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2012 Most Read/Shared Posts

One of my goals for 2012 was to write more. Beyond writing weekly for the online publication Start Marriage Right, I was able to share some thoughts and writings here on my counseling site. Below are the top 5 shared and viewed posts from the past year.

Stop Trying to Be Normal, You’re Not 167

Normal is depressing. Normal is just plain vanilla, no toppings. Normal is the path of no resistance. Not least resistance, no resistance. Normal is normal, and more and more people are looking for the supposed feel-good nature of being normal. Let others define what normal is, then jump on the bandwagon to feel accepted, part of the team. But you’re not accepted or connected. You’re a drone that parrots what you think others want to hear, what you think others value as popular or normal. …Stop Trying to Be Normal, You’re Not

The Sexual Commodity of Beauty 92

There are two issues here. First is the need for women to transcend the message that to be sexy and hot is to be beautiful. To take it one step further, women need to reject the notion that beauty is synonymous with being sexual. Some of the most beautiful people in the world would never be selected to appear on the cover of a vanity magazine. Capturing and extending external beauty is a losing battle. It’s not just the women’s responsibility to reject this, it also requires men to engage beauty and sexuality in a mature and person-centered manner. …The Sexual Commodity of Beauty

Seeing the Real You 77

We care what others think because it’s easy. It’s easy to ask someone else to define you. To judge you. To tell you who or what you are (and in most cases, they will tell you what you are, not who you are). We want easy, because hard is painful. Hard is just that, hard. And not many of us like hard. … Seeing the Real You

Parenting Kids, Not Controlling Them 62

Parenting is the essence of training a child in how to relate to the world around them. There are hundreds of books to help you along this journey, but the most important piece that a book can never teach you is how to engage your child in who they are. When we control our kids, we ask them to be someone that they are not. It’s scarier to be in relationships with others, our kids included, where we are not in control. Control will crush a relationship, and your child’s spirit. You will do more harm than good by ushering them down the path of life that you want for them. … Parenting Kids, Not Controlling Them

Fear of Losing Her 57

I’m afraid I’ll lose him or her can be one of the most powerful motivators in a relationship. There are many stories that shape the foundation of this fear, but regardless of it’s origin, the way you behave out of this fear will either result in bondage or freedom. If we’re honest, we all have fears about doing or not doing something that will bring an end to an important relationship. This fear may not be consciously present for both partners, but it’s in there.

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Fear of Losing Her

I’m afraid I’ll lose him or her can be one of the most powerful motivators in a relationship. There are many stories that shape the foundation of this fear, but regardless of it’s origin, the way you behave out of this fear will either result in bondage or freedom. If we’re honest, we all have fears about doing or not doing something that will bring an end to an important relationship. This fear may not be consciously present for both partners, but it’s in there.

There are two ways we typically react to this fear:

  1. Grab on tightly and not let go (a natural and normal reaction)
  2. Hold with open arms and allow the other the freedom to choose (a more nuanced reaction).

Obviously the latter is more difficult, but it’s a promise we all hope to give and be given upon getting married. This is the reality of accepting that love is a choice.

In the infancy of a relationship, it’s impossible for couples to not behave and interact as though devastation is but a whisper away. Couples will spend countless hours together, spending energy they’d normally reserve for work and other relationships, and will be quite infatuated with each other. It’s the picture of the animals coming out in the spring in the movie, Bambi. Everyone is twitterpated, and nothing else matters. This infancy can last days, weeks or years and is the beginning grounds of every relationship.

If one person tries to break free (mature) from the immaturity of the relationship, it forces the other person to either increase their efforts at containing the relationship or to follow the others’ lead. Thus begins the dance of “I’m afraid I’ll lose the other person.”

When we’re afraid of losing someone close, our natural tendency is to hold on tighter so as to guarantee the person never gets away. Said another way, finding something of immeasurable value is rare and it’s easy to want to horde so as to never experience the loss. God has hardwired us for relationships, and this is the dilemma that faces marriage:

 How do I ensure I’ll never lose him/her?

The unfortunate answer is that we can never ensure our own safety, or closeness to another person. Because of this, our humanness takes charge and we squeeze tight, so we don’t experience loss. One of the quickest ways to erode trust with your spouse is to risk them feeling controlled. If this word pops up in your conversations, wisely heed the warning and address it.

The balloon analogy
What’s not understood in this dilemma is that when we squeeze something, we generally expel the air that resides inside; much like a balloon. Balloons are designed to hold air. When you commit your life to your spouse, you commit to caring for him/her the way you’d care for a balloon. Sometimes they’ll need you to put some air in them, sometimes they’ll need a string so they can fly in the wind but not get lost, and sometimes they’ll need to be left alone to dance on the floor to how the air moves them. If I’m afraid of losing my balloon, I might squeeze it so hard that all the air is expelled from the other person. “She’s safer in my pocket, than out on her own,” might be a phrase associated with this act or belief.

This dynamic plays an important part for the early stages of intimate relationships. This “holding on tightly” is usually given and received as a token of the pure love that couples have for one another. This can be experienced as love early on in a relationship, but as the individuals (and marriage) grows, so too does the need for a more matured expression of love.

Love takes energy and selfless behavior to care, respect, actively listen, attend, and honor our spouse. On the other hand, fear silences, manipulates, controls, and worries. Marriage is the choice to engage in spite of our fear. I liken it to the challenge of being given a rare flower that needs care, but room to breath and grow. Smother it, and it will slowly die; tend to it and it will thrive.

If we let the fear of loss control our actions and interactions with our spouse, it will result in a failure of love. Love is not static. It’s a dynamic process of growth both for the other and for ourselves.

 

(originally published at Start Marriage Right)

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A Year Ago on 5 Minute Sherpa

2011

Parenting as a Journey with Kids

The most relationally adept parents that I see are those that come alongside their kids in walking with them in their journey through life. When parents and kids can meet together at the intersection in the disappointment of life, powerful relationships are built.

2010

Where Do You Go

Where do you go when life shows it’s jagged edges, and impossible scenarios?  Often times in the face of pain or fear, we look for the easy button.  You know, the button that Staples has made famous.  Just press that button and all the problems of life will fade away.  Perhaps that button for you is alcohol, pornography, an unhealthy relationship, or isolation.

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Peace

This season is so full.

Holiday parties, shopping, Christmas cards, kids activities all dot the calendar landscape. It’s only 30 days or so between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it might as well be one week. It sure feels that way.

Too much the antithesis of what I want this season to be about, though I realize I’ve dug my own hole and booked myself and family too much. Each year I anticipate the peace that the Christmas season promises, and each year am saddened with how busy it becomes.

It’s loud. Too loud. People shouting, shoving, and posturing on Black Friday. Others leaving notes on cars because they weren’t parked “correctly” in the mall parking lot. So much of the busyness is self-inflicted … and yet I wonder if this is an age-old dilemma.

I wonder if the fullness of the “holidays” are akin to what God-fearing people felt as they waited and anticipated the coming of Christ. Perhaps they too felt full and maxed out. They needed the Savior to come and relieve the tension, anxiety, and worry. To save them from themselves. To save them from trying to buy happiness, contentment, or fairness. They needed Christ in the same way we do.

Maybe that’s why Christmas day is about the only day of the year when many of us stop our normal comings and goings and accept peace. Accept the truth that we don’t have what it takes, but someone does and he came. For us.

I’m glad He came.

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Five Hours of Magic

Dr. John Gottman, revered marriage expert, has done extensive research in the field of marriage. One of his most helpful findings is what separates successful marriages to ones that fail. The answer: Those that spend an extra 5 hours per week investing in their spouse tend to live a more fulfilled marriage. He calls it the magic 5 hours. Below, I’ve adapted and commented on the 5 categories he uses in his book, The 7 Principals for Making Marriage Work.

1. Partings/Departures – 2 Minutes per day
Spend two minutes per day warmly and intentionally departing from your spouse for work, the gym, or social activity. This can include a brief description about the forthcoming appointments or activities that you will encounter during your day. Take a moment to do this without rushing and, as you depart, let your spouse know they are an important part of your day. Two minutes per weekday, 10 minutes per week.

2. Greetings/Arrivals – 20 Minutes per day
At some point shortly after your return home from work or daily activity, spend twenty minutes debriefing about the events of the day. Like the 15-Minute date, each take about ten minutes of this time to share your high and low points of the day. This is time to reconnect after spending the majority of the day living in separate worlds. Spending 20 minutes per weekday is 1 hour and 40 minutes per week.

3. Physical Affection – 5 Minutes per day
The more familiar and routine we become with our spouse, the less we take time to physically. Unfortunately, the physical proximity of each other in a home gets to be sufficient. For most marriages, the only intentional physical connection occurs during sex. Without non-sexual touch (touching that is not leading to sex), sex can become a chore and obligation. Gottman suggests spending 5 minutes per day, not necessarily in one setting, intentionally touching, hugging, kissing, and physically interacting with one another. These 5 minutes will likely be the easiest of this list to do with each other, and will likely enhance your sex life. Five minutes every day is 35 minutes per week.

4. Admiration, Affirmation, & Compliments – 5 Minutes per day
Those who are loved by touch have had their five minutes, now it’s time to spread some love with words of affirmation. Make mention about something you admire about your spouse or something they did. In his research, Gottman says that it takes 5 positive affirmations to counteract one negative interaction. Think of this category as your emotional bank account. Each time you find something enjoyable or affirming about your spouse, make a deposit. Five minutes every day is 35 minutes per week.

5. Weekly Dates – 2 Hours per week
Doing the previous four exercises will net you 3 hours of foundational time spent investing in your marriage. The cherry on top of this is the weekly date. Dating is the time that you and your wife leave the confines of the home, and live life together. Dates do not have to be dinner and a movie, nor do they have to be talking dates. My wife and I actually try to have dates together where we are not sitting face-to-face with each other for the entire evening. This can involve a movie, putt-putt golf, serving dinner at the local homeless shelter, or another activity that is not routine.

Dates are usually the first activity to go in marriage. A big reason is assuming the time spent together at home negates the need for an intentional date. The problem with this thinking is that your relationship was never built by staying at home. You went out, dated, and that usually ends pretty soon after marriage. Make it a point to protect your date night at all costs.

My guess is these 5 hours were present in your dating relationship, and you didn’t have to think about doing them. The good news with this: You’re able to do it.

The bad news: You’re going to need to work on it. Take the time to invest in your marriage in these 5 hours per week: You’ll reap the rewards.

 

(Originally published for Start Marriage Right)

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Beyond the Seen

http://youtu.be/0D-LsS4MuZk

We’re all trying to make it in a grown up world. We’re all Tom Hanks’ character in the movie “Big.” Nothing more than a boy stuck inside a 30, 40, or 50 year olds body.

It’s time to grow up. It’s time to stop living life as though it’s going to work, to fulfill you, or bring a constant smile. It’s a grown up world, and a lot of us are acting like that three-year-old in the grocery store pitching a fit because we’re not able to get Lucky Charms.

Stop spending more money than you make. Stop being late for lunch with a friend, and stop taking advantage of your spouse because “we both understand how busy we are.” Personal responsibility is lacking, and this just isn’t going to work.

The physical is where we miss each other. We see the body, the facial hair, the curved body, the jewelry, cars, and houses, but fail to recognize that these are statuses kids can attain. Kids get married, have kids, get jobs, and make lots of money. Kids do things that make them appear to be adults, but inside they’re not. Adults don’t stay in abusive relationships. Adults don’t have affairs. Kids are who buy BMW’s because it makes them feel good inside.

Adults know and value time, forgiveness, compassion, and grace. They know these things because they’ve been given these by others. They’ve been given these things by an adult. Not a child. But an adult. Virtues drive adults, not statuses.

Wisdom coaches adults, not knowledge. The turtle is admired, the hare hated. Kids don’t grow up trying to be the slowest, they want to be the fastest. The fastest wins the race, but loses the journey.

Early on, kids learn the pain of telling the truth. Maturity is about being honest, especially when it’s the hardest to do so. Not only about what we stole, or lied about, but what we fear, hope for, and desire.

This American Life recently had a 25 minute story about a politician and his friend who both lost their careers (and one went to prison) because they spent 3-4 years covering up a mistake made over a postcard during a campaign. They cheated, and had they told the truth at the time, it would have been a slap on the wrist. This is the penultimate example of choosing to believe the justification or lies over the truth. I’ve done it, and so have you. “What the heart wants, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.” – Thomas Cranmer

What if we stopped giving people so much credit? What if we looked beyond the titles, power suits, big homes, nice cars, fancy vacations, and latest fashion? What would we see?

You’d see someone just like you. Someone who doubts themselves, questions God, fears vulnerability, and knows from experience to trust no one. You’d see the kid inside trying, screaming, clawing, and begging for someone to hold them and tell them it’s ok. You’d see a 40 year old man who still gets afraid of the dark, a 30 year old woman who still worries about being alone, or a 60 year old man wondering why life has been so empty.

We’ve trained ourselves and each other to judge by the seen, not the content. Because covers can be made beautiful, attractive, sexy, and appealing. There’s no such thing as Photoshop for the soul. Often the content doesn’t ever get read because we’re too transfixed by the cover. We want to believe that some have it together, because then there is hope for me. If no one has it together, where do I go? What do I live for?

Ever wondered why social media is so popular, or why there are so many so called “reality” shows on television? It’s because we want someone else’s life. We don’t want our own. You may not admit it, but your life has not been what you wanted it to be. If you don’t learn your own content, what makes you you, then you’ll be looking to live out someone else’s.

Looking beyond the seen is difficult, and takes effort, time, and being intentional. You must first look beyond the seen in your own life. Examine your own reflection, and learn to tell the story of your content, of your life.

 

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Truth and Truthfulness

Truthfulness is a principal that most would agree is a valuable and worthwhile virtue. Most courses of therapy challenge the client to engage in his/her true self and live out of that core in a truthful way. But the conversation takes a dramatic turn when truthfulness is pitted up against the truth. A lot of religions will espouse that the truth is the way to live, regardless of what ones individual truthfulness is or is not.

More often than not, what I’ve noticed is truth comes at the expense of being truthful. This is the stance of losing sight of what’s inside because the external is more robust and valuable. The pursuit of the truth (and this applies to issues beyond theology or spirituality) can lend itself to an biased way of living that places more emphasis on the external than the internal.

For some, when the external truth is more important (by their own doing, I might add), they begin to feel lost, flustered, and confused. Ultimately this leads to looking for external validation and rightness, which results in a constant state of deficit or need. There’s not enough external validation in the entire world to satisfy these needs. The internal truth, being truthful, is what needs focus and attention. This doesn’t mean that external truths don’t have merit or are at all times subordinate to internal wishes and desires, in fact it’s quite the opposite. It takes a lot of maturity, courage, and honesty to live life in exploring oneself — to be truthful.

A man considering marriage might say he doesn’t feel old enough to get married, even though he’s 28 years old. The truth, that adulthood comes sometime around the age of 18-21, is seen as more true (acceptable) than one being truthful about feeling inadequate about getting married. Saying it’s ridiculous to feel inadequate about getting married is not a truthful comment.

Being one who values truthfulness and truth means allowing for both the internal and external worlds to co-exist, letting neither become more important or more valuable than the other. Growth is enlarging the capacity for tension to exist — in this case, the internal and external truths that often conflict with one another.

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Not all Space needs to be Filled

If your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly life with all the activities, commitments, and “things you do regularly” were manifested as various sized cardboard boxes in your home; what would your home look like? Would there be any open spaces, or would you be the next candidate on a “hoarding” reality show?

The U.S. is a culture that values doing more than being. We don’t rest well, which means that most spaces and places of our lives are filled up. We are a culture of performers, of doers. Unfortunately, when cultures are driven by performance, doing, addictions and life controlling habits flourish. Said another way: We fill our lives up with stuff. Shopping, Toys, Food, alcohol, internet, reality (not really) TV shows, porn, and drugs are all ways that we medicate the reality that we don’t have enough capacity to get what we want.

It’s impossible to live life for long as a human doer. We are human beings. We’re finite creatures with needs that sometimes defy age, logic, and reason. We’re not the great conquerors and rulers of life that we want to believe we are. As the poet and songwriter Lenoard Cohen once said, “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Living life with spaces, pauses, takes great discipline. It also takes acceptance about our limitations and finitude. We cannot perform as though we are whole creatures and value brokenness and faults. Not all spaces — in all aspects of life, physical, emotional, relational, mental — are meant, or need, to be filled. Rhythms create space. What rhythms are you practicing?

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Rock Bottom

Over the past few years, one of the only television shows that I watched was (and sometimes is) Gold Rush. It’s a Discovery show about some broke and struggling men who mortgaged their lives for an Alaskan summer land claim to mine for gold. It’s the ultimate show about striking it rich. They’d operate their big rigs to dig through the earth, searching for pay dirt. Ultimately though, the gold they were and are looking for was well below the surface. The gold is at the rock bottom, or bedrock. This is true in Alaska, just as it’s true in humanity.

We cannot find the gold of life, that is, the true purpose and joy, until we have hit rock bottom and come to the end of ourselves. This usually happens as a result of our, or someone else’s, poor choices. Rock bottom is a date with suffering, pain, and adversity. This is especially difficult when we are not the ones that chose poorly. But even when we don’t choose what happens to us, we still have a choice in what to do next. When we hit rock bottom, we can choose to be a victim, or find a way out.
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Growth from the Desert

In 2006 there was a study that showed the link between the Amazon rainforest and the Sahara desert. Evidently, the Amazon rainforest is not self-sustainable. It’s one of the richest ecosystems in the world, yet doesn’t natively contain enough minerals and nutrients it needs to thrive. These nutrients come from one of the most unlikely of places: The Bodele’ depression; a small dried up lake in the African Sahara.

The Bodele depression, about a third the size of Florida (roughly .05 percent the size of the Amazon) provides over half of the needed minerals and nutrients for the Amazon rainforest. Yes, that’s right: A patch of desert in Africa makes the Amazon, the Amazon. The nutrients in the Sahara that feed the Amazon rainforest don’t get transported overnight. It takes time. If this desert land did not exist, nor would the Amazon. It takes a suspension of disbelief to wrap your brain around this concept. The dusty, sandy, and arid land of the Sahara helps to create the habitat for one of the most rich and abundant natural habitats on earth. Metaphorically, this wonder of the natural world offers some wisdom for us.

Here’s a challenge about life and marriage: Couples don’t naturally grow together because everything in life is grand, wonderful, and dreamy. We, and relationships, grow because of adversity from a foreign land. This “foreign land” is your partner for life. They come from a strange, perhaps even hostile, environment. It’s normal to them, but different, adverse, to you. Paradoxically, this “otherness” of your partner is what brings you together in the first place.

This coming together of two different regions usually creates lots of growth and movement. We begin relationships in earnest, with excitement about the other person. We spend time with them, think about them when apart, create photo books, write letters, and lots of other romantically inclined actions. These are all what communicate love to the other person, and what knits hearts together. However, what provides nutrients to relationships in the early days often becomes laborious work in the long haul

A wife might say, I used to love his spontaneity and lack of planning, it was exciting and new. But now I’m really tired and exhausted from having no plan for our life.”

I’ve often heard husbands say that they fell in love with her self-reliance and independence, but over time they have come to resent her not having a place for him in her life. These parts we dislike about our spouse usually began as welcomed nutrients to the relationship but over time the focus is lost and what was once loved, is not resented.

Enter the Amazon/Sahara analogy. The fruits of love came from the acceptance and blessing of dusty, sandy, hot winds coming from across the seas. In the beginning, the experience of the other was new, fresh, and intoxicating. But as time goes on, the sand starts getting in your eyes and hair, it chaffs your legs when the wind blows hard, and ruins any food left uncovered. It’s difficult to accept these distant winds as blessings when they rub you raw.

Here’s the dilemma: Without the desert being the desert, the rainforest cannot be the rainforest. If given the choice, most of us would choose to spend the rest of our life in the Amazon as opposed to the Sahara. The essence of self love is the view that others are threatening to our happiness, not the source of it. A relationship cannot be the relationship without two people coming together from distant and different lands. Much like the personal growth that occurs from prolonged time in the desert, so too is the growth for a relationship. If we do not embrace discomfort, we will not flourish.

(This post was originally published as part of my writings for Start Marriage Right)