Equal...Doesnotequal

Change = discomfort

It's a given.  If things are changing in your life, you will be uncomfortable and you will try to find anything that will make you comfortable again, sometimes even choosing things that you left behind because they were harmful.

Discomfort ≠ bad
Hard ≠ bad

Sometimes you will have to go through the discomfort and the hard to get to the healthy and the good.

Familiar ≠ good

Especially if familiar means you go down into that negative place, only because it's the only path you've ever known.  Trust me, there are other choices.  You may not be able to see them because you have a wall of fear all around you, but there are ways to get around that.

Good ≠ best

Good can be an ok choice, but good can get in the way of the best.  Baby steps.  Today choose one thing that is best.

Busy ≠ good

Keeping busy does not necessarily mean productive or fruitful or good.  Often times staying busy is just masking shame which is trying to keep you tied down in familiar patterns of self-hatred and condemnation that, while they may be familiar, are definitely not your friends.  Busy also can be a wall that keeps you from seeing what your best choice may be. Take that into consideration.

Messy ≠ bad

Learning to operate with new tools while things are changing around and within you can get messy.  The mess can feel overwhelming.  It can feel daunting.  It can feel bad.  Ask a wise and trusted friend about this. Let them help you determine if your mess is bad or not and if there's anything you need to do about it.

If you find yourself in relational messes wherein you say or do something selfish and/or hurtful, apologize. Get good at apologizing now.  Need some help?  Here's a great "formula" to use until apologizing for selfish behavior comes naturally:

 I apologize for  ___________.  It was unloving because ___________.  Will you forgive me?

I can't see through this screen into your world, so know that these are basic generalizations.  If you or someone you know is in trouble and needs help, please get it.  Don't know where to go?  Leave me a comment here, and I'll point you in a helpful direction.

P.S. I've joined the Ultimate Blog Challenge in an attempt to get myself blogging again on a regular basis.  Daily blogging means imperfect posts that often feel uninspired, but there you go.  I'm blogging and that's what I'm going for.

Perspective

I like movies with a happy ending.  I like it when the good guy wins and the story lines end up tied up in plausible, pleasant ways.  I like the predictability of the happy ending without knowing exactly how it's going to get there.

Life doesn't feel like that.  Oh, I know life isn't a movie, much less a feel-good movie.  But these movies do mirror a part of THE story where God works all things out.

Right now, life feels chaotic, broken, uncertain.  A series of events have left me unsteady.  I drift in and out of anxiety, fear, and doubt daily.  It's hard for me to remember when I'm in this point of the story that there is a happy ending coming when I can't see how I'm going to get there.

The problem is that my focus gets off.  Instead of focusing on God who loves me and cares for me lavishly, who has told me that there will be trouble but that I don't have to fret, who fills my day with good things if I only have eyes to see...I look at the negatives: the things that need fixing, the places that are dirty and piled with stuff, the unsorted laundry, the messy kitchen and unmade beds, the projects left undone, the relationship struggles, my mistakes and my inability to keep up with it all and to fix it all to my liking.

All of these light and momentary troubles somehow have obtained the power to absorb my attention and distort my perspective.

Pretty Woman is one of my favorite happy-ending movies.  I know it's an unrealistic story involving prostitution, but there's a bit of Hosea hidden in there, and I just love the scene when Julia Roberts as Vivian is firmly approached by Hector Elizondo, the hotel mayordomo, for her disheveled appearance that doesn't quite fit the hotel's clientele.  Once he hears that she has been unable to purchase anything respectable to wear because the shops on Rodeo Drive won't attend her because of how she looks, he takes her under his wing and proceeds to bring to life the beauty and passion that has always been there in Vivian...it's just gotten muddied and distorted by the world and the lies that have been heaped on her.  And after a second shopping attempt is successful, Vivian emerges poised and beautiful and confident. If you've seen the movie, you know the ins and outs of her complicated relationship with Richard Gere and how that all turns out, and while it's far from a perfect analogy of God and his love for us, it does speak something profound about the power of perspective and kindness and love.

I just need to remember that God sees past all of my outer trappings that make me unappealing to myself...No one has rejected me or refused to help me recently because of how I look, how my house looks, or how my relationships look.  But I do often refuse to help myself out...to give myself a break and show some love and kindness, to "allow" God to be bigger than it all so that everything I see goes through His perspective, His Truth.

Isaiah 61:1-3

61 

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

    because the Lord has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

    to proclaim freedom for the captives

    and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a]

2 

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

    and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3 

    and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

    instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

    instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

    instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

    a planting of the Lord

    for the display of his splendor.

My favorite five

Today I'm simply going to list my top 5 movies.  No time to tell you why, however, so that may be a blog post for another day.  So, here they are in no particular order:

1. Pretty Woman
2. Ever After
3. The Matrix
4. The Game
5. Annie

Surely there's a theme running through these titles...

Advice or what I wish I would have known sooner

Love wins.  It's messy and fraught with uncertainty and pain.  It doesn't look neat and tidy. There aren't a list of rules or formulas by which to live.

When my kids were young, my primary focus was making sure they were doing their chores and behaving well.  If one or the other wasn't happening according to MY plan, MY timeline, MY agenda, MY expectations, then there was some sort of consequence.  Granted, I thought that those things were really God's plan, timeline, agenda, and expectations; but the truth is they were all designed to keep me ok inside.  I mean, I didn't want to fail as a parent and I didn't want my children to be ax murderers (or worse), so I had to make sure I was carefully watching and correcting every. single. mistake.

I once heard Sally Clarkson tell a story about a young mom who came to her very distraught because she couldn't get her two-year-old daughter to obey her.  Every time she asked her to go wash her daughter to go wash hands, her daughter wouldn't (or didn't) obey.  So the mom would reprimand and discipline her daughter and tell her to go wash her hands again.  Apparently the daughter was not very compliant as the mom was asking Sally for help to get her to obey the first time, every time.

Sally lovingly showed the mom that the best way to handle a two-year-old is with lots of love and affection, kissing the little hands and face that need washing, and with lots of hugs and snuggles and "I love yous" go to the bathroom together to get those sweet little hands clean.

With chagrin, when I heard the story, I knew I had been that mom.  I was the one who was looking for immediate obedience and oftentimes becoming a harsh mama to enforce the rules and regulations of the house so that my children would obey.  Harshness and intimidation seemed to produce obedient children, and since that was, as I was given to understand, a most important result of correct parenting, I used it regularly.  And sadly, there's still some unrighteous fruit being born of those years of misguided methods.  Thankfully, God has opened my eyes and given me an increased awareness of what love looks like and how to be a loving parent, thereby showing me how to allow His healing to come into those damaged relationships.

Hearing Sally's story was a turning point for me.  I began to examine my parenting and adjusting as I became aware.  I read her books: Mission of Motherhood, Ministry of Motherhood, and Heartfelt Discipline.  Later I was introduced to other parenting books like Parenting with Love and Logic by Cline and Fay and Loving Our Kids on Purpose by Danny Silk.

I became increasingly aware of how little love I was demonstrating and how much fear was dominating my parenting: fear that I wouldn't train my kids well, fear that I wouldn't teach them what they need to know, fear that my mistakes and their mistakes would overpower the plans and purposes of God.  Sometimes that fear looked like love.  I wasn't a bad parent, I know.  I did lots of good things with and for my kids.  I didn't beat them or berate them.  But I didn't lavish love on them simply because I didn't know how.  I thought correcting them and letting them know what they needed to do better WAS loving, and there is place for that in love, but I was doing those things mostly out of FEAR of how their mistakes were going to affect me and not LOVE.

Today, I am a different parent, I hope.  I've turned my course towards one of developing relationships based on love instead of on rules, fear, and perfectionism.

So, what do I wish I would've known sooner?

How to dial down the fear and trust in God.  How to let His love be the source of my attitudes, intentions, and motivations.  How to really know that my mistakes would in no way derail God's love for my kids.  How to parent from a place of love instead of fear.

Now that I'm aware, I repent often (to God and to my kids) for my unloving, unrighteous attitudes, intentions, and motivations. I cry out to God for more grace and increased awareness of His love, allow Him to parent my heart, turn to Him moment by moment.

I have a messy house since love moved in.  Chores aren't always assigned which means they aren't usually done; rooms aren't always picked up.  The dust is getting thicker by the minute, and my kids aren't obeying the first time every time. I'm on a steep learning curve, and I've had to let go of a lot in order to focus my energies on this new way of living.

But love is happening.  Relationships are happening.  We are laughing and enjoying one another more.  We are learning what loving responses look like and how to stop the unloving ones.  And in the process, hearts are mending, love is flowing, and I am letting go of control and trusting God more each day.

1 Peter 4:8 "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins"

Love

Learning this new way of relating in love is challenging.

In the past, I resorted often to irritation, frustration, anger, intimidation, withdrawal...all tools I used to send messages to those around me (i.e. my kids) that what they were doing was not acceptable in my book and that the behavior needed to change in order for me to be ok.

I was powerless, or at least acting like I was.

Then I was introduced to books like Parenting with Love and Logic and Loving Our Kids on Purpose and, most recently, Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values.  I became increasingly aware that these tools, while seemingly effective at getting what I wanted done, were creating distance, pain, and brokenness in the relationships most important to me.

I didn't want to do that anymore.

So I've gone on a journey of learning to love my kids, of allowing God to parent my heart and root out those self-focused tools and replace them with His love.

I'm far from perfect, and some days it's so hard to put down the old tools and pick up the new ones because learning to do things a new way is time-consuming and "inefficient" (i.e. my agenda is not happening in the time-frame I think is important) and requires me to trust God like never before.

However, I never want to go back to the old way of doing things.  Things are messy on this journey: lists of all sorts have gone out the window as God knows they keep me from fully embracing this season of learning to love selflessly, learning to rightly relate to Him and my family.

I'm grateful that He's opened my eyes to the fruit of the old tools so that I can stop doing those things and embrace love instead.

Space

I haven't had much space this past year to move past the thoughts in my head to the keyboard at the computer.  Truth is, the words have ended up on pages in journals as time spent at my desk in front of a keyboard and monitor has been minimal.  Email gets checked on my super smart phone as does Facebook and Instagram which leaves little other reason to sit at my desk. So this space here has been neglected and a part of me that has enjoyed blogging has too.

Part of that also comes with this season of life where God has me focused on rightly relating to my children and husband.  I can't be relational when my back is to them, and I'm facing a computer.  I admit, my phone does distract me, but it's much smaller and somehow usually easier for me to set down and focus on the person at hand.

I hope to be more regular about my writing now that I've managed to find some space again in my head for it and share more about this journey into loving my children and my family well.  It all started with a blog I read over here.

See you soon.

It's our anniversary

It's our anniversary, and to break out of my blogging slump, I want to write a post about my man who is definitely God's gift to me.

If you read our story I started to chronicle a couple of years ago, you can learn about how we met and the first few years of our marriage.  It's a good story and one I hope to continue when this brain freeze is over.  Right now there's window open for the man I love.

He is gracious.  Truly gracious.  He never nags me about the stuff on the floor, the piles by the bed, the dust on the blinds, the stains in the carpet, the laundry not folded, the lack of food in the house, the to-do list not done.  Never.

His is generous.  If someone needs his help or wants to borrow his truck or is looking for a piano player, he almost never says no.  He only says no if it interferes with our family, in which case, that is definitely a good time to say no.  If he knows of a financial need, he wants to give as much as he can.  If I ask him about giving towards a certain need, he always says yes.

He is smart.  Let me give you an example. Way back when he decided to get a job in computers, I freaked out.  I freaked out because at that time I knew more about computers than he did and the job he wanted required way more than I knew (which was plenty, by the way).  He bought some books, took a month or so to read and study, and then went and got himself a computer help desk job. And he continues to learn and grow and work in the field some fifteen years later.

He is loving.  He has worked long hours at jobs he hasn't always loved to provide for us the very best he can.  He comes home and eats dinner with us most nights, even when I know a lot of times he'd rather crawl into a cave somewhere and be quiet.  This is most remarkable since dinner at our house is the opposite end of the spectrum from cave and quiet.  He listens to me and rarely tries to fix me.  He goes to marriage classes, parenting classes, and finance classes with me and occasionally reads a book on those subjects so he can see where I'm coming from.

He is sexy.  I'll just leave that one right there.

He is my husband who I could continue to go on about, but errands call and I still hope to get to some of those piles of stuff and dust in our bedroom before he comes home from work...

I love you, hon.  I'm so glad to be on this journey with you. I wouldn't want it any other way.