April 5, 2011

It is not about the car……

by Rod Smith

“I am 30. I have been with my boyfriend for 13 years. We have four children and are not married. For some reason I have stayed. My boyfriend acts like he has a problem with commitment. Every time I ask he says it will happen. He has such a nasty attitude. He recently started a new job but he hasn’t had a job in two years. Every time I say I can’t do this anymore he says all I want to do is run back to my mother. I woke up one morning to take kids to school and the car was gone. I thought the car was stolen. I’m getting dressed and he pops up and tells me he took a loan out on the car and they came and got the car. Do you agree when I say it is time for him to be a man on his own? I’m leaving. We don’t have a car and I have to walk my children to school because of his stupidity.” (Edited)

This is not about a car, your mother, or love. It takes two people to become this entangled and irresponsible. Do what is right and courageous for your four children before they repeat this destructive, sad pattern.

Posted in Difficult Relationships | Leave a Comment »

April 4, 2011

Mother tells a story of ubuntu — and wins my competition

by Rod Smith

I am 51 and became a mum at 43 when I adopted a child. I often take my son to Mitchell Park.

Recently, a woman who sells sweets and chips happened to be sitting next to my bench. I bought some goodies from her and we started a conversation while my son played on the swings.

She told me she had 3 children – two of whom were unemployed. Her husband is an invalid. Despite her hardships, like waking up at 4am and leaving home at 6, this woman had an aura of peace and contentment.

She asked why I had only one child and I explained that I had had infertility problems. We continued chatting while my son played.

When it was time to leave I decided to buy 5 packets of chips to take home. As I handed over my money she gave me 6 packets- one “bonsela” for my special son.

I cannot explain how touched I was. Here was this really poor woman, eeking out a living, offering me an extra packet of chips for free.

I will never forget her generosity. This is Real UBUNTU!

Paddy

(“bonsela” – unexpected bonus – Zulu term)

Posted in Children, Communication, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace | 1 Comment »

April 3, 2011

The Surprising Discovery of Richard McChurch

by Rod Smith

Richard McChurch was very aware that God’s a communicating God. The still small voice or the thunderous call, and anything in between, (whichever God might choose to use at a given time) was not something to which he often laid claim. When Richard felt God had spoken to him, he was always particular about inserting the words “I believe God spoke to me.” This not only gave him room to be wrong but also the appearance of humility.

One day he had a very unsettling experience. It was as if everything he had ever believed about the way God treats humans was turned upside down.

“What do you really want, Richard?” he believed God asked when he was earnestly praying about a few major decisions.

The question was posed long and hard. It lodged somewhere deep in Richard. There were no voices, no unusual feelings or anything at all weird about the moment. This was a “matter-of-fact God” meeting him, face-to-face and there was no mistaking who it was as far as Richard was concerned.

“Go on, figure it out Richard. What do you really want?” he felt God say.

It was as if God was playfully saying, “Stop asking me what I want for you. I know what I want for you. I am God. I am not at all confused about what I want for you. What I require is that you demonstrate the courage and willingness to determine what you want for you. Do this, Richard, and we can do business.”

He became very nervous. In his silent negotiations, random and scary thoughts began darting across his mind. It was very disconcerting.

“What if I want to break up my family, hurt someone or steal something?” he questioned God.

“Is that what you really want? You want to go around hurting people? Do you really want to take what is not yours? Do you think damaging others is what you were cut out for?”

“No Lord.”

“Then what kind of game are you trying to play?” he felt God’s persistent voice welling up inside him. “I am asking you to evaluate, for yourself, how you would most like to use the talents I have given you. Take stock of the time you have left, the opportunities that come your way. You keep saying I will grant you the desires of your heart, Richard. But you know what? You wouldn’t recognize them if they jumped out at you from behind a bush. I am asking you to take the responsibility for your life. Develop a blueprint of what would inspire you. Discover and know yourself, Richard. Present me with a plan instead of continually asking me for my plan for you. Find my plan buried like treasure, in your strongest desires and longings. Grow up, in other words!”

Richard was shocked to hear God speak in this manner. He had always been taught that God had a plan for his life and for many years he had waited “in faith” for that plan to unfold. Now it sounded as if God expected him to do something!

“That’s the problem!” God interrupted his confusion; “you want to give me the responsibility for your life when I want you to be responsible for your own life. You think my will is something deep and mysterious when it is not. In fact my will for you is that you discover and do what you really want! It’s about passion Richard, passion. Just make sure it is what you really want.”

Richard thought long and hard and realized to his horror that he really did not like his career, chosen purely for the financial and status benefits. He realized that even his sports interests were built around promoting his career. He sat in stunned silence and realized that if he honestly answered the question he was in trouble.

“What I really want to do God, is so far from what I am doing with my life at present that it will take a miracle from you to turn it around,” he said in near desperation.

“No,” said God, “it will take one from you.”

Posted in Differentiation, Faith, Family, Grace | 1 Comment »

April 3, 2011

A person who loves you will…..

by Rod Smith

not intentionally embarrass you in private or in public

do all he or she can to avoid scornful comments, hurtful humor, and sarcasm

listen attentively to you even if he/she has heard what you are saying many times

stand up for you when you are right

stand up to you when you are not right

refuse to be a pushover

not offer you blind or unquestioned support. He or she knows that unquestioned support is a form of idiocy and no indication of love. Love invites questioning and dialogue

be unafraid to ask you tough questions

not try to cut you off from your community of family and friends

not tell you how to dress, speak, think, or feel

give you regular, uninterrupted, opportunities for eye-to-eye contact so you have time to each reflect upon your lives. This is time without phones, television, radio, music, pagers, computers, or children invading the holy territory between you

regard both your unshared and your shared private lives with absolute respect

expect and encourage you to have a life outside of the life you share.

Posted in Difficult Relationships | Leave a Comment »

April 3, 2011

My faith is once again questioned…..

by Rod Smith

How can you be a Christian AND promote the idea of growing your SELF?

Christians often have little idea of what it means to deny self or to die to self. There is apparently less understanding of what it means to love self and love others. The “mixed” message of “deny self” (a condition of discipleship / Mark 8:34, see also Luke 9:25 NIV) and “love self” (Jesus commanded “love others like you love yourself” in Mark 12:31), I agree, can be confusing.

Jesus did not mean we were to deny we have a self! He meant we were to deny serving the self we know, love, develop, and enjoy.

Conversion to Christianity does not mean your self disappears or that your self is something to be ignored. Conversion TRAINS and DEVELOPS the self to love and serve God.

At conversion the self gets a new perspective. It gets a new focus. At the Cross the SELF gets and a new reason to live. Conversion is the beginning of self-renewal. The self is offered to God as a gift for restoration, renewal, and service.

Rather than serving self, obeying self, and being self-centered and being self-indulgent, at CONVERSION the self decides to serve God and others. At conversion the self submits itself to God’s will, becomes focused on Who God is and What God wants.

Denial of self (as ordered by Jesus) is a person’s decision to refuse self-indulgence and to turn the self toward full service of God.

It takes a developing, growing, and healthy self to love and serve a healthy God.

A non-self, an ignored self, a self whose very existence is denied, cannot love anyone or anything, let alone love and serve a perfect God.

I believe Jesus meant we were to discover who we are, understand who we are, love who we are – while offering all of who we are unequivocally to God as an act of worship, service and sacrifice.

We are to offer ourselves to God as a living, growing sacrifice (Romans 12).

There is a huge difference between identifying and developing a self to serve God and living in the denial that we have a self at all.

Jesus was a SELF to be reckoned with – yet He was not selfish at all — be the same.

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Faith, Grace | Leave a Comment »

March 31, 2011

Couples who are too close…….

by Rod Smith

Edwin Friedman – a pioneer in family therapy, writer, teacher, and rabbi and who was trained by Murray Bowen who is considered the “father” of family therapy and “Bowen Theory” – wrote about helping couples to separate, establish space, maintain individuality and secure room to breathe and room to move in order to help the couple avoid radical separation (divorce) in their future. Friedman suggested sometimes couples were “too close” meaning that everything done one or both persons seemed to unsettle or rock the world of the other or both.

Identifying couples who are “fused” or who are too close:

1. Every thought, move, glance, blink of the eye, every gesture is interpreted to mean something by the other person and the meaning is usually negative.

2. Mind reading is at its most intense. What is damaging is that what is “read” or interpreted is believed as fact. “I know exactly what you are thinking when you look at me like that.”

3. There’s no room for change or growth because there’s no emotional “wiggle room.” If one person is convinced that he or she knows exactly what the other person will do and will think there is no room for anything new to occur.

I have named these writers to facilitate reading beyond this column.

Posted in Affairs, Anxiety, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Schnarch, Space, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Voice | Leave a Comment »

March 30, 2011

Your comment about suicide is profound…….

by Rod Smith

Good morning/evening, Rod

If you do find time to respond to this message I would be most grateful. If not, I understand. You must be inundated daily.

Your comment ‘Suicide is perhaps the strongest and most powerful form of prayer I have ever encountered’ is profound. It is a belief I share and I would welcome information as to its origin. Is it a personal philosophy or is there reading that would embellish?

It is a very brave thing to do ….juxtapose suicide and prayer and declare them compatible in pursuit of relief. I have been directly and intimately involved with the death of two 15-year-old boys … one my son and the other the son of a close friend who also hung himself five months later. The latter action I cannot for the life of me fathom, but in my search for understanding with my own child, I came to one conclusion that it was an act of bravery in pursuit of that which life could not offer. I do understand that viewed from another vantage point it could equally be regarded as an act of folly ie that something that ‘seems impossible’ need not necessarily be so.

Any available reading you could direct me to in this regard would be sincerely appreciated.

Tony
Durban

Dear Tony:

While it is true that I am inundated with mail I cannot move on without answering you directly. Your letter moved me. I was making my bed when the “ping” came through and I sat on the same bed and wondered at the pain you must endure in the light of your losses.

My own children are downstairs “fighting” over the remote for the TV and your letter made me so very grateful for their boyish squabbles.

I have been in the midst of several suicides and encountered it as a professional, a minister, a school counselor, and as a neighbor (I am – have been – all of the above).

I am sad and distressed when suicide is framed as a sin, a way out, or a cop out — this is not my understanding from many one-on-one encounters with desperate people. As for reading, I can offer none. Some of the bravest men and women I have ever known have been days from taking their own lives.

Your son and the other child to whom you refer, would have been embraced by me (a stranger to each) were they to have arrived at my door asking for absolutely anything. I would have given them each a home with full rights to the house and my life in every way – this I did already with my two children (adopted from birth).

If I, a sinful, lousy, struggling man could do this — how much more would a loving God not do the same.

Your boys are safe and happy and I believe they’d want you to miss them but to also be comforted.

Please let me know you got this – even if it is not what you expected. Keep in touch. I am not “brave” as you say. I am just sick of the BS people spew in the light of the pain others encounter when they, themselves, have only watched it all from a distance.

Keep in touch.

Rod

Posted in Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship | Leave a Comment »

March 30, 2011

My wife left me for a man she knew when she was 15…

by Rod Smith

“My wife left me for a man she dated when she was fifteen. They were in love. The children still stay with her. I chose to exit like a gentleman. I still helped; was still dad. It was tough on me in the early days but it got better. My wife on the other hand is in a living hell. She is really off balance. The man has no job; he’s unfaithful and left another woman with a ten-month-old child. My ex wife has lost her luster the last time I saw her she looked very stressed. She’s up all night checking his phone and crying. My daughters tell me she looks like a zombie under mind control. Her dream has turned into a nightmare. Life is funny. I have become a better father. I am truly happy. My children and I enjoy life. The last time my ex I told her that I forgave her and that she needs to forgive herself.” (Edited)

Your response to your ex-wife and her complications appears gracious. A tough situation, which could have resulted in your becoming vengeful and angry, has resulted in your growth. You have demonstrated that the question is not “should I go or stay,” but HOW a person goes or stays.

Posted in Difficult Relationships | Leave a Comment »

March 29, 2011

How do you explain suicide to a child?

by Rod Smith

“I struggle with what I told the little one’s in my family of the death of their young and vibrant ‘Aunt L.’ She had been really sick and took her own life in the end. I just could not tell these little one’s that she committed suicide – how would they understand, ranging in age from 9 to 2 years old. I just told them she got sick and she died – her body and her spirit were tired. I am so afraid of them finding out the truth one day. We all have continued to grieve our loss. All of the children attended the funeral and memorial services and we all take an active role in remembering her life. But how do you explain suicide of a very close loved one to a child?”

Attraction is only enduringly poss

Your chidren will understand

Relax. You have done well. Of course what you faced was difficult and, once the children are old enough to know the truth, I believe they will understand the reasons you have said what you have said. Suicide is perhaps the strongest and most powerful form of prayer I have ever encountered – giving ultimate relief in dying, what seemed impossible while living. “Aunt L”, I believe, has found in death what she could not find in life.

Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Betrayal, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, Grief, Meditation, Parenting/Children, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Space, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice | 7 Comments »

March 28, 2011

Children and death of a loved-one

by Rod Smith

1. Tell the truth, even to young children, as lovingly and directly as possible.

2. Avoid meaningless nonsense like “uncle has gone to America” – use words like “he died” and “dead.” “Gone away” or “passed away” are meaningless terms and only add to confusion.

3. Avoid nonsense like “God needed a helper and so God took your aunty.” Not only is this theological claptrap, it is likely to make a child wonder how an all-powerful God can need a beloved relative in Heaven more than a helpless child needs the same person on Earth.

4. Allow grief and mourning to freely occur for you and the child. Crying and wailing is helpful in the light of loss – stopping it up, blocking it, holding it in, will only allow natural grief to fester and transform into something unhelpful (anger, resentment) in the future.

5. If a child does not appear to be upset, don’t push the child toward your own grief. Allow the child to handle loss in his or her unique way.

6. I am of the opinion that it is helpful for children to attend funerals and to see the body. Of course I am aware that there are many who disagree and, of course, there are exceptions which include violent deaths, suicides, and so forth.

Posted in Anxiety, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Listening, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Victims, Violence | 3 Comments »

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