Monthly Archives: July 2010

Family, General

Never Say Never

One of my biggest pet peeves is absolute statements.

No human being that has ever lived has been absolute in anything. There is always an exception, a slip-up, a blunder, a good intention that fell short of achieving its goal.

Absolute statements lead to frustration, discouragement, or guilt.

So, beware of most self-help books. Even Christian ones. Because they will inevitably have absolute statements for you as an individual, a spouse, a parent, or whatever other topic it includes.

That doesn’t mean that you have to stop reading them. It just means that you have to learn how to take an expert’s opinion (even mine) and humanize it, personalize it, or generalize it.

Take parenting for example.

I don’t think it’s possible to fathom the number of books that talk about the importance of consistency.

We have all heard about being a consistent parent, right? So, let’s humanize this principle.

How are you at being consistent?

In anything?

No one can be 100 percent consistent. All we can do is hope to increase our consistency; to follow-through a lot more often than not. We can hope for damage-control when we mess up or fall short. We can hope to be described, at the end of the day, as a parent that did well by their children through their words and actions.

So, if we can’t be constantly consistent, then what can we be? The answer is – you can be more self-aware. In my opinion, self-awareness is a lot more important than consistency, as well as the key to it. Are you aware of what you are doing? And, why you are doing it? Can you pause before you act in order to choose your response?

Increasing your self-awareness will lead to the ability to be consistent, responsible, in-control, calm, and all of those other ideal parenting traits.

That means that it’s a good thing that developing self-awareness has no absolutes associated with it. It is a lifelong journey that ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes. Increasing your awareness all depends upon how much energy you allot to it – what level of priority you attribute to it.

In order to move it up the priority meter and find the motivation to allot more energy to the process, to trudge through when you hit plateaus or forget why you even care about becoming more self-aware, it must have a pay-off.

Pay-off means, ‘what’s in it for you?’

I know this sounds selfish and no one wants to admit that the only things they are willing to exert any sort of prolonged energy toward are things that have something in it for them, but it’s the truth. A tough truth, but a human-nature truth. You will not do anything for an extended period of time or that takes a lot of energy or any other resource unless there’s a pay-off.

So, what is the pay-off for raising your self-awareness?

Only you can answer that.

And, seriously – answer it.

Write down the strongest reasons that will compel you to keep working at it. Then, whenever you hit an ebbing moment, whenever the energy or priority you allotted to it has begun to wane, pull out that list and renew your commitment.

Once you have this list, pick an area or two of your life where you will intentionally slow down and turn on your inner-documentarian.

Back to our parenting example – start noting what happens when you interact with your kids. What is triggered inside of you, both feelings and pulls to act, when your kids do various things? Start digging into what you discover. Figure out what you are doing and why you are doing it.

It is a lot harder to change if you don’t know what you do and why you do it. Self-awareness will put you in greater control of yourself; will give you a choice.

And choice is what we all truly want. Perhaps that is why absolutes don’t work on us – they take away choice. So, forget about always being consistent and strive to become more consistent. Increasing your self-awareness and finding the pay-off will help you do that.

Marriage

To Catch You When You Fall

Earlier this week I was blessed to witness a profoundly moving performance that represented what it means to love someone in sickness and in health. There was this one particular moment that really stuck with me. It was when the stronger partner came up behind the ailing one and slipped his feet underneath hers so that he was actually doing the walking for her.

It was a truly poignant moment.

She couldn’t walk on her own anymore and instead of simply picking her up and carrying her, he gave her the use of his feet. That’s what it means to be a partner to someone. You don’t do things for them. You don’t interfere with their individuality or impede on their independence. You lend them your strength. You share with them your resources. You avail yourself in whatever way they need to continue on their own.

Ecclesiastes 4:10 says, “For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” (ESV)

In Hebrew, the word translated to “lift up” means to stand or arise, not to carry. And, in ancient Israel, to say “woe” was to speak of imminent death.

So King Solomon, the traditionally attributed author to this Old Testament book and the wisest man to have ever lived (except for Jesus), looked at what life is without God and called it meaningless – except when he looked at companionship. He saw virtue in having a partner.

Being alone meant death. Having a companion was a blessing. But, only if that companion was a true partner.

A partner shares in your toil, lifts you up when you have fallen, shares their warmth in the midst of the coldness of life, and sticks with you against all adversaries (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).

A pleasant face, a wicked sense of humor, entertaining stories, wealth and resources, a pleasurable touch – these are all companionable features. But to borrow a word from Solomon, they are meaningless if they are not possessed by one who is also capable of being a partner to you.

I believe we have all experienced a betrayal by someone we cared about. A failure to meet expectations in a time of great need. A shortcoming that left you stranded in the midst of great toil, or fallen, or cold, or under attack. We believed this person to be a partner and instead they proved themselves merely a companion.

But isn’t it worse to be this sort of person than it is to have been betrayed by one?

If your betrayal is quite recent, you may be saying ‘no’. However, in the grand scheme of things, who you are is so much more important than who you are with.

Why work so hard at discerning the difference between companion and partner when choosing a spouse or close friend if you cannot reciprocate? I think that would be the deepest betrayal of all. Luring a person of worth into being a partner to you when you cannot or will not be the same for them.

So, I guess my point is that while it is of gravest importance to seek out a true partner for your life because “woe to him who is alone when he falls”, it is even more important to be a true partner yourself. Look inward before you look outward, but keep the same standards in mind for both.

Faith

“What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

My 4-year old son has recently taken to sneaking things so that he can enjoy whatever seems enjoyable of that particular item before getting caught and having it taken away.

It has become quite frustrating. My husband and I have tried explaining the wrongness of sneaking, hiding, and lying. We have told him many times that if something has to be hidden or performed in secret, then it most certainly is something that he should not be doing at all.

That fact has not yet sunk in for my son, which shouldn’t surprise me, because I think that fact eludes most adults as well. Except we shroud our actions in terms of privacy and personal space and individual rights. The truth, however, is that most of what we do in secret should not be done at all either.

But, the idea of confessing our wrong actions, of bringing into the light whatever we have been keeping in the dark, is quite scary.

For some things, we know exactly what is hidden, which is why we keep it hidden.

For other things, we imagine our secret to be worse than it really is because it has been secreted away for so long. If we were to open the door to that particular closet, we’d realize that what we believed to be a monster is really a mouse. Unfortunately, for most of us, our fear keeps us from ever investigating and we continue to live in fear of our secret monsters.

For all the rest, we stashed them away in the dark a long time ago, and we have allowed ourselves to forget about them. It is as if our mind has erected a barrier that keeps that part of ourselves locked away so we don’t have to deal with it. We look in that direction and all we see is darkness. We have no real idea what is there.

We hide things from others. We hide things from ourselves. We hide things from God. Or, at least, we think we do.

The Bible says of God, “He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him” (Daniel 2:22, ESV).

He reveals deep and hidden things. Things we have removed from sight, not to be searched out.

He knows what is in the darkness. An inherent knowledge, a revelatory knowledge of our darkest places.

The light dwells with him. Both an illumination and a wisdom that fellowships and abides in him.

A light and a wisdom that abides within every Christian through the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit.

That means that there is nothing truly hidden, no real secrets, and no impenetrable darkness in which we can keep our actions from being found out. Which is both a dreadful notion and a relief. We dread the judgment, reaction, and mistreatment that could accompany such revelations. Yet, there is also a relief in knowing that these hidden, secret things do not have the degree of power that we currently believe them to have.

Walking out of the oppression that is the darkness in which we hide and secret things away is a difficult process, at best. However, if we can take one thing at a time and first confess it to God, then to ourselves and finally to one other person, then we could truly be free.

If God already knows the worst of ourselves and loves us anyway, and if we can face the worst of ourselves and love ourselves anyway, then perhaps revealing it to someone who also loves us might not be so bad. Perhaps the price of this freedom is worth paying.

“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16, KJV).

(Title quote by Andre Malraux.)

Family

Mealtime at the Miller’s

I continue to be caught off guard when people ask how we’ve taken the battle out of eating with our kids after they have noticed how easy mealtime is at my house. So, I’ve decided to write this blog post about it.

Everything we do with our kids comes down to our basic values about parenting. Our overall goal is to raise our kids to be responsible, successful adults who know Jesus intimately.

Applying that to food then, we want them to know how to both enjoy food and to eat responsibly. We want them to have good manners. We want them to have a healthy relationship with food. And, we want them to appreciate food as a gift from the Lord and honor their bodies the way God made them.

Rule #1: Mama is no short-order cook

I make one complete meal, not special meals for each person sitting at the table. They are welcome to take what they want from what I serve. That means that I’m also mindful of everyone’s tastes and try to include something in the meal that I know the kids will eat. But, that doesn’t mean they are off the hook for the rest of the meal. They have to at least try everything that is served with a couple of bites.

My son has been so frequently surprised at how good “weird” things are to him, that recently he told my husband that to “try things is to like them”. I hope that continues to be true for him because one of my goals is to keep expanding his still-developing palate.

Beyond the requirement to taste everything on the plate, we do not require them to eat everything. This is not a “clean your plate” house. I want them to eat until they are satisfied, not until their plate is empty. Now, that means they must eat enough to tide themselves over to breakfast because there is no midnight snacking either. And dessert is always a surprise, not a guarantee. I don’t want them “earning” dessert by eating all of their dinner, although I may keep the surprise for another night if they haven’t eaten very much that night. They just don’t know about it.

Since one of my goals is to teach them how to eat responsibly, I verbalize my decisions about meal planning. I also explain to them why they can’t have another helping of a sugary snack. They understand that there are foods that taste good and are enjoyable for that factor, while there are other foods that are necessary because they make our bodies work correctly. And that it’s a blessing when you find a food that is both! It’s all about balance.

They have juice at breakfast and dinner and water everywhere in between. They get two snacks a day, one of them is fruit or veggies while the other is something a little more lenient in the nutrition area. That second snack could be crackers and cheese, or popcorn, or a handful of cookies, or one of those fruit snacks kids adore. I usually let them choose what they have for snack as long as the morning snack is healthy. (If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m big on offering choices. I’ll blog on that another time, though.)

Breakfast is a cereal of their choosing, although I retain veto rights over the nothing-but-sugar options. Lunchtime is usually a united effort, so they have some choice. Dinnertime, though, is mom’s domain.

As for the rest of our goals for our children’s eating habits, we have a couple of other mealtime rules. First, they must be respectful of their food. That means, no playing with their food. I know that other “experts” may disagree with me, but this fits into our value of teaching gratitude. Which fits into the next rule: we always say grace before eating to acknowledge that it is from God that we receive this food.

The last thing we do is set a time limit if the kids are messing around instead of eating. It goes something like this, “Dinner will be over in 10 minutes, so get what you need to hold you over until breakfast.” Then 10 minutes later, plates are swooped up and dinner is over. That doesn’t mean we rush our kids’ eating. By the time we do this, they have had plenty of time to eat their meal. At this point, they are just messing around. (This is usually where some jaws drop because to some people the thought that their child may go to bed a little hungry is astounding. Guess what? God made your kid’s bodies smarter than that, so they will not let themselves starve. Plus, one night of a grumbling tummy may be a worthwhile lesson.)

I hope that by doing all of this that we will succeed in our goals. I don’t know how it will work out in the long-run, but I do know that our children have good table manners, are grateful for their food, have a basic understanding of eating a balanced diet, don’t fight with us over what is being served, always try everything on their plate, and still eat instinctively**. And that is why people continue to notice how different mealtime is at the Miller’s.

**To learn what I mean about instinctive eating, visit www.amihungry.com.