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Sacrifice What’s Easy

A millionaire who gives away $100 does not experience the same sacrifice as a factory worker who gives the same amount. It’s easy for someone wealthy to give away a few bucks, it’s not that significant of a cost to them. 

There is not much sacrifice when we give what is easy to give. Sacrifice is the surrender of myself for the sake of someone else. This how we know someone loves and cares about us. 

Gary Chapmans concept of The Five Love Languages is a great example of how this might show up in a relationship. For instance, one of my love languages is words of affirmation. It is relatively easy for me to show others that I love or care about them with words of affirmation. This comes naturally to me. 

My wife’s love language is acts of service. Words of affirmation might be the last one on her list. Acts of service is probably the last one on my list. If I only choose to love her out of what comes naturally to me, I am going to miss opportunities to love her. 

A great rule of thumb on this principle for Marriage: Work on growing your capacity to do what isn’t easy. This could be how you engage in conflict, your habits in talking and listening (Men speak about 10,000 words per day, Women speak around 25,000), or how you express love.

What do you need to sacrifice today?

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The Three P’s of Porn Recovery

Last week I wrote about the allure of Porn. As a therapist, I’ve interacted with hundreds of men, women, and teenagers about their sexuality and porn usage. They all desire sexual wellness but struggle to know how to find it. In working with them, there are three things that always show up when someone is wanting health and healing from pornography. Those that engage with these three categories always discover something greater for their lives. They find what they have been searching for. 

The Three P’s of Porn Recovery:

People
Shame tells us that we need to have life figured on own. This is a flat out lie. We have to have people involved in our recovery story. We need others to support, encourage, hold accountable, challenge, and believe in us (especially when we don’t believe in ourselves). This needs to include (with limitations) someone’s spouse, but not only their spouse.

Process
We need a process to follow that is beyond our ability to set rules and limitations on life. Helpful processes include therapy, 12-step meetings (AA, SA, Al-Anon, ACA), Celebrate Recovery, or a sexual integrity group at a local Church. This process needs to be facilitated by someone who has been down the road for a while. Someone who has already followed and is now leading. A doctor can’t perform surgery on themselves, they need another professional to care for them.

Protagonist
We need a hero to discover. Someone to believe in when we lose our way. A hero that can push through the cold of night, withstand the lonely of day, and resist the enemies who thwart the journey. A hero that has character, value, morals, and integrity. Recovery forces us to face the hero within and the ultimate Hero who can save us from ourselves. There’s a reason that the first three steps in the 12-steps is about admitting powerless and entrusting our lives to God for healing.

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Shame

The best explanation I have heard for shame is a simple acronym: 
Should 
Have 
Already 
Mastered 
Everything

It’s the feeling that tells us to figure things out on our own. Don’t ask for help. Don’t admit weakness or needs. Keep the facade up, act like you know what the topic of conversation is about. Shame is a master at keeping secrets (where addictions come from). It will hold you in hiding until you feel like you’re enough. When you’re supposed to be a master of everything, there’s no grace or forgiveness for messing up anything.

On the flip side, shame tells us that we have limits, that we are not God. Which, if you can accept it, is a really freeing feeling. There is a God, and that is not me, which means I don’t have to have it all figured out. I can master some things, but only a mastery that a human can achieve, not the mastery of what God can achieve. Admitting this will lead to an ability to ask for help.

What do you need help with in your life?

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Confidence

When we talk about having confidence we’re usually referring to the feeling of being steadfast, solid, or steady in our decision/statement. We also use the word to describe telling someone something private or secret that we ask them to keep “in confidence.” 

Confidence comes from the Latin word which means to act “with fidelity.” When we are confident, we act out of faithfulness to what we know or believe to be true. 

In an act of confidence (or lack thereof), a really important question to ask ourselves is this: “To whom or what am I being faithful?” Is the action faithful to a value or morality that is internally held? Perhaps it is faithfulness a boss, parent, spouse, God, friend, or other authority figure? 

Often our lack of confidence is because we are acting with too much faith in what another person says, instead of finding out what it is that we believe needs to be said or done. The risky work for this person is discovering and acting upon what unique interests, beliefs, and needs they have.

When we are too confident in ourselves, it’s because we have lost faith and trust in others. We can’t rely on them, so we act and live in isolation so as to not be hurt or let down again. The maturing work for this person is to risk asking for help from others. 

Too much confidence in others will keep us from making our own decisions and discoveries.
Too much confidence in ourselves will keep us from making wise decisions and finding our need of others. 

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Serving Time

Each day is full of potential. Usually this “potential” is beyond what we know to be possible. Potential successes. Potential failures. We sometimes wake up with great expectations, and other times with great dread. But we all wake up in the same position: Unable to change time. We can’t make it pass faster, or slower. 

There are two kinds of time: Chronos and Kairos. 

Chronos is about the chronological, the counting, or tracking of time. This is why we have clocks: To track, count, and measure. 

Kairos is about the actions or purpose we take in time. Opportunity. Criticality. Possibility

Each day we are faced with a decision about how we will serve the time we are given. Will we serve it chronologically in how we pass or track the time. Some times, it’s all we can do to just get through it. TGIF.  

Or will we serve it with opportunity and possibility? Purposefully. With hope and anticipation.

The great thing about this question of how will we serve time is that it doesn’t matter how we did or didn’t serve it yesterday, we get another choice today. 

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Comfort

The word “comfort” comes from the Latin word which means “strengthen greatly.” We use this word to describe relief from distress more so than strength in our distress.

In Western culture, the majority of us have a variety of “things” that are comfortable. Comfort food. Comfortable shoes. A comfy sweatshirt. Comfortable friendships. Comfortable habits. Comfortable life.

But sometimes that which is of comfort is not all that helpful. Comfortable isolation. The relief of familiar thought about ourselves or others. The comfort of more food. The ease of sleeping in instead of getting up early to exercise. 

Discomfort is not typically on our menu of options we gleefully chose for our lives. Yet it is the discomfort that moves us to change, or causes us to do something different with our lives. 

Many times it is our comforts that keep us from becoming who God created us to be.

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The Gospel of Porn

The allure and promise of porn is simple. It’s about acceptance. It tugs at our need to be saved. Rescued. Our need for salvation.

Porn says, “You can come as you are. You are welcome here. Alone. Tired. Afraid. Ashamed. No problem, You’re ok here.” 

Usually not really knowing what you are looking for, it promises to take care of you. 

It welcomes you. There is no judgement from anyone on the screen. No forgiveness needed because you are good and there is nothing wrong with your desires. Just keep searching, clicking, and watching. 

Porn holds you and tells you that whatever you are searching for, you can find it here. It whispers, “you’re not lost anymore.” This is the mastery of porn. It hits on a desire that we all have: To be found. Not lost anymore. Accepted. Welcomed with excitement and anticipation, without judgement, with open arms.

Porn offers no rejection. It always says: “Yes!” Accepting whatever you ask, faster than you can ask.

But in the end, you will leave. You’ll walk away alone. Tired. Afraid. Ashamed. Lost. Cold. And not ok.

Do you know what or who you’re searching for? 

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In Process

Practice makes progress, not perfection. 

Voltaire said it so well, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” 

We are all in process. Not fully baked. Not quite done. Some of us are almost, but not yet there. We are all learners in different stages of our own growth process. Only those who expect themselves to have already arrived will have little room for those that have yet to arrive. Themselves included. 

If we stop expecting perfection we might be so much happier with the results we get in life. Most importantly, we’ll be excited about ourselves, and others. Perhaps it’s time to set down the idol of the perfect, and accept what is good. 

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One Thousand Words

Words are a gift for us to use with wisdom. Some of us have a lot of them, some of us don’t have all that many.

We use language to express thoughts, feelings, desires, ideas, and hopes. They are not all we have to communicate with, but they are the anchor of our communication. If we’re honest, we don’t measure our language with those closest to us.

If you only had a total of 1,000 words to use per day in your life, how would you use them? Who would you want to give them to (a blessing)? What kind of words would you want to use? What would you want to make sure you said?

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The Viewpoint 1.1

The Viewpoint is a weekly roundup of content I have come across throughout the week that is worth reposting. This content will often be an article or a book I’ve recently read, or something else that is of cultural significance.

One of my good friends talks about the word “viewpoint” as nothing more than a view from a point. When we change our point of view (or sometimes the point of our view — which is a different issue altogether), we can see differently. Relationships grow when we are open to changing our view.

The Viewpoint

Vol 1, Issue 1

  1. You Are What You Watch?
    This article from the NY Times covers several interesting topics about the rise of television consumption. It’s a fascinating read that covers a lot of ground. The two topics of most interest to me were the social science research done about children and Sesame Street, and the affects on someone’s IQ based on the amount of TV watched.

    Television has changed dramatically in the last 5 years. On demand content and streaming services have created a massive library of accessible information and entertainment. As with any technological advance, the danger is in the use of the system without boundaries. I’m especially concerned for our kids and their parents marriage. The television (screens) offers the safest place of escape from relational hardships, and what we watch is impacting us far more than we realize.

  2. Fatal Stabbing Recorded by Dozens of Onlookers.
    Sad news this week out of New York about a fight that broke out amongst some High School students one evening that turned into a deadly stabbing. The troubling part of this story comes from the details that “dozens” (from the 50-70 that were present) other kids were watching and video recording the young man bleeding to death in the parking lot. Some of these bystanders live streamed the event, and others posted the video to their social media accounts. Share this story with your age appropriate teenagers (if your child has a smart phone, they are old enough for this story), and talk about what happened.

  3. Comedian Impersonates Tom Cruise
    I’m sure you’ve seen the gifted comedians that impersonate celebrities. It’s awesome to hear them talk like a famous person. What’s not awesome is to watch a video of an impersonation, and their face change to match the person they are impersonating. It took me several times watching this video to figure out what I was seeing was both real, and fake. First, watch this video, then keep reading.

    This is a technology that allows faces to be manipulated in a video. Think of it like photoshop for videos. This might not be news to you that something like this can be done, it wasn’t to me. But what was news to me was how subtle and real this appeared. After watching this, I’m really concerned with how this kind of technology can be used (and weaponized).

    Our society is losing it’s grasp on what truth it can stand on. There are significant implications now that videos can be manipulated to subtly appear as though “Tom Cruise” is sitting on that couch. With so much of our lives centered around a screen of some kind, how do we know what is real or what is fake? It is becoming increasingly important for real, face to face relationships to be a significant part of our lives. The less real relationship we have, the more we are going to be subjected to on screen manipulations (words, news, videos, etc).

Thanks for reading this week’s version of The Viewpoint. If you’ve read something of interest, please let me know. Thanks and have a great weekend.