On Hate

Yesterday my youngest son Alex proclaimed that he hated his older brother Ben. My immediate reflex was to say "No, you don't hate your brother." "Yes, I do hate him!"he replied.

My mind was quickly scanning old parenting books and remembering that some said that you're not supposed to tell your kids how they don't feel something - even hate. I thought of our preschool guru Mame who has told us as parents not to insist that a child say they are sorry when they are fighting over a toy. "Believe me," she'll state definitively "in that moment they are definitely not feeling sorry!"

I tried again with Alex. "Sometimes you feel really really angry at Ben." "Yes!"he said "Especially when he breaks my lego and I've been working since tomorrow on building it."

I feel the hate in my heart too. Even though I don't want to. Last night I was in the dinnertime crisis and I thought "I hate this!!!" not - I'm grateful I have plenty of food to eat, and a family, and a warm house. No - I hate this. And right now I'm feeling pretty angry toward pretty much everyone in my family.

Thank God I have God. Really, I can't imagine living with myself if I didn't. The shame and self-loathing would be overwhelming. God's grace for me isn't a blank slate to do whatever I want and then ask for forgiveness. But God's grace in my world is a chance to experience that dark dark place inside myself, and know that I can move on, and try to be a better person tomorrow.

Tonight I am thinking about a song by Chris Tomlin "Your Grace is Enough"  which really inspires me when I need grace (which is pretty much every day!).

What do you do with all your dark emotions?

Supporting Change in Others

The TV has been an issue of negotiation for our family for a while. When we moved into our first place together, Jeff and I decided to put the TV into the office upstairs instead of the main living area. We had to go upstairs to watch TV, which meant that the kids weren't tempted as much, but the reality was that Jeff and I would huddle in the small office and watch shows at the end of the day, leaving the big room empty.

I've spent lots of the last year trying to convince Jeff that we could save lots of money by canceling the TV altogether and just watching things on the computer - hey between cable, tivo and netflix it really adds up! I slowly started watching TV less at night and reading more, though Jeff still often fell asleep in front of the TV before going to bed at night.

Even before we moved into our new place something shifted for me. I still didn't want tons of TV, but I pictured "movie nights" where our family cuddled up on a big sofa. I wanted live sports, so we could watch football and baseball and lounge around on the weekends (I have comforting memories of my Dad napping while watching football games).

Jeff, meanwhile, went from wanting a large 48 inch new flat-screen TV for our new living room, to not wanting any TV at all.

Somehow we both criss-crossed to opposite ends of the TV spectrum.

One of my dear high school friends Nicole has parents who have been married over fifty years - married as high school sweethearts. I remember her mom once told me that the key to their successful marriage was letting the other person change, and moving forward with that.

I am not sure where our family is going to land with the whole TV in the living room negotiation. But it reminded me that change is certain in the people we love, and part of being in relationship is expecting, acknowledging and supporting that change.

No one is stagnant - and I don't think that's the life that God wants for us anyhow. Not all change is good of course, but even good change can be uncomfortable for the rest of us while we negotiate this new reality in our relationship.

How do you support your partner in the changes s/he is making in their life?

Making Space to Bring in the New

This week I think I hit a new low in terms of mood. I also think I proved that grumpiness is contagious - having successfully spiraled my husband out of a decent mood into the vortex of grump one evening.

In the midst of this marvelous abundance, I feel awful that I have been feeling so irritable and just plain angry. I should be happy! We are proud owners of our house in the woods, our old condo is in contract for more than we had imagined, and here I am, in the grumps.

I think it's easy for me to think that when I'm starting something new I won't be haunted by some of the things in my past. Like my irritability or feeling penned in by my surroundings. And then when those awful feelings come back to the surface I realize that I had hoped they would have disappeared in the move. No surprise that they haven't.

And here I am surrounded by boxes and chaos, and it's hard to focus on anything else. I've made no progress at all on any of my other heart's desires and goals.

I am slowly chipping away at the boxes, and trying to put things away, but I'm also realizing that my old stuff simply won't fit into the new house. I've started to slowly haul things back down to our van, and bring boxes to goodwill.  I know that to get the peace I crave, I need to get rid of things. Like my Dad says "possessions are a burden". Mostly I just want four solid days by myself in the house to go through it all!

I think life is like that too. I say I want healing - but have I made the space for it in my life? Is there something I need to give up? I think God's abundance is such that we don't always have to "give up" something to get the things we need most - but I find myself so distracted in this life, that I don't always focus my attention on what I want or need most.

Where do you need to make space - either in your physical world or your spirit world?

The End of the Summer of Bald

School starts tomorrow, and for us, that effectively means end of summer.

I've been putting off deciding what do to about the Summer of Bald. I thought about asking other people what they think, but in the end I decided this was too personal to follow anything other than my instincts. Only my instincts have been delaying and delaying.

I've loved the summer of bald.  I've felt so free - wearing my big earrings daily, and makeup when I can find it at the bottom of a box.  I realized that lately I haven't gotten any cancer inquiries, and I suppose it's because in my urban area it's a fashion statement to run about shorn. That and I think I look pretty healthy. But mostly I think people realize that when I show up all bald I'm not trying to hide anything - somehow I got more inquires when I've been wearing a hat.

I realized one of the confusing things for my son Ben and his schoolmates last spring was that some days I would wear a wig, and some days I would wear a hat. I think if I wore my wig everyday they would just forget about it eventually, and likewise if I wore a hat (or went bald) then it would just become passe at some point. So at some level I want to be consistent when I show up at his school. Though I can't quite muster up wanting to wear a wig again.

This is complicated by the fact that I'm planning my reentry back into the workforce after five years at home, and I'm planning to wear my wig. I feel like I have enough to explain about why I was home, and what skills I have to offer, without having to explain my "illness" to potential employers.

So I may start wearing my wig again a lot, but not yet. I'm just not ready for the summer of bald to be over.

The irony is that our new house in the woods gets a lot more fog than our old apartment - particularly at night. I've been wearing a hat almost constantly at home to combat the chill. Bald indeed!

Finding Peace in Chaos

We have moved into our new home, and I look out the window and see trees and more trees. I feel so blessed.

And then I look around inside, and I see chaos. Hundreds of boxes, in various stages of throwing up on the floor, combined with clothes that have no home, dirty laundry, lego and playmobil. Yesterday I was feeling a bit anxious, even though I made great progress on unpacking the kitchen.

The "when this then I'll be...." thoughts began to creep into my head. Like "when all these boxes are put away then I'll feel much better and will be able to relax" similar to the "when I find a new job then I'll be happier" soundtrack.

I took a break from the unpacking and went for a walk in the magical canyon (city park) that is our backyard. I watched the hawks flying, saw kids picking blackberries, and felt a bit more peace.

I was listening to the Christine Carter's Happiness Matters podcast and she mentioned a study where participants were instructed to only do "high productivity tasks" all the time - nothing fun, nothing for rest. They had trouble sleeping, and reached such a high anxiety level after just 48 hours the researchers had to stop the study.

There will always be chaos in my life. There will always be more things to do, scattered toys, jobs and tasks undone. And it's up to me to find peace in the midst of it.

I think that's what God wants for us "the peace that surpasses all understanding". The fray won't go away - there will always be something else to do, or something else to worry about. But I can take a few minutes every day to reconnect and find that peace and try to enjoy the ride.

How do you find everyday peace? Meditation? Exercise? Prayer? Post your comments!

Choosing Resentment or Changing the Story

Today in the midst of our busy packing week, one of the hazard warning lights went on in the car. After I had driven around for a while (wondering, is this car going to break down on the side of the highway?) I finally pulled out the manual to figure out exactly what this light meant to tell me.

It was low tire pressure. And I knew I had to deal with it, sooner than later.

And then that niggle of resentment began to creep into my head. Isn't this a guy's job? Shouldn't my husband be dealing with the car stuff?

Once when I was living in New Zealand a neighbor tried to teach me how to change the oil in my old car (the lesson didn't stick).  I'm not at all confident when it comes to even knowing simple things, like when to even bring my car in to get *someone else* to change the oil. I wish that my husband would just take this dreaded job away from me.

But the reality is that our family has one car, and I'm the one who drives it 90% of the time. Jeff commutes on the train to work, and occasionally drives it on weekends, but otherwise it's me. Before we got our new car, I formed a good relationship with the mechanics a block away - since our old Jetta seemed to need a lot of help.

So when that resentment started to creep in today I realized it was less about what my husband wasn't doing, and more about the lack of confidence I had in the task at hand. I didn't know what to do, and so I'd pretty much rather not do it at all.

I decided that I was going to take this on with a better attitude - and my son Ben quickly became my partner. I told him I'd never done this before, I didn't know what to do, but we were going to figure it out. We went into the gas station, bought an air pressure gauge, and I read the fine print on the tire not to exceed 40 PPM. Then Ben and I filled each tire to about 38 in my estimate. And we celebrated!

I told Ben that I was so proud of us, and I was. The story changed - from one about me having to deal with my husband's supposed "job" to my son and I bonding over conquering something new.

What are you resenting right now? How can you change the story?

See what you Seek

In the last issue of Stanford magazine, there was a really interesting article about a new book by anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann called "When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God."

In the book Luhrmann doesn't talk about whether or not God exists. She talks about how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God's voice. There's also brief mention in the article of students in a study where they were told to visualize the deceased Leland Stanford Jr. (and some of them did).

This article really emphasized for me the fact that we do see what we seek to find. If I'm not looking for the divine, then running into a neighbor for an intense conversation, or the fact that our real estate agent answered the phone after not speaking for seven years would be just plain luck. But if I am seeking the divine, then I might notice things I wouldn't, or make connections that I will attribute to divine intervention.

I think the opposite is also true: if I believe that most people on the road today are terrible drivers, I will find a lot of bad drivers out there.

I really like the work of Christine Carter, who has a blog and a book called Raising Happiness. She talks a lot about the science of happiness, and about how incorporating different habits have been statistically shown to make us feel happier - having a faith practice is one of them. Her discussions about gratitude have really hit home for me - the more you focus on things you are grateful for, in a routine way preferably every day, the more grateful (and happy) you will feel for your life.

Yesterday I went to Big Trees State Park with the boys, and I saw the most "ginormous!" tree I have seen in my life. These sequoias tower over the redwoods hands down. And for me, I saw amazing grace, evidence of a God that is both large and small, and ancient.

And I will continue to seek.