Listening To the Nail

There is this video that is running rampant on Facebook: It's Not About the Nail. It is meant to be funny and yet prove a point. The point being that, even though women might be emotional and just want men to listen to them and not fix them, the problems men perceive and the solutions that men suggest are perfectly logical and just what is needed. You are left with the perception that women are  emotionally deranged beings and just want to whine instead of get with the program.

I watched it and laughed, too. The woman, we'll call her Miss Nail, sits there with a nail sticking out of her forehead, complaining of pain and how her sweaters are all snagged,  and the man, Mr. Solution, says that she obviously needs to just take the nail out of her head and the pain will go away. "If you would just..."

But how many times do we hear that? We speak up, begin to share a burden, only to be answered with "If you would just...." There is nothing that cuts off communication and stops fellowship in its tracks than being set up as a project for somebody else to fix.

The truth is is that it might NOT be about the nail after all. Or "just" taking the nail out might not be easy or even possible. What if the person the woman trusted more than anybody on the planet is the one that hammered that nail into her head and she is afraid to let anybody else near her? What if the only way to get the nail out is to travel a long distance to a highly qualified medical professional who can remove it with the least damage, but she doesn't have the money? What if that nail is in her head in such a place that its removal would result in her bleeding to death and so she has to live with it as it is? What if what she is talking about isn't about that nail at all? What if it is another matter entirely?

Mr. Solution might find this out if he were to maybe ask some questions and listen long enough to get the full picture. The "here I am, Mr. Fix-it to the rescue" attitude cuts off any true communication and understanding of the heart of the problem.

Listening is crucial. But listening takes time. Last week I read a most excellent article from a man who had interviewed a large number of college age and young adult atheists. He just wanted to listen and hear their stories. What struck me was that the most of these people came to him expecting to be argued with and debated and urged into changing their position. Once they realized that he was just there to listen then they really opened up. He said that early on most would claim that their decision to become atheists was a rational one, but if he listened long enough he would find out that often it was more emotional than rational. But he had to listen long enough.

Do we listen long enough? It seems like the knee-jerk reaction in society and even, maybe especially, in the church, is to fork over solutions and prescriptions without ever knowing the full story. We hear a snippet and assume, based on our own frame of reference, that we know exactly what is going on and how to fix it.

Young Woman shares with Older Woman that she is struggling in her marriage. Older Woman suggests that the solution is for Young Woman to keep her husband happy by having lots of sex. Lots of sex equals happy husband and happy husband equals happy marriage or something like that, maybe because that is what worked for her.

But the problem is that Older Woman never asked Young Woman any more about her struggles and the nature of the problem. What if struggling in her marriage means husband is having an affair, or abusing her or her children? What if husband is addicted to pornography and has rejected Young Woman as not exciting enough or forcing himself on her? What if struggling in her marriage means that every time she begins to have sex with her husband she is flooded with memories of being raped by her uncle and, try as she might, she just shuts down?  The solution of "just have more sex" would not only be ineffective in the face of these situations, it could be downright harmful. But Older Woman doesn't know this because she never asked and never took the time to listen.

People who are hurting rarely fight for the right to be heard. Shut them down with a "you just need to" and you have shut them down for good. We are called to love and encourage one another, not necessarily fix one another. This isn't must my lame idea because I get tired of getting "fixed" myself, other people have said it, too.

Our mutual calling is to live out our faith together, not simply provide solutions to one another. —William P. Smith from Loving Well

That's not to say we cannot work toward solutions together. But we must listen long enough to truly understand the problem before we can, together, come with a solution. If we are to bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2), we need to be able to identify what those burdens really are.

For Mr. Solution in the video, it will mean listening long enough to get the whole picture. It might mean that he has to earn the trust of Miss Nail before he can take out the nail himself. It might mean that he helps Miss Nail raise money to travel to the specialist who can remove the nail for her. It might mean that he is there to assist her when she puts on her sweater so that it doesn't get snagged on the nail. But he won't know until he listens.

I think that is one reason why James tells us to "be quick to listen" (James 1:19). We listen, we just might learn something and end up loving somebody in the process. 

Tweet

Bear With Me . . .

Dear Mama Bear, Junior Bear, Baby Bears and, I assume, Papa Bear (based on the basics of animal husbandry, I assume you must exist):

I come in peace. I feel no enmity between your people and mine. I understand that we have invaded your Happy Hunting Grounds and therefore you have no need to respect boundary lines nor fence posts nor restrictive covenants regarding the keeping of livestock or wild animals of any kind.

I understand that you are likely hungry and we humans seem to have the goods. We humans set out seeds for your gastronomical pleasure and bags of garbage to provide you with a satisfactory trash-picking experience. Not only that, but we even provide you with decks to climb, hot tubs for your bathing needs, and play structures to keep your wee cubs entertained.

I like you. But I have a problem.

You see I have dogs and my dogs have noses. And, seeing how you don't seem to have discovered the joys of Dry Idea or Speed Stick, my dogs can smell you from what seem to be miles and miles away.

Sometimes their sniffing starts out quietly and slowly. In the middle of the night it usually begins with a breathy "Hhhmph" followed by a growl and a large sniff and then another "Hhhmph" or two—or ten. So I am partially awake before the all out I Must Alert The World That We Are Being Invaded By Alien Beings bark sets in.

Other times there is no warning and I must peel myself off the ceiling and hope my pulse, that just tripled from the sudden Alert The World barking, will slow down some time this week.

Just this morning, dear bears, your presence set in motion a chaotic domino effect that ended with one sleep-deprived people-teen yelling out the window for the canines to SHUT UP! You may have heard about not waking sleeping bears. The same applies to sleeping adolescents of my species. To awaken such a sleeping monster is a foolish and dangerous thing, indeed.

I understand that this is all part and parcel of living in the mountains, or more particularly, living with dogs in the mountains. I don't have anything against your being here. What I do have a problem with is the fact that, no matter how much my dogs are sniffing and barking and trying to save the planet, I don't see you. And I like seeing the source of the chaos.

It is kind of like traffic jams. I understand that this might be totally lost on you bears, but we humans, when we get stopped in traffic on the highway and move at a snail's pace (or a sleepy bear's pace) for a mile or two and end up being late to the dentist because of it, we like to see WHY we were held up. There is something SO darn frustrating with never seeing the source of the jam.

This is the same case. If my dogs are barking themselves into a frenzy over you, I want to see you. You are fun to look at. In fact you are just plain cute. And, by the way, your babies look as if they were plucked from off the assembly line at the Gund factory.

So, this is my plea. Stand up and show yourselves. If necessary, just come and ask for food. I can understand the word "please" in five languages (six if you count Pig Latin) and am always happy to oblige. I currently have on hand some stale "everything" bagels, week old baked beans, and popsicles purchased last January to sooth a sore throat, and I am ever so willing to share.

So from now on, I am happy to share my chunk of the planet with you. I will try to be a good neighbor. But don't be shy. Show up every once in a while. And the pups will thank you, too. Dogs barking at bears are more tolerable and endearing to their owners than dogs barking at air. The least you could do is provide us with a wee bit of entertainment.

Tweet

Pick Two (Another Note for Young Mothers)

You, yes, you young moms. I see you. I know you. I know lots of you. I used to be one of you. It seems like eons ago and yet like yesterday, but I was there, too.

Here's the gig: You can have standards. You can have children. You can have sanity. Pick TWO. You can't have them all. It just plain goes against the laws of nature.

You CAN have standards and sanity:

Sure, in your pre-children state you can have standards and still maintain your sanity. You can be germ-averse and house-tidy. You can have a place for everything and everything in its place. You can dine at the finest of establishments while swigging down locally brewed beverages made from only the most organic of ingredients. Your house can look like the cover of Martha Stewart Magazine and you can vow never, ever, ever to set foot in Wal-Mart. Ever! You can shop at the local tailgate markets and fork over $4 for a tomato. But throw in kids and, well, you're toast.

You CAN have children and sanity:

Well, maybe one kid and you can keep up the standards . . . for a bit. One kid you can chase down and wrestle to the ground, to pull the dead stinkbug from his tiny fist or fish it out of his mouth. Two kids are a different thing. Three? Well, stinkbugs are a great source of protein. Four? "Let's make stinkbug ice cream for the science fair project!"

To have kids means to loosen up and go with the flow. You might be horrified to find yourself doing many of those things you smugly said in your pre-kid days that you would NEVER do, but you sigh in defeat and do them anyway, knowing that nobody is the worse for wear.

Kids and tidy just don't go together. Kids like dirt and water (and dirt + water = mud—lots of it). Kids like to experiment with gravity. Kids like Wal-Mart (mind boggling, I know). And kids like . . . no, they LOVE . . . McDonald's seemingly crack-infused chicken nuggets. And when you have a car full of hungry, cranky mayhem and you see the Golden Arches in the distance, you might find that the one thing that brings back your sanity is to bring the car to a screeching halt and partake, along with the rest of America, of those cultural entities, greasy at they may be. You have not failed, you have done what any good mother would do: You have prevented mass murder in your back seat.

You CAN have children and standards:

But don't expect anybody to be happy about it.

Not you. You will drive yourself nuts running around cleaning and straightening and fretting and panicking and never, ever enjoying the little beasts God has placed in your care.

Not your kids. You will drive THEM nuts. Snapping and training and taking all of the full-on spontaneity out of that thing called childhood. So what if he is eating Cheerios off the floor (a little added fiber)? So what if he is wearing the same shirt 4 days in a row? Everybody expects kids to be dirty, anyway. So what if he just dragged every blanket in the house into the living room floor and made a mound the size of Everest? This is what childhood IS. Deal with it.

Not your friends. You will drive them nuts, too. Nobody can live up to those standards. Even dear old Dr. Dobson says that the worst thing one mom can do to other moms is to clean up her house before they come over. We moms need to know we are all in the crazy mess called parenthood together.

There you have it. Standards. Sanity. Children. Pick two. 

Go ahead and enjoy your micromanaged, orderly, germ-free life pre-kids, but once those bundles of joy start piling up you are gonna have to change the game plan. If you try to maintain your high ideals with a growing family, you WILL go certifiably nuts, and drive everybody else crazy in the process. It just isn't worth it. Give it up and have fun with the chaos!

Tweet

The Illusion of Control

My kids are older now and having older kids can be kinda scary. Not that having younger kids isn't scary. Some of us have spent the duration of parenthood downright terrified of the responsibility involved in raising the screaming masses set before us. But having older kids is just different. As I lay awake last night with my old buddy, Migraine, I tried to understand it. I think it all has to come down to control. Or rather the illusion of control.

It is easy to think, and in some cases it is true, that we can control our children when they are young. And it is easy to think, and some "experts" will tell us, that if we control our children when they are young we will, in effect, control them when they are old. They use Proverbs 22:6 ("Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.") ad nauseum as a guarantee for their formula for success.

But the fact of the matter is, we can influence, but we can never truly control. The younger they are, the more variables we can control, but we can never really control them, because we can never really control their hearts.

Control is such an evil sounding word (think Big Brother) but we all want it. You might be the most baby-averse person on the planet but open your loins and push out that bundle and in no time there is nothing you wouldn't do to protect that pile of squawking, wrinkled flesh. God made us that way.

But from the very beginning, even before the very beginning, there was so, so much we could never control. We can't control if we conceive, unless we opt for in vitro, in which case we can't control if the fertilized egg will take. We can't control if the baby will thrive or die in utero. We can't control when we go into labor, though from the dawn of time, we have tried . . . OH HOW WE'VE TRIED!

Babies should be easy enough. We can control where they are, who they are with, what they wear, etc., but those of my friends with newborns—and the rest of us, if we can even remember those early days (likely erased forever due to a combination of sleep deprivation and shock)—know that you can't make a baby sleep. Or eat, for that matter. You can lead a horse to water but . . . .

Older kids and even toddlers really aren't any different. We can childproof the house into Fort Knox and serve up only the healthiest of fare but somehow . . . SOMEHOW, unless our little wonders are kept in the dog kennel 24/7 (and even then...these kids are tiny Houidinis of the cleverest type), SOMETHING'S gonna happen. That's why stitches were invented, and Dust Busters, and Poison Control. You can't really get ahead of a kid or get into his head. (It truly never occurred to me to tell my 8 year-old son not saw open an aerosol can with a steak knife. To his credit, he claims he knew to check and make sure it was empty first and, indeed, nothing blew up.)

Then there is school. Ah, the choice that has split a thousand churches, or so I've heard. Parents have different reasons the education choices they make for their children. Homeschooling obviously provides greater variable control and public schooling probably the least, but it is still the variables that we are controlling and sometimes not even those very well. We opted for moderate variable control and sent our kids to a very solid Christian school. But even there, there were dud teachers, and evil science fair projects, and unfair athletic coaches, and taunting classmates. Even there, there was heartache. Nothing crushes a mother's heart than when her third grade daughter gets into the car at the end of the school day and hands her a note: "Mommy, nobody would sit with me at lunch today." No control over her broken heart. No control at all.

It never ceases to amaze me how different kids are. And a lot of it has to do with temperament, and temperament—or how we are wired and knit together in our mother's womb—is not something we can control. Take my two oldest children. Same two parents (I promise—I was there), both girls, born less than two years apart. Same rules, same variables, same schooling, same younger siblings, same major life events, same bedroom for 18.5 years. And you would never even guess that they are remotely related. They are both beautiful (an objective fact), but in vastly different ways. Their personalities, interests, strengths, and weaknesses are so different they can have a tough time even relating (maturity is making that easier). Don't anybody ever tell me that all kids are alike!

We don't wire our children. God does. It is like he sends them into this world with a backpack filled with their hair color, eye color, body type, personality traits, learning style, athletic ability, and on and on. And none of these things we can control (except for hair color, but that's another story).

I think you get my point. I've already written too much. Parenthood is hard. It is **** hard. But I think it is harder when we think we have control over something that we really don't. Sure, we can lead that horse to water . . . well, even that depends on the skill of the one leading and the temperament of the horse itself. But say we actually get the horse to the water, there is no power outside of the God of the universe that can make that horse drink.

Sure, from the very beginning, we can (and in a lot of cases should) control many basic things. What they eat (sometimes). What they wear (well, if you want to get OCD about it). Who teaches our children and what they teach them. What movies they watch and what music they hear (for a while, anyway). We can control who they play with, when they get their driver's license, and maybe even where they go to college. Basically, we can control, to a certain extent, what goes in. We cannot control how it is perceived and how it is processed and how plays out in their lives. Yes, we can speak, guide, discipline, model, train (for some reason that word makes my skin crawl), but we can never truly control them because we can never control their heart.

That fact brings me great relief. I am not qualified to control my child's heart. I didn't create it, I don't keep it beating every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I am so thankful that the very Creator of my child's heart is the one who can work his will in it. Last I saw, I had not been given the title of Holy Spirit. I'll take the influencing and do the best I can, but I think I'll leave the controlling up to him.

Tweet

Mother's Day Musings

Today is Mother's Day. I used to hate Mother's Day. I still don't care for it, really. I don't like days that put people on the spot. Days where you are supposed to have sentimental feelings and buy sappy cards and give the perfect gift to prove your love and appreciation. I am sure that there are people out there who see great things about Mother's Day (especially those in the greeting card, flower, and restaurant industries) but I see potential for so much pain: closed wombs, lost children, fractured relationships. This second Sunday in May is, to some, a reminder of loss and can be an emotional, if not visible, divide between the haves and the have-nots.

There were years that I dreaded Mother's Day. My mother and I had a rather tense relationship for a long, long time and, well, I have never been good at forking over the goods on demand. In her insecurity, she craved love from me and, in my immaturity, I found myself unable to give it, at least not on her terms.

My mother had grown up a lonely, only child. So had my father. She was a brown haired, brown eyed, stunning Southern belle and he was a blond haired, blue eyed dashing hardcore yankee and Navy pilot. They married right after WWII and spent eight years moving around the country. By 1954 she was ready to come home. My father retired from active military duty and took a job with her father's construction company and they built a family. There were four kids in all, with me as the last and bottom of the heap.

Somewhere along the way things went bad with their marriage and after 32 years, they divorced. My mother never recovered emotionally. By that time I was the only one left at home. Maybe one day I will tell my whole story but for now let's just say that life was hard and confusing for both of us. During my high school and college years, the harder I pulled away and longed for independence the harder she pulled back. It seemed to be my responsibility to meet all her emotional needs. And I have never performed well under pressure.

As an adult I wanted to love her and honor her in a biblical way but could never figure out how to do that without feeling caught up and trapped in a vortex of dysfunction and unrealistic expectations. I did the only thing I knew. I avoided her.

When I look back now, it breaks my heart to see just how much I broke hers. She died four years ago next week. God gave me nine weeks to prepare. I was there when she stepped from this earth into the presence of God. I think she knew I loved her then. I know she knows it now.

I myself am a mother of four and am still in the process of nudging my youngest two children through their teen years. Being a mother is much harder than I ever expected. I see how easy it is to take things personally, react poorly, and even run out of emotional gas and check out of parenting altogether. The fear of perpetuating the cycle of unrealistic expectations sometimes has me paralyzed. I so do NOT want to put upon my children the burden of propping up my fragile soul.

It is incredibly humbling to walk in someone else's shoes and experience life from a different angle. In some ways I love my mother more now than I ever did, perhaps because I understand her more. She was a person, just like myself, bumbling through the heart-wrenching boot camp called motherhood, with some successes and a good number of failures. But as time moves on, the bad memories fade to gray and the good ones grow more vivid and I wish I could wish her a Happy Mother's Day one more time. That was her language.

Tweet

Repentance and Parenthood

I think we all have things we said we would do or never do as parents....until we became parents and we found that it was so much easier said than done. I had so many of them. Lists and lists and lists of them, if not on paper then at least in my muddled head. Some were mundane while others were harder to pin down but so much more important. Well, my kids grew older and my ideals fell, one by one, to the onslaught of reality. But through it all I was determined in this basic calling:  I would never to use my children to meet my emotional needs. I know too well what it is like to be in that position and I never ever wanted to lay that burden on the young backs of my children.

There comes a time when you have to realize just how far you have strayed from the path. Yesterday was that day. For years I beat myself up, in front of my children, for my failings as a mother. My security, my significance, my value as a person, was so wrapped up in being for them all I felt I was supposed to be and doing for them all I was supposed to do and loving them in the way everybody said I was supposed to love them. Motherhood was an idol to me and my children suffered the consequences.

The other day I wrote about how I try to do God's job, which is a really, really bad idea. My kids were never created to do God's job either and it is totally unfair and downright wrong to expect them to. They have to be free to change and grow and run and stumble and climb and fall and try and fail without my fragile self-image dependent on their performance. They have to be free to relate to me in ways I don't always understand, and love me sometimes in "languages" I don't speak, without my whole being feeling threatened and crushed.

Placing any such huge burden on my children and giving them so much power over my own spiritual and emotional and, yes, sometimes even physical health is wrong. It is sin. What to do? Repent. Repent and believe.

Q. 87. What is repentance unto life?

A. Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience

"Turn from it unto God." "Turn from it unto God." "Turn from it UNTO God." This is turning from believing a lie to beholding that truth. This is relationship. This is turning from an idol that cannot save to a God who can. I can love my children without condition because God loves me without condition. Repentance is a beautiful thing.

Tweet

Doing God's Job

We have a phrase in real estate. If a system within a house (electrical, plumbing, roofing, foundation, HVAC, etc.) is doing its job, it is "performing the function for which intended." The roof was built to keep you dry and it should be doing just that and on and on and on.

I was created for a reason, too. To do things like loving God with all my heart, soul, and mind and loving my neighbor as myself (Matthew 22:37-39), and good works (Ephesians 2:10), and, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, "to glorify God and enjoy him forever." But I find that I really don't spend much time performing the function for which intended because I am too busy performing functions that God never, ever intended me to perform at all. I can't do my job because I am too stinking busy doing God's job . . . or at least trying to—with miserable results.

It is time to get this through my thick head:

• I wasn't created to build my kingdom on this earth. That includes having the house I want in the place I want it with the weather that I want around it and the stuff I want in it.
• I wasn't created to impress people and make them think highly of me and put me on a pedestal because that is where I get my worth.
• I wasn't created to worry about my appearance.. . . how pretty or fit or thin or young I look or what I wear.
• I wasn't created to defy gravity or the aging process.
• I wasn't created to get things done at the expense of loving other people.
• I wasn't created to work the system in my favor and "fake it til you make it."
• I wasn't created to so that the world could revolve around me.
• I wasn't created to come up with all the answers.
• I wasn't created to create my children in my own image.
• I wasn't created to be the Holy Spirit to my children.
• I wasn't created to believe in myself or follow my heart.
• I wasn't created to fear or huddle in a corner in self-protection.
• I wasn't created to fret while the nations rage.
• I wasn't created to have my life wrapped up in a neat and tidy box.
• I wasn't created to be in control of my world at all.

I was created by God for his pleasure and his glory. To love him. To love my neighbor. To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. (Micah 6:8). I can leave the rest up to him. That's his job after all.

Tweet