Hard is normal. It’s what each of us experience it many times in life;overwhelm, discouragement, losing a job, divorce, financial trouble, stress, moving, loss, depression, anxiety, disappointment, children with struggles, health challenges, and so many more. How we deal with hard determines our experience. I was bequeathed a legacy of bravery from my mother and grandmothers. I always pictured bravery like I saw it in super heroes or in movies. But through their legacy, I’ve discovered that bravery is something much different. It is the ability to find peace in difficulty and grace under pressure.
Letting Go and Digging Deep in the American West
Some of my great-grandmothers helped to settle the American West. They took their families to the unknown and made a beautiful life over and over again as they moved.
One of my grandmothers writes of moving over 7 times within a short period. When she finally settled in her new home in Salt Lake City, she set to work creating beauty. She planted tulips and writes of her delight at being on one place long enough to watch them bloom. Before they had fully flowered, she received news that she would be moving again. At first, she threw herself on the bed, and sobbed. With tremendous grace, a few days later she left her tulips behind and set her nose to her new home.
That new home was a dug-out in the desert of St. George. Not only were there no tulips, there wasn’t much of anything at all besides dust storms and floods. If it was anything like most dugouts, when it rained the ceiling dripped and the floor was a mud bath. Early settlers of the same place wrote that St. George seemed void of any civilization.
She was cooking dinner one night when a Native American of the area came to try to evict her from her dug- out. After 7 moves, she wasn’t about to give up another home without a struggle! She took her frying pan and knocked him out cold. She stayed in her dug-out home. She created beauty where she was and helped to make that desert area bloom.
Letting Go and Digging Deep around the Globe
Like my grandmother, I am blessed with a life of frequent moving though admittedly there is no covered wagon and I’m not taming of the wild west. My husband and I felt brave starting out in the Foreign Service where we knew we would live in many countries around the world. Our eyes were big with the idealism of traveling, raising broad-minded children who were citizens of the world and serving others.
As we started out, we enjoyed many wonderful parts of our lifestyle; my husband loved his job and felt he was able to contribute in a meaningful way, and it allowed me to be home with our children. We were able to offer a wonderful education for our children, meet amazing people, learn new languages, discover history and culture and serve others.
However, our children struggled with the constant moving.
At first, the signs seemed minimal and we didn’t worry too much. But over time their issues became more pronounced and began to affect their functioning. A couple of my daughters developed significant anxiety.
They didn’t adjust like I saw other children do. It seemed like once we finally got them settled in a new place, it was time to move and their anxiety flared again. It was painful to watch and exhausting to manage.
We sought medical care, counseling, and read a lot on the topic. However, our lifestyle made getting them the care they needed more challenging. Moving frequently made it hard to find continuity of care with one provider. Often, I found myself trying to use complicated medical terms in other languages to communicate with doctors in whatever country we were in. Despite a long list of interventions, my girls continued to struggle.
Mourning The Life We Thought We Wanted
Eventually my sense of adventure began to wane and stress and exhaustion began to wax. I was getting worn down trying to manage everything; I began to feel resentful about moving frequently and the stress it caused our children. I didn’t want them to suffer. And, I didn’t want to have to keep trying to manage their issues with so few resources. I felt slighted without access to the medical resources I was accustomed to. I was easily frustrated with people around me who didn’t seem to understand how hard it was.
The harder things got, the more resentful I became and the more I blamed our frequent moves and living abroad for my children’s suffering, and making my life miserable. Theoretically, I threw myself on the bed and sobbed over my tulips many times. This was not the life we had dreamed of. This was not fun. This was hard. We thought we would be educating our children’s minds in foreign lands and instead we were wracking our own brains to try to figure out how to help them function. My husband and I often blamed ourselves when our girls had issues. Guilt is not an emotion that brings forth the best in us. It certainly didn’t for me. I became negative and discouraged.
Looking for Paradise
We began looking for alternative careers or grasping for any solutions we could find. We moved state-side to Hawaii for a while, hoping we would find some stability and better medical care. We used to joke, “Everything will be better in Hawaii.” It WAS an amazing place to live, but I was surprised to discover that my girls continued to struggle even there—in the midst of American medical care, stability, familiar culture and language. It became evident that their issues were bigger than just our lifestyle. Frankly I was surprised. I had spent a lot of time blaming our moves and foreign living for their problems.
After three years, my husband received a new assignment to work in Taiwan. One of my daughters in particular was really suffering at that time—even with an amazing team of doctors behind her. I was stewing a bit about another change for our children and how they would respond. I was gearing up for the worst possible scenario for her in our new place. I was also praying that God would help guide me in how to help my children.
Around this time, I discovered some amazing tools that began to completely change the way I thought and saw things. I felt like my brain was being turned literally inside out. I had always known that thoughts were powerful in how we feel, but these tools of how to actually change my thoughts were transformational.
Re-titling my Story
I realized that for years, I had created a story about our life. It went something like this, “This lifestyle is causing my children and me suffering.” That thought caused me tremendous resentment and frustration. Those feelings caused me to stay stuck and to feel sorry for my children and myself. The result was miserable for all of us.
One day as I was listening to Jody Moore, a life coach, talk to someone with a similar situation to mine. This idea distilled on my mind. “What if there is a different title to my story? What if this is the PERFECT lifestyle for your children? What could be more beneficial to children with anxiety than the opportunity to frequently face hard and new situations? They get to practice under the watchful guidance of loving parents. This is the perfect chance for them to gain confidence to overcome anxiety.”
Suddenly my whole perspective shifted. It was an idea I had never even considered. The idea brought excitement and relief. And, I felt God confirming that this was a better way to think about our life.
“Setting My Nose” Toward a New Life
I decided to experiment and try this new thought with our move to Taiwan. I embraced the idea that “hard is good” for my kids. Essentially, I “set my nose” to our new home and tried to leave behind my tulips—my idea that some other situation would be my ideal life. I tried to envision our new life as the PERFECT life for my children.
Indeed, as we moved, my children encountered challenges and anxiety as I had anticipated. For example, I remember one day my daughter came home and told me she was being bullied because she was one of the only white girls in her class. My heart hurt for her. My brain’s first reaction was to doubt our decision and blame myself. I thought, “This lifestyle is causing them so much suffering.” But I stopped myself and tried to re-direct my brain to a healthier thought. “This lifestyle is exactly what my children need to become confident and brave.” I noticed that when I armed myself with this thought, I started to feel thankful and creative instead of guilty and resentful. This allowed me to be so much more loving, compassionate and creative in helping her. I was able to say, “That sounds really hard. What do you think we could do about it?”
As she began to feel my confidence in her—not just my compassion, she began to rise to the challenge of dealing with the issue. It didn’t resolve immediately. But small exchange by exchange she did deal with it. She was able to make good friends as well as stand up for herself. By the end of the year, she was a thriving student beloved by her peers. I was fascinated at the difference in her response when empowered.
Knocking Out Negative Thoughts
Just when I thought we were on an up-swing, they would struggle again. One of my daughters felt so anxious she wasn’t able to go to school. We tried a number of things with the school and eventually we had to withdraw her. At times, I worried I was just trying to convince myself this was a good idea and that I might be really hurting my children further. But I theoretically got out my frying pan and crushed the thoughts that continued to bubble up. “Even if this lifestyle is causing them suffering,” I reminded myself “there is suffering anywhere. The best thing I can offer my children is love and a healthy mom. I can’t be healthy if I’m trapped in misery myself.”
My daughter began a homeschool program and really thrived with it! She had a wonderful year and learned more about American History than I ever did! She was able to enjoy learning instruments she wouldn’t have otherwise and she and I developed an amazing bond last year. I had to remind myself—she has her own path. This is the perfect life for her. And, with a healthier brain, I’ve been able to set up better care for her. We found counseling that she can do from home through skype. It’s been a huge blessing—better than any of the counseling we did face to face. Sometimes our ways through things look different than we expect.
As our girls sensed our confidence in them, our daughters began to slowly rise to their challenges in a new way. Of course, their problems didn’t disappear, but I was delighted at how brave were and continue to be. As they confront their challenges, they have gained confidence and they are thriving. Life has become fun, and our lives are happy a lot of the time.
Being Brave in A Bold New Way
This experience has meant learning bravery in a whole new way. It’s not the bravery of doing something painful or fighting through misery as I had previously thought—instead it is the bravery of letting go of old ways of thinking and embracing new ones. In letting go of my anguish, there has been more space for compassion and creativity.
I certainly still have my throw-myself-on-the-bed-and-cry moments. I think feeling the spectrum of emotions is essential to happiness. There are times that living a more stable lifestyle sounds very attractive. But I’ve also come to see that there are pros and cons wherever you live. There is suffering and happiness everywhere.
I have learned that letting go—leaving behind the tulips or the ideal I thought I wanted, and committing to what I have now has been transformative. It requires a lot of courage to let the old go and it requires continually knocking out self-doubt with the frying pan to embrace the new, but it has brought peace and beauty to our lives. This is the kind of bravery my grandmothers have written on my bones. This kind of bravery is written on yours too…it is the inheritance we receive as humans.
Be Brave
What is something difficult you face?
1. Allow yourself a cry-on-the-bed moment to mourn the loss of what you had hoped for.
2. Accept that the difficulty probably won’t go away. So decide, who do I want to be despite this difficult thing? Set your nose to it.
3. Knock out the negative self-talk with the frying pan.
