WFG?

My mom says she doesn't remember this story, but I do*.

When I was about 12 or 13, we were living in Lubbock and I was just entering the youth group at our church.  I'd spent my whole life being a middle child, which often meant that if the older kids got to do something cool, I was one of the younger ones.  If the younger ones got to be spoiled a bit, I was counted as among the older three... at least it felt that way to me.  So, entering the Jr. High youth group meant that I could participate in youth events that my older sisters couldn't do (being high schoolers) and that my younger sisters weren't old enough for!  Yay!

One Sunday afternoon, a spontaneous youth event was forming for the Jr. High kids: a group trip to the dollar movies.  This was in the early 90's when dollar movies only cost.... $1!  and a $5 bill could get you into the show with coke and popcorn and maybe even a candy.  As soon as the evening worship services concluded, I raced from the area where the youth were sitting to find my mom and beg her to let me go.  I'd already arranged a ride to the theater and a ride home afterward.  All I needed was permission... and some money.

I found mom and pestered her until I had her attention and started to plead my case.  "Please, mom..."  I explained the logistics and waited for her response.  That is when I noticed the look on her face.  Now that I'm a parent, I understand much better what may have been going through her mind.  I am now in the phase of life where my role as parent is mostly an ATM and Taxi driver.  If I'm not working or doing something for upkeep at the house, I'm probably dropping off, picking up, resupplying, shuttling and checking on my teens and their activities and social lives.  It can be exhausting.  Thinking back, I remember that look on mama's face.  It started off as a "no" but quickly softened to a mental sigh and then a resigned, "ok, fine".  All in the span of a second.
Mom opened her purse and pulled out a billfold.  She bypassed the empty compartment where paper bills briefly resided every payday.  Tucked back behind medical cards and other wallet debris, she pulled out a carefully folded $5 bill.
I somehow knew in that moment that I shouldn't have asked.  That $5 bill represented money that she'd set aside for sometime when she wanted to grab lunch out instead of taking a bag lunch.  It may have been a 'rainy day' fund for when she wanted to splurge on a well deserved treat that moms don't want to share with greedy offspring.  Whatever it was intended for, she was about to re-purpose it.  "Here, Jeff."  she offered me the bill.
I backpedaled.  "Oh, mom.  It's okay.  I don't need to go to the movies.  I can go next time."
"Jeff, take it."
"Mom, really, you keep it.  I'll hang out with some other friends."
"Jeff..."
I continued to protest until she moved in close and stared at me, hard.  "Jeffrey!" she said, commandingly.  I looked into her softening face and she said, "Part of grace is letting people be gracious to you.  Take the money and go have a good time."

I have had several of my therapy clients this week express their difficulty in allowing others to help them, or even asking for help when they obviously are in need of some kindness.  There seems to be a feeling of positivity that we attach to helping others that is only matched by the weird shame we seem to attach to needing help.  We somehow create a false dichotomy with this idea that some people are helpers and others are the ones who need help when in truth, we are both.

What we somehow fail to realize is that in order for there to be opportunity for ME to help another person, there needs to be another person who is willing to ask for and accept my help.  It is a curious thing to note that when we place a positive judgement on ourselves when we help others (and rightly so, as it is a good thing to help others) we also manage to place a negative judgement on whomever is the help-ee.  We weirdly manage to tie our self-worth into being in a position to help while somehow needing to avoid being in need of help.  Silly humans.

In summing up her own narrative of learning to accept help, a client managed to say in three words what has taken me 15 minutes to type out.  She finally accepted the help offered to her by a friend by simply asking herself, "Why fight grace?"

Why fight grace?

Good question.

And now, as you have need, may you position yourself to receive what those who love you so desperately want to offer: Grace.  Help.  Kindness.  Relief.  And may you know in that moment that God is loving you through these people.

Always happy to help
-Jeff

*my recollection of this event may have been embellished for storytelling purposes. :)

A little dabble... do ya?

Recently I was reading about Mindfulness and was reminded that it is a practice, a philosophy, a lifestyle even.  It is not just a set of tools and techniques.  The article I was reading noted that when we approach Mindfulness from that stance, we diminish it.  The power of Mindfulness, the outcomes and effects we see as a result of the practice are only truly realized when it is integrated into our daily living.

It got me thinking about other things that really require me to be "all in" to have the full benefit.  Like my health.  I dabble in being healthy.  You know... a salad here, a jog there.  Look!  I'm assure myself that I'm doing right by my health and wellness as I have my second helping of fries while I binge watch my 4th hour of whatever Netflix show I'm consuming.

What else?  My faith.  I dip my toe in the ocean of religion and then congratulate myself on my piety.  I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis and his work The Screwtape Letters.  An elder demon named Screwtape advises a junior demon named Wormwood on how to properly manage the humans he's been assigned.  In one correspondence between the two, Wormwood is upset that his person is regularly attending worship services and asks Screwtape how to put a stop to that practice.  The crafty mentor advises his junior demon not to stop his human from going to worship, but to plant the idea that just showing up on Sunday at church is all that is needed to be a righteous person.  Even the demons know that dabbling is not delving.

I wear so many hats and live in a society that pulls and tugs my attention with trivialities and novelty.  I want maximum return for minimum investment.  Why can't I have my cake and eat it, too?

So I've been drawn to the idea that less is more.  That we don't own things... but that things own us.  I've embraced the counter intuitive paradox that Jesus put forth: you have to die to self so you can live in Him... in His Kingdom, the first is last and the last is first.  Admitting and accepting our inefficiencies is the starting point for allowing God to lend us his strength.  I have to let go of what I'm holding on to (false idol of American Church of Busyness and Activity) to take hold of what is better.

Jeff: Ok, God.  Here's some of my heart and attention. 
God: That's a good start, son.  What else?
Jeff: Oh, um... how about my stuff... I can probably give more at church.
God: I appreciate the offer, but I don't really need your stuff.
Jeff: Of course, of course... um... what is it that you want from me?
...
God: I've been pretty clear about this.
Jeff: I know, but everything is open for negotiation, right?
God: No.  I don't want what is left over.  I want all of you.  Your thoughts, your will, your devotion, your attention, your service, your time, your good, your bad... all of you. 
Jeff: I've tried!  I really have... I'm just not good at staying focused on You.
God: Keep trying.  That is what I'm asking.  Where you fall short, I'll pick up the slack... but you can't dabble and pick and choose how you live for me.  You've got to be all in.

*sigh

So goes my ongoing conversation with God as I try to get by with as little effort as I can and still reap the maximum blessing I can take hold of.  God is gracious... yay.  But God is also just... yikes.

My purpose in writing this post is to highlight the  self deception in which many of us take refuge.  I hope you ask yourself, "In what ways to I dabble?  What in my life requires all of me that I only actually give myself to partially?"

May you gain an understanding of how you dabble.  And may you also be convicted to stop dabbling and start delving.  May you come to know the truth that hears God saying, "I am all you need.  And I require all of you."

To do or To be?

Are you a people pleaser?  Do you know one?
What do you feel you have to do to make someone proud of you?
How did we learn to feel that way?  I think we are conditioned by society to think that we have to DO something to be worth something.

Consider this passage from Mark Chapter 1, where Jesus had gone to John the Baptist to be baptized in the Jordan river.  As he came up out of the water, he heard a voice saying, "You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."  In Bible class a guy commented, "What had Jesus been doing that God was pleased with him?  I mean, we haven't heard anything about him for 18 years."

We all kind of chuckled because we had a shared understanding that if someone is pleased with us, it MUST be because we did something.

But...

What if our understanding is wrong?  In some cases, we don't (or shouldn't) have to do anything to be pleasing to someone else.

A client shared, "I wake up every morning and my sole purpose is to put a smile on that woman's face", pointing to his estranged wife on the couch next to him.  I asked, "You feel like it is your responsibility to make her happy?"  He agreed.  I followed up, "Is there anyone else you have worked to make sure they are proud of you?"  Without missing a beat, he responded, "Yes, my father."  Intrigued, I asked, "Did you have any success?  Did he ever tell you he was proud of you?  That you made him happy?"  The client shared, "He came to visit my ranch one time, after I'd quit working for him and had my own spread.  We had ridden out to inspect the property and I remember him telling me he was proud of what I'd done."

Did you catch that?  His dad was proud of what he'd done.  Not "proud of him" but "proud of what he had accomplished".  I think this is a great example of the thinking in the world today.  Our value is found in what we do and not in who we are.  Because that is how we perceive thing to be toward us, we have difficulty believing that we belong or that we are accepted by others.  It is this sense of "not enough-ness" that torpedoes our self esteem.

Author Brene Brown wrote, "Most of us use the terms fitting in and belonging interchangeably, and like many of you, I'm really good at fitting in.  We know exactly how to hustle for approval and acceptance.  we know what to wear, what to talk about, how to make people happy, what not to mention - we know how to chameleon our way through the day.  One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and, in fact, fitting in gets in the way of belonging.  Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted.  Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are." (Gifts of Imperfection p.25)

What if we no longer felt like we had to DO something to be acceptable to others?  What if we understood how powerful it is to be certain that we are worth something no matter what we do?  What if God is pleased with us because he chooses to be and not because we did anything in particular?  What if we quit expecting others to do or behave in ways that we want them to and just accept them as they are?  Can we change the world?  Maybe, even if it is one person at time.

May you learn to accept yourself.  May you learn to accept others.  And in doing so, may we all get out from under the tyranny of not being "enough".

-Jeff

Unanswerable questions

What do *you* do when someone asks you a question to which there is no good answer?

"Do these jeans make my butt look big?"

"Why didn't you take the trash out like I told you?"

"How could you hurt me like that?"

Wow, that escalated quickly.  The 1st question is a toughie... we don't want to hurt the other person with our answer and if they asked the question in the first place they are unlikely to accept any answer we would give anyhow.

The 2nd question isn't really a question.  It is an expression of the speaker's own disappointment, wrapped up in a question format.  Think about it.  The truth could be that the trash didn't get taken out because you were figuring out the cure for cancer but it wouldn't matter because what the speaker was really saying was, "I expected you to do what I told you and you didn't and now I'm hurt and disappointed and I'm blaming my feelings on you."  No answer would be good enough, just take the trash out.

The 3rd question though...
It is a different level.  It expresses not just the speaker's hurt and disappointment.  It indicates that a relationship has been damaged.  Trust may have been broken.  There is no good answer to that question. "How could you hurt me like that?"
"How could you hurt me?"
"How could you?"
"How?"
Sometimes when we've been hurt, we can't even get the whole question out.  It seemed unthinkable before it became known.  We couldn't even have imagined that person could do that.  Our disbelief and hurt is based on a faulty assumption.  It goes something like this:  If (person) really loved me, they would never do (behavior).  Ipso facto, if (person) does (behavior) they don't really love me.  Ergo, they never really loved me, therefore our whole relationship has been a lie.  I believed the lie, therefore, I'm a fool.

Yes, you are a fool.  Love is a foolish emotion.  In order for it to happen, we have to take the risk that we can be vulnerable with a person by caring about them and feeling cared for and hope that the other person will handle that risky choice with respect.  But they don't always do a good job with that task.  In fact, for a variety of reasons, the other person just may not handle that trust well.  And that brings us back to the unanswerable question: "How could you hurt me like that?"

The truth is that it is possible to love another person but behave in ways that are devaluing.  However, we cannot continue to behave in ways that devalue the other person and expect that they are going to continue to believe that we love them.

In couples therapy, I often run into situations where there are competing definitions of what it means to "love".  I may hear him say, "I wake up every day trying to put a smile on her face and show her how much I love her.  I'd walk a thousand miles to show her that."  Her reply, "I didn't *ask* you to walk a thousand miles.  I just want you to do a load of laundry!"  What looks like love to one person doesn't always line up with the other's view of love.  Lots of people have attempted to encompass the ineffable definition of love. Gary Chapman gave it a go with his Five Love Languages.  I use his framework frequently, but there is still more to be said.

Love is a feeling.
Love is a choice.
Love is action.
Love is ..... (fill in your favorite way to describe love)

Problem is, although we have overlapping definitions, the areas where things don't overlap cause problems.  I've adopted a definition of love from Everett Worthington Jr. from his book, Hope Focused Marriage Counseling:

Love is valuing the other person and refusing to devalue the other person.

I love this definition because it encompasses the understanding that we can say (or feel like) we love the other person, but if we aren't demonstrating it through our behaviors (in active and passive ways), it isn't really complete.

May you learn to value others and refuse to devalue them.  May you find the answer to the unanswerable questions.  And may you discover in the process that part of the answer lies in questioning our assumptions and finding ways to ask different questions.

Counterintuitive

Sometimes I run across ideas that don't seem to make much sense on the surface, but they have deeper truths that reveal themselves later.  They seem to run counter to conventional wisdom and require me to give some thought to them, so I call them "counter-intuitive".  Today's counter-intuitive idea came from a Facebook post by the straightforward thinker and TV personality Mike Rowe (https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe/posts/1916686088341525).  While the entire post is well worth a read, here is the part that jumped out to me:

"Failure was simply viewed as the most common symptom of trying. Consequently, the more I tried, the more I failed. The more I failed, the more I succeeded. The more I succeeded, the more confident I became."

For many of us, 'failure' is a bad thing.  It is associated with a sense of inadequacy, with shame or with uncomfortable feelings.  Because of this, our brains begin to associate 'failure' with 'bad' and we learn to avoid not only actual failure, but anything associated with failure.  You know, like, effort and trying.  After all, if I don't try, I can't fail. See?  This can snowball into other's perceiving us as 'lazy' and cowardly, but somehow, those things are more tolerable than feeling like a failure.

Wait.  There it is.  The subtle, but powerful, distinction.  *Being* a failure vs. failing.  As Mike Rowe indicated, when we fail.... when failure is an action, an outcome of trying something... something outside of us, it is possible to learn from it.  To grow from failure.  In this sense, when I try and fail, it is feedback.  It is experience that I can use to change my attitude, my behavior, my intention as I try again and move closer to success.  Far from being a bad thing, failure is an *essential* thing for me to experience.  When we internalize failure, we begin to see it not as something that often happens when we try something.  We think that failure is something that we *are*.  Can you understand the powerful difference between thinking, "I *am* a failure." vs. "I tried something and failed at it."?

I'm thankful for people like Mike Rowe, who can succinctly remind me to think differently about failure.  I'm thankful that I can think more deeply about what it means to fail and learn that failure, far from being a bad thing, is an essential thing to my success.

And now, may you find failure, and in failing, may you find that you are successful.  In feeling successful, my you try and fail and try some more and in the process discover that you are powerful beyond belief.

-Jeff