to be unafraid of you?
Talk about what you would like to do more as a family and what would we prefer to do less as a family. The list may include monumental challenges that take years to address. The list may include things that can be changed in an instant.
Talk about what you would each like to do more, and less, as individuals in the family. As above, some may be really easy and some may take seemingly forever.
Plan something meaningful and unusual (“off the charts”) that the family agrees to work toward. This may be a trip, a building project, or entering as a family into a race.
Discuss (according to age, ability, and appropriateness) topics that are usually taboo like death, sex, finances, and family secrets. Discuss why they are taboo in the first place. When and why and how did the secret become a secret. Who decides what is and what is not a secret?
Consult a professional who is able to construct a Genogram with your family. Request that it span three generations. This will (potentially) alert family members to troublesome trends and urges that pre-exist within the family system and therefore (potentially) equip members to face them if and when they emerge again. Nothing in families is new!
1. You experience greater OBJECTIVITY and can “see” your most important relationships as if looking at them through someone else’s eyes.
2. Despite any pain, any trauma, any uncertainty, you can see some HUMOUR in what you are experiencing even if it is short lived.
3. You are progressively gathering a small community of friends who know everything (or almost everything) about you and their SUPPORT is becoming easier to trust.
4. You are seeing with greater and greater CLARITY what are and what are not your responsibilities within your most important relationships.
5.”No” comes easier and it is not accompanied by guilt. “Yes” is your response when you really want what you agree to. You begin to BELIEVE the words you say. Your words reflect you, your desires, and are not said from guilt or the impulse to keep the peace or make others happy.
1. Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself to her marriage or motherhood. She has a strong spirit of independence while being a loving wife and mother.
2. Enriched is the woman who does not accommodate poor manners (being taken for granted or being victimized) from anyone (not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, or her parents).
3. Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination, and intimidation. Her relationships are pure and open; her boundaries are defined, secure, and strong.
4. Enriched is the woman who does not participate in unwanted sexual activity. She honors her body as her private temple and shares it, even in marriage, only by her own deliberate choice.
5. Enriched is the woman who has developed a strong, clear, identity. She regularly articulates who she is, what she wants, and what she will and will not do. She is unafraid of defining herself.
6. Enriched is the woman who knows that pursuing her dreams to be educated, to work, to accomplish much, to expect much from her life, are profound acts of partnership in marriage and profound acts of mothering. She knows that the woman who “takes up her life” does more for herself, her husband, and her children than the one who surrenders it.
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