Questioner

We set aside the compelling desire to be a problem-solver in order to support the other person.

By asking questions we provide another person an opportunity to gain access to their inner wisdom.

We set aside the compelling desire to be a problem-solver in order to support the other person in this counter-cultural way.

An open, honest question is a question with “no answer”: it freely invites any response. In other words, the questioner could not possibly anticipate the answer to it and is not trying to “get at something.”

When is the last time you asked a loved one a question like this:

What surprises you?

What moves or touches you about this?

What inspires you?

What was easy?

What was hard?

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My cynical view on relationships

Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship?

In marriage as in most things, we tend to strive for success.  We’ve made a commitment.  We’ve made a promise.  We’ve made vows, “in sickness and in health, til death do us part”  …. or something. 

How would you feel if you went into a marriage being perfectly OK with it failing?  How would you feel if the person you married felt that way? 

It sounds cold, it sounds cynical. 

In my first marriage, which was problematic from the start, we went to a marriage counselor the first year of our marriage.  He led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, divorce needed to be an option.  We left and never went back because, for us, it wasn’t an option.  Twelve or so years later, I went to a therapist to work on some anger issues I was having.  She led with a statement about how in order to really do good therapeutic work, I was going to have to be willing to consider ending my marriage as an option.   I stopped seeing her immediately.  It wasn’t an option. 

Of course, if you read my blog you know that my marriage fell apart anyway and divorce, which had never been an option became a reality.   I’ve come to believe that one of the things that contributed to the failure of that relationship was the fact that divorce was not an option.

I know, that sounds weird.  Backward.  Like an oxymoron. 

But there are a lot of deeply spiritual principles that are backward, upside-down, oxymoronic.

Love your enemies.

Blessed are those that mourn.

Rejoice in suffering.

Lose your life to find it.

It’s the final one that speaks to my cynical view on relationships.  And here’s why.  If failure is not an option, then the game becomes about survival and success and not about love. If the goal is success, then one or both people in the relationship may stop being authentic and lose touch with what they want and who they are.  If the goal is survival of the relationship, one or both people may essentially give up anything and everything to preserve the relationship.   The problem with that is that if you give up anything and everything, you ultimately lose yourself as well.  You give yourself up in service to the preservation of the relationship.   And then guess what?  It’s not a relationship you are in anymore.  But rather, some version of yourself that you have created that you think will lead to success.  But not the real you.  Not the one that person fell in love with to begin with.  

Relationships take risk.

You have to be brave.

You have to embrace death to live. 

You have to be able to say, “This is me.  This is what I want.  This is who I am and what kind of relationship I’m interested in.” 

You have to be able to say, “If that’s not what you want, that’s OK, but I’m not willing to lose myself in order to save the relationship.” 

and….

“I don’t want you to either.”  

Some might disagree and say that the ultimate romantic move is for someone to give everything up for them. 

“This is how we know what love is, to lay down one’s life for another.”

But laying down one’s life is vastly different than being fake and living a lie.   Laying down one’s life certainly means sacrifice, but it doesn’t mean dishonesty.  

Imagine the person you love. What if they sacrificed themselves on the altar of your relationship? What if they quit doing what they love, gave up their passions, stopped being THEM for you? Can you imagine what a tragedy it would be? How BORING it would be to be with that shell of who they really are?

The times that I’ve had the courage to say to my husband, “This is me and this is what I want and if this is not what you want it’s OK.”   THOSE were the times I was laying down my life.  I was putting my heart out there to get broken in the name of honesty.  In the name of being true to myself and in the name of allowing him to be true to who he is and what he wants. 

Those other times?  When I was pretending to be something else, or cramming myself into a box that I thought might please?   Those times I was trying to force my agenda on him and asked him to be dishonest about what he wanted so that I would be more comfortable? That wasn’t laying down my life, that was just living a falsehood in order to control an outcome.  

To lay down your life is the ultimate risk, the ultimate surrender.  It involves no control of any kind.  

Because love can only exist where there is freedom.  

“The law brings death, but the spirit of grace brings life.”

Storyteller

I am my dad’s story and he is mine.

My dad died last week.

We were expecting it. He had been on hospice for eight months. I had prayed to god, or the universe, or whatever power would hear me to release him from his suffering.

It still feels like a punch in the gut.

My dad was a larger than life kind of figure. There is much to say about him and about my relationship with him. Today, I want to talk about how he loved to tell stories.

He liked to create a good story - even with his very self. The picture here is him in a cowboy hat. I grew up in Canada and he liked to wear a cowboy hat around, and wave at strangers and say, “howdy!”. As a kid, this was supremely embarrassing. But, he was creating a persona. A story. Big stories or small.  He loved to tell them.  The bigger the better. He loved to embellish and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. 

A lot of the stories he told were not strictly true. He understood that a story isn’t important because of its facts, it’s important because of what it makes you feel, if it makes you laugh, if it makes you brave, if it is memorable. 

And a story has the power to create its own reality.   There is nothing in the world more powerful than a good story.

He came from a poor and abusive family background. In his own life, he told himself the story about how he could do anything he put his mind to. Consequently, he rose above his upbringing and many, many times he just absolutely could do anything because that’s the story he told himself.  I’m sure he won many a football game based on that story. 

My brother tells a story about a time when my dad was coaching for the Detroit Lions. Dad was about 44 or 45 at the time. A little overweight. Not in the greatest shape. There was a young coach there and dad bet the young coach $50 that he could do a back flip from a standing still position. The young coach took one look at my dad’s physique and thought, “no way” and made the bet. Then my dad, from a standing still position launched into the air and did a back flip, landing on his feet.

Now, my dad was a natural athlete , strong and agile, but he had probably not done a standing back flip for 20 years. I am pretty sure he simply did it because he told himself he could. That’s just how he operated.

As his daughter, he told me that I could do anything I put my mind to.  Which is also not strictly true.  There are lots of things I put my mind to over the years that I found I couldn’t actually do.  But the story gave me power to get through many a difficult situation in life and to do many things that I might not have done had I not been told that story. 

He told me I could be anything I wanted to be.  Which is also not strictly true.  But the story gave me confidence to become someone I might not otherwise have become without that story.   

The day dad died, there was an enormous electrical storm.  Then, the power went out moments before he took his last breath.   Right after he was gone, the sun burst out of the clouds and later that day, we had a rainbow.  I like to think that he was making a grand exit.  It’s a good story.  

And sometimes, the story is better than the truth.  It’s bigger and more important than the literal version of what is true.  There are the things that happen in our lives and then there is the story we tell ourselves about those things.  And between the two, it is the stories that make meaning, the stories that give us hope, the stories that make us strong, the stories that make us laugh and…

It’s the stories that make us live on eternally in the minds and hearts of those who loved us.     Because we are one another’s story.  I am my dad’s story and he is mine.  

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Mirror Mirror

life is created from death and decay, pain and suffering, every bit as much as from love

I was talking to my daughter the other day about relationships.  Marriage in particular.  In the conversation we were talking about how marriage, maybe more than any other relationship we have, is the one that holds a mirror up to us.  It shows us who we are and what we are made of.  It exposes our ego and attachments in ways that nothing else ever does.  It forces us to ask the really, really hard questions of ourselves and of life

If we let it.

That’s why it’s so hard.  That’s why it’s transformational.  That’s why it’s so sacred. 

I used to define sacred in terms of something pure, so for marriage to be sacred it had to be pure and undefiled. 

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to feel that everything is sacred and that there is no clear dividing line between pure and impure, sacred and secular, clean and unclean.    

Perhaps I could say that the sacred is that which brings forth life.  And life is created from death and decay, pain and suffering, every bit as much as from love.   It is sacred that death can be transformed into life in this way.   

In relationships, we can fake it with people we don’t live with.  We can fake it with our kids.  We can fake it with our co-workers.  We can even fake it with ourselves.  

But it’s pretty hard to fake it for any real length of time with our spouse. 

Sooner or later, the truth will out and likely as not, our spouse will react in that transformational, mirror-mirror-on-the-wall way that we all hate so much.  Pointing out to us what we are doing, provoking the very ugliest parts of us to burst forth, pulling out our deepest fears of abandonment and rejection.  It feels awful.  It can feel like a death of sorts. 

So, we avoid showing up with real truth and inviting real truth in relationships with the “if I don’t say anything, maybe he/she won’t say anything either” game.  We shut down those we are relationships with by blaming them and making our feelings and unhappinesses their fault.  We spray flat, black paint on the mirror, or we avoid relationships altogether. 

Transformation only occurs when something dies and something new is reborn and death isn’t easy.  Most of us fight against it with everything we have.  Most of us let go of our agendas in life kicking and screaming when life rips them out of our death grip.  Maybe that’s why they call it a death grip.  We are fighting with all our strength against the death of something. 

Funny thing is, when we do let go, something new is reborn. 

And that’s sacred. 

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Girl Talk - Part 5 - Soul mates

All have shaped my soul.

In continuing my “Girl Talk” series, let’s talk about soul mates. As you know, I solicited input from women asking them what life advice they received, that they found to be toxic. Some of the women I heard from talked about how toxic the idea of a soul mate had been to them. 

I looked it up in the dictionary  

soul mate

/ˈsōl ˌmāt/

noun

plural noun: soulmates

1.      a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner.

“Ideally suited to one another” sounds pretty non-threatening and non-toxic by definition.  And yet most people have a much more emotionally charged idea of the soul mate.  The soul mate is often thought of as one person out there that is your one true love, your prince charming, “the one god has for you.” 

This idea of a soul mate can be a pretty heavy burden.  It’s a lot of pressure to think that you have this one shot to find the ONE. 

What if you never find them? 

What if you miss your opportunity?

How will you know when it’s “the one?” 

What if you misjudge it and end up with someone who isn’t “the one?”  

One website I read said, “Your soulmate makes you feel entirely whole, healed and intact, like no piece is missing from the puzzle.”   

Wait…. what?????

I went through years of therapy to learn that no person can make me feel whole, healed and intact.  It was my job to become whole and bring that whole person into the relationship.  Two halves don’t make a whole – two wholes make a whole.  

As a girl, I was raised on fairy tales and romance novels.  I bought into the soul-mate myth and when I was sixteen I met him.  Love at first site, intense, passionate.  We could finish one another’s sentences, we could finish each other’s jokes, we knew what the other one was thinking without even having to say anything.   We married young and were completely confident that we were soul-mates.   And maybe we were for that moment in time, as young-love teenagers, and yet we weren’t whole and complete, so the whole thing fell apart.  We expected the other one to fill the void, to fulfill the dream of happily ever after, but that’s not how happily ever after works.  

Happily ever after isn’t about riding off into the sunset with someone who makes you feel whole, healed and intact, it’s about being with someone who takes responsibility for their own wholeness and healing and shares that journey honestly with you.  That journey with someone is messy.  It’s filled with beauty and also with conflict, boredom, and irritation.  It’s mundane.  It’s being OK with the fact that sometimes you can’t stand how much you love them and sometimes you just can’t stand them.  

If your idea of a soul mate is this one magical person who will come into your life, sweep you off your feet and fill your every desire, when the day-in, day-out of life rubs the shine off the relationship, and your every desire is not being fulfilled, you might just start thinking you’re with the wrong person.  You might start believing that you made  a mistake and missed your soul-mate.  You might start looking around thinking that your TRUE soul-mate is out there somewhere.  And you will miss the beauty of the real-life love that’s right in front of you. 

If there are soul-mates, I like the idea that they are simply people that come into our lives and touch our souls in some way. 

Friends, encounters, siblings, children, parents, lovers. 

I’ve had many soul mates.  Some have come into my life and left again.  Some have stayed.  All have changed me in one way or another.  All have shaped my soul. 

“When you meet that person. a person. one of your soulmates. let the connection. the relationship. be what it is. it may be five minutes. five hours. five days. five months. five years. a lifetime. five lifetimes. let it manifest itself the way it is meant to be. it has an organic destiny. this way it stays or if it leaves. you will be softer. from having been loved this authentically. souls come into. return. open. and sweep through your life for a myriad of reason. let them be who. and what they are meant to be."      -Nayyirah Waheed

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Mottoes - Part 5 "To Make a friend...."

“To make a friend, be a friend”

When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. My dad was a football coach. It’s a lot like being an army brat. I moved every year from 8th grade through graduation. The first big move, after 7th grade was awful. I was painfully shy and didn’t have the faintest idea how to make a friend. I hid in bathrooms during lunch at school because I was too shy to figure out how to invite myself to sit at a table with people in the cafeteria. I hid in bathrooms after church because I didn’t know how to make conversation with kids I didn’t know. It was excruciating. My mom’s advice on how to make friends was this motto:

“To make a friend, be a friend”

It didn’t help me navigate lunch in the cafeteria or “fellowship” time after church. I still went that entire year without a single friend.

But actually, it’s pretty good advice overall and it has served me well over the course of a lifetime.

Yay mom.

The ten year Parent

It’s weird to think that for all of us, the parent that raised us no longer exists

My mom is 84.  She’s been living here for three and a half years.  Having her live with us has been interesting.  At first, she actually lived in our house – we re-did the den to add a larger bathroom and she and my dad moved in.  Shortly afterward, my dad ended up in a nursing home and about a year ago, she moved out to her own apartment, which is behind our house.  My husband built it for her at one end of his workshop.  I think she’s happier there.  She doesn’t have to feel like she’s in our way (even though she wasn’t).  She can eat her own food without feeling we might disapprove of the sugar content.  She can do whatever she wants without worrying about what we will think.  And I guess that includes playing the piano.  My husband frequently hears her sitting at her piano and playing.  I heard her the other day too and I thought, “how cool!”   Growing up, I don’t remember hearing her play much.  There were four of us kids, and I’m sure she didn’t have time to sit down and play much, or she played while we were at school. 

I’ve had conversations with my siblings about our memories of mom.  Each of us has differences based on our ages and how she changed over the years.  I told my sister once that when I was a young parent I felt like a failure because sometimes I would lose my temper and yell at my kids and I have only one memory of my mom ever losing her temper.  My sister is the oldest and is six years older than me.  She couldn’t imagine this version of my mom.  She remembers my mom sometimes losing her temper and yelling.  She remembers my mom making popovers and cooking casseroles for dinners.  I remember none of that.  The mom that I remember was cool and calm, never yelled and never made popovers.  Meat, veg and starch were the meals I remember.  My younger brother remembers frozen pizzas and hot pockets after school and a mom that was more hip and with-it than I remember.  

My mom is much changed from the mom any of us grew up with.  I guess we will all be able to say the same when we are 84.   I have thought a lot about how strange it is to be with this mom, who is so different from the mom I grew up with.   I’ve wondered, when did the change occur?  We haven’t lived in the same city since I was 17.   They moved away while I was a sophomore in college and I stayed here in Fort Worth.    Throughout the years, I would usually only see her a few days a year.  She would come for a visit of a few days at the holidays, and I would go for a visit to her house for a few days for other holidays, seldom more than a few days at a time.  Not enough time to get to know the changes that might have been going on with her that much.  How she might have changed in her viewpoints, her temperament, her beliefs.   Sure, as she has gotten older I’ve seen the physical changes; aging, slowing down, more forgetful, more vulnerable.  But for the most part, in my mind, my idea of her as “mom” was locked in to that person that raised me. 

Until she came here to live.

And I realize that the person I have thought of all these years as “mom”, really doesn’t even exist except in my memories. 

It’s weird to think that for all of us, the parent that raised us no longer exists.  It’s weird to think that my own kids will remember the person I was from the age they had good memory (8 years old?) to when they moved out of our house (18 years old) – maybe ten to twelve years; as their mom. And that woman doesn’t exist.  Sometimes I think back to the person I was ten or fifteen years ago and I barely recognize her myself.  From the time that my kids left home until now, our interactions have been for a few days here, a week there.  Not day-in and day-out.  Not living together and experiencing what is happening to the other, seeing how they live now and how it’s different from then.  We see one another age and evolve, but from a distance, and in short glimpses. It’s kind of sad to me in a way.  The 10-year parent that I gave to my daughter’s memories was not my very best self.  I was a young parent with them, super enthusiastic about being a parent, but a little over-the-top; pretty dogmatic, strict and black and white.  The ten-year parent I gave to my son’s memories was better. I was more chilled out, had a better balance.    If I had been a parent to yet another kid the past ten years, I would have been even better. 

But who am I kidding, I would have been too tired to raise another kid. 

Anyway, it’s an interesting process getting to know a new mom.  Holding her in my heart as that same person I knew then and letting go of that person at the same time. 

This infinitude within people is such a strange and weird contradiction. 

And this infinite contradiction is one we all live with – both with the people we love and within ourselves.  We all feel like we are the same person we have always been.  In so many ways, I feel no different than I did when I was 17 and I wonder how it’s possible I am 53.   But, if I stand away from myself and look at myself – really look – I can see I am nothing like that girl I hold inside.  I am much changed.  I hardly recognize so many of the things I said, and did, and believed.  I regret things that I said and did in the past. I find many things embarrassing and laughable and find that it would be impossible to think and act that way now.   So the girls I’ve been at any age and at all ages add up to the person I am today.  We are all me at the same time.  And who I am today is a breath that will blow away and be gone but will incorporate into someone I am becoming and will be tomorrow.     

I’m sure my mom would say she’s the same person and she’s unchanged from the ten-year mom I remember. 

But it’s not true.

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