We can’t beat ourselves up into doing better. In fact, when we beat ourselves up–we do worse. The way to do better, is to feel better. That starts by treating ourselves with compassion and patience.
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This Christmas, consider the gift of peace that Christ has given us. The Sawi tribe in Papa New Guinea has a tradition called “The Peace Child.” Find out what meaning this might offer you this season.
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Life has loveliness to sell. Are you buying it? We often allow ourselves to habituate life and stop noticing things around us. Choose thing have wonder can increase the small moments of joy and gratitude we feel.
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Humans are terrible at predicting what will bring them pleasure. What we THINK will bring us joy or fulfillment often doesn’t. And, the things we don’t expect to bring us fulfillment sometimes do. The ability to predict what will actually make us happy can help us be more motivated to do tasks we don’t think we want to, find pleasure in places we weren’t expecting to, and to avoid disappointment.
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Although many of us chose to be mothers and wives on purpose, being a deliberate mother or wife requires constant recommitment to our roles. The simple act of articulating our commitment can change the way we feel and may even change our relationships.
Last week I took a trip to India with some friends. It was an amazing trip, but I really missed my kids and my husband! On the last day, I started getting so excited to see them, hug them, and get to be part of their daily life again. When I got to the airport counter, I realized my passport and visa were missing. I looked everywhere. Gone. The airline staff would not allow me to board the plane without them.
I was trapped by myself in India until I could get a new passport and visa to get home.
During the time I was stuck, I had a lot of time to think. I had been away from family before, but it was the first time I had ever been prevented by someone else from being with my family. I felt so helpless.
While stuck in India, I dearly missed my 3-year-old resting her head on my shoulder. I missed my 6-year-old’s excitement when she gets home from school and tells me all about her day. I missed my 9-year-old’s thoughtful questions and insights about the world and I missed the way she makes us laugh. I missed hearing beautiful music from my 11-old on the piano and violin and watching her creativity as she plays with neighborhood friends.
I did not, however, particularly miss the more challenging parts of my days as a mom. Like the moments when I am so frustrated with my children’s whining that all I want to do is go in my room and shut the door. Or the times I become overwhelmed when everyone needs help at the same time and I lose my temper (as if they are wronging me in some way by all needing something simultaneously). Or, when I wish I could be doing something more interesting than playing blocks and filling water bottles and driving carpools. (I admit that sometimes I get distracted and check my text messages or put on a podcast when I’m with my kids instead of being fully present.)
As I reflected about what I missed about my kids, I found myself thinking: “I wanted to be a mom. I chose to have my children on purpose. I chose to be at home with them on purpose. I chose this life! I love this life!” But I also realized that in my more difficult moments I sometimes forget that I chose this life. It’s not so much that I choose NOT to be a mom in challenging moments I just start to feel out of control—my brain starts to believe everything is happening TO me. There are many competing demands coming at me and I’m just trying to re-act. It feels overwhelming, uncomfortable and unpleasant sometimes. Sometimes, I feel like I’m stuck doing something I don’t want to be doing. Sometimes I feel like my children are making my life hard. Sometimes (subconsciously) I begin to feel like I’m a victim who deserves something better (like children who obey, or less traffic, or a full time cook!).
In many areas of our lives we have periodic events that help us renew commitments. For example, I go to the dentist every 6 months and get my teeth checked which reminds me to recommit to dental hygiene. We pay rent or a mortgage payment each month, which reminds us we are choosing to live in that apartment or home. With our careers, we have yearly performance reviews and renew our contract periodically. We also have these renewing events on our spiritual journeys: Christians take the sacrament or communion to renew their commitment to follow Christ, Hindus participate in fasts, Buddhists offer food as a sacrifice to show their devotion and earnestness. All of these events and rituals give us a chance to stop, reflect, and choose to renew our commitments.
So what do we do to renew our commitment to motherhood or being a wife? These are two of our most important roles, yet it’s easy stop deliberately “choosing” them; instead, we feel we are simply reacting to them or surviving in our roles.
As I waited in India for a new passport and visa I dearly missed my husband and my kids. I missed being part of their lives each day. Life felt hollow without them. I couldn’t control whether or not I was with my family. I felt trapped NOT being with them.
In my hotel room I recommitted myself to being a wife and mom on purpose—even in the difficult moments. I recommitted to showing up as the best mom and wife I could be. I promised myself I wanted to be more present with my family and own all the parts of being a mom and a wife. I realized that this included choosing the not-so-pleasant parts too. I wanted to choose this role and deliberately be the mom I wanted to be, not just react to what happened to me each day.
A few days later, with the help of some amazing people at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and some divine intervention, I was able to get a new passport and visa and fly home to my family. It was such a sweet reunion and I loved being back with the people who matter most to me.
In the days since, I’ve been trying to remind myself: “I chose this, and I’m continuing to choose this.”
In the wonderful moments, like when we’re all snuggled up for movie night, when we’re having a discussion at family dinner, or when the kids are playing happily, it’s been easy to say “I choose this!” Realizing that I’m renewing my commitment to choosing motherhood adds additional significance to the wonderful moments.
When I feel bored playing Polly Pockets or changing my baby’s diaper and I think “I choose this,” Suddenly my boredom is replaced with gratitude. I notice little things l love like: my baby’s fat rolls on her wrists, the darling way she uses “y” instead of “l”, the tender way she wraps her arms around me and says “I love you.” As I feel more gratitude, I naturally want to engage more and show up as the mom I love to be.
When I think “I choose this” when I offer to let my husband sleep in because he’s had a long week at work, I get to enjoy being up early instead of feeling resentful. I feel like I’m in control and choosing to do it because I want to, not because I have to. That makes all the difference in feeling joy about it, and feeling connected to my husband through it.
Saying “I choose this” when my kids are all needy after coming home from school has been more challenging. But I’ve found that it takes the frustration out of my tone and I feel more connected to my kids when I’m helping them because I’m consciously choosing to do it. Instead of feeling all their demands are coming at me and I just have to try to receive and meet them, I feel like I’m the actor. I’m in control. I’m the one choosing to meet their needs because I want to. This feel empowering and I can calmly and clearly think and act to meet their needs in a way I feel confidant about later.
When my kids are whining refusing to help with chores, I’ve been trying to think “I choose this.” Instead of going to my thoughts of frustration about how my kids are making my life hard–I’m able to access my creativity think more about how I can teach them cleaning can be fun and rewarding. Instead of feeling like a victim, I feel like a leader.
Saying “I choose this,” even when it’s not your ideal version of the situation stops the feeling that things are out of your control. It stops the feeling that you are a victim. That you are trapped. It gives the power back to you! Feeling empowered, we have better access to emotions like; gratitude, job, creativity, calmness, and leadership. Not only do I feel better in the moment when I chose it, I feel better in the long run about how I show up as a mom or a wife. Choosing is powerful.
Feelings like resentment, boredom, irritation, or blame can be good indications that you feel you are just reacting to your circumstances. When is the last time you felt resentful, bored, irritated, or overwhelmed as a mom or wife?
Next time you feel this way, try to notice the thoughts you are choosing to think. Consider replacing your thoughts with the phrase: “I choose this.” Choosing on purpose can change the way you feel about your situation and when you feel different–everything else changes too.
Problems can feel overwhelming and impossible to solve at times. If we continue to think about them the same way as we always have, then they likely always will be overwhelming. However, changing we the way we see the problem and changing the way we see ourselves can make all the difference in our ability to solve the issues in our lives.
I recently visited a gigantic boulder in India called Krishna’s Butterball. The rock is so large that a human pales in comparison. I took a humorous picture of me trying to push the gigantic rock. Sometimes our problems can feel a lot like Krishna’s Butterball—so large we are incapable of solving them.
I learned a powerful lesson from my great-grandmother Genevieve about how handle a problem that feels completely overwhelming.
Genevieve was a strong woman—she had ten children after being told by a doctor she would never be able to have any at all; she and her husband created a successful coal business after losing everything in a previous business venture; and she was the first woman elected to the Salt Lake City School Board, despite opposition from many due to her gender.
When Genevieve felt a problem was getting the best of her, she would stand in front of the mirror ask herself: “Who is stronger, me or the problem?” She would square her shoulders on her tiny 90-lb. frame, lift up her chin, and declare, “I am.” Then she moved forward to solve the problem.
A few simple changes in our thinking can help us see that we are stronger than any problem we may have.
We usually think about a problem through the filter of our beliefs about it. This often causes the problem to seem much larger and more challenging to overcome.
Stripping a problem down to the “facts” can help us see the challenge in a much more manageable way.
As a young mom one of the biggest problems I faced was sleep deprivation. I constantly felt miserable. I never felt rested and as a result I often felt irritable. Then, to make matters worse, I felt guilty for feeling irritable. No matter what I tried, my baby would not sleep through the night. The problem felt hopeless. I felt I had to get up with my baby in the night to be a good mom. But yet, I felt like I was not a good mom all day because I was so tired. I felt like I had tried every book and every system to get my baby to sleep at night, but nothing seemed to work. The problem felt impossible to solve—it felt miserable and hard. I felt like I couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be and I couldn’t enjoy my baby because I was so tired!
When I stripped down my story to the facts it was simply this:
I have a child. I put my child to bed at 7. They wake up at 2 and 5 to nurse and go back to sleep. They wake up at 7 for the day. I sometimes feel tired in the day.
When I looked at it this way, the story didn’t seem quite as dramatic. I was just a mom with a young baby—a baby who was healthy and growing and eating well. In fact, I noticed that actually it sounded normal to be tired and I even felt lucky to have a healthy baby.
Most of us underestimate our own abilities. But our brains are powerful, and as we change our thoughts we realize we have a lot more control over our circumstances than we think.
When we think of problems, most of us unconsciously choose thoughts like “This is impossible.” “It will never change.” “There’s no way that I can do that.” “It’s too overwhelming.” “I don’t know how.” These thoughts keep us from taking action and are often self-fulfilling—the problem seems so big that we don’t solve it because we don’t even try.
Instead, more empowering thoughts could be: “I got this.” “I’m going to try this, and if that doesn’t work I’ll try something else.” “I don’t have to fix all of it, I’ll just work on one piece.” “I wonder how much of this I can do?” “It’s possible.” If these thoughts don’t work at the beginning, try to add on a phrase like: “What if this is possible?” “What if I do know how to solve this?” Sometimes offering your brain a question can help open it up to think about solutions.
With my last baby, I had some better tools to keep myself emotionally healthy. My baby still woke up during the night. I still felt tired. However, I also reminded myself that I could feel tired and still be pleasant. I didn’t have to choose to be grumpy and irritable when I was tired. I could still have a pleasant day and be tired.
This simple shift in my perception—sizing down the problem to the facts, and sizing up my own ability to deal with the problem—changed everything. Instead of constantly feeling resentful and irritable because I was exhausted, I was able to really enjoy mothering my baby. My circumstance never changed, but my perception of it did. Essentially, I looked the problem in the mirror and saw it for what it really was—not the drama I had made it into. Then I sized up my own ability to handle it. The result was that I got to be the pleasant mother I wanted to be, and I got to enjoy my baby, something I had felt deprived of previously.
Problems in our lives only have the power to overwhelm us if we don’t see them and ourselves accurately. When we fix our perceptions, we are often able to come up with solutions and carry them out. Sometimes that means we change our circumstance. But sometimes the problem is solved simply by changing the way we think about it, which in turn changes the way we feel about it. And when we feel better, sometimes there’s nothing else that needs to change.
Essentially, when we size down the problem and size up our abilities we make the problem something manageable—instead of looking like Krishna’s Butterball, it appears like a large but moveable rock. When we see our problems in this way, we can have the courage to look at our problems head on and say, “Who’s stronger, me or the problem?” “I am!”
What’s a problem that feels impossible or overwhelming to you?
Bring the Problem Down to Size
Write down your “story” about the problem. Then strip the story down to only the facts. Everything else you wrote down is just thoughts about your facts. Those thoughts you are choosing are causing the stress, overwhelm, and drama around your problem. The good news is, those thoughts are optional and you don’t have to think them if you don’t want to.
Size Up Yourself
You are absolutely capable of dealing with this issue. Your brain is the most amazing tool on the planet. Look what you believe about yourself. Are those beliefs helping you solve the problem. If not, then change them. Our beliefs are all optional. Often, I love to imagine how someone I admire might think about this problem. Then, I like to adopt the thoughts I imagine they would think.
Take Back the Power
Now that you see the problem in its true size, and have also recognized your own true strength, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m stronger.” Then move forward and start solving.
Most people don’t like feeling negative emotions like shame, guilt, discouragement, and irritation. So to avoid these emotions we usually resist them or react to them. However, both of these methods only intensify the negative emotion and often create other negative results. The best way to get rid of a negative emotion is to process it—to experience it and then let it go.
It’s important to begin with the caveat that negative emotions, while uncomfortable, can be very important. Getting rid of all negative emotions is certainly not a goal that would benefit any of us. Feeling negative emotion is an important part of being human, and helps us appreciate positive emotion when we feel it. Without negative emotion–positive emotion wouldn’t feel positive at all. Negative emotion helps us feel the depth of our spirits and allows us to mourn the loss of things, to identify our own belief and value system, and to connect with others among other things. However, if we don’t know what to do with emotions–how to feel them, they often get larger than necessary and wreak havoc in our lives.
Our emotions work a lot like a Chinese finger trap that many of us played with as kids. The trap looks like a woven tube—when you place a finger in each side and try to pull them out, the trap tightens. The harder you pull, the tighter the trap gets. The only way to free yourself from the grip of a Chinese finger trap is to stop pulling and push towards the center. Only when you move your fingers towards the center can you gently slide them out again free yourself from the trap.
Our most basic human response to feeling a negative emotion is to react to it. When someone criticizes us, we lash out. When we stub our toe, we kick the chair we stubbed it on. Kids do it too—they often react to negative emotion by crying or throwing a tantrum.
But as we evaluate our reaction to negative emotions, we learn that the outcome of our reaction is often more negative than the emotion itself. Why my daughter cries, she has to go to her room for a while to calm down. She has to be away from the family for a while, which is even more disappointing for her. When I kick the chair after stubbing my toe, I actually create more pain for myself. Reacting to a negative emotion makes the emotion bigger.
Over time, we recognize that reacting to our emotions can have negative consequences. So, in order to avoid the negative consequences of reacting, we instead learn to repress our emotions. We ignore them, or we try to cover them up with other emotions or actions. This might seem logical, but unfortunately it doesn’t work either.
First, when we don’t express our emotions, others can usually tell. We think we’re good at hiding how we feel, but others are astute judges of sincerity and suppressing our true emotions can cause distance in our relationships, which often means more negative emotion. When I’m bugged at my husband but I try to act like nothing is wrong, he always seems to know and it makes things worse.
Second, resisting emotion requires a lot of energy—it can be exhausting to constantly try to act contrary to how you feel. Most people’s willpower runs out and despite their best efforts they eventually explode, bringing more negative emotion.
I find this is true when I try to hide my frustration with my kids. When I ask them to do something and they don’t, I first try to calmly ask them to do it again. I’m good at staying calm the first few times, even though it’s exhausting to dance around my feelings of irritation and frustration. However, the feelings of frustration get more intense the longer I resist them. By the fourth or fifth time I tend to explode at the kids! Ironically, that was exactly what I wanted to avoid doing. Then I feel worse than I did before!
If reacting creates a negative result, and resisting causes the emotion to grow, how do we deal with emotions in a healthy way? We need to process them. Processing emotions isn’t something that most of us are taught how to do, and in our Western culture it is something that feels a bit foreign to us.
Processing means actually feeling the emotion. The beauty of this approach is that when we truly feel an emotion and process it, it goes away. True, it may resurface a few times, but each time it resurfaces it comes back with less potency and if we process it each time it arises eventually it stops resurfacing.
Crying is a perfect example of processing. Have you ever noticed how cathartic it is to cry? Afterwards, you often feel a lot better even though nothing has changed. This is because crying is a way of processing sadness.
Here are some simple steps for processing any emotion:
1. Name it
2. Notice exactly where you feel it and note what it feels like
3. Remind yourself that this is just a chemical in your body; the emotion itself can’t hurt you
4. Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of it. Allow it to stay as long as it needs
5. Repeat this process as often as the feeling resurfaces
Recently, I was with a group of people and I used a word that was offensive to someone. My intention was definitely not to be hurtful. When I was called out on it, my first response was to be defensive. I explained all the reasons I’d used the word and why I didn’t think it was a problem. The problem was that my shame didn’t go away. It actually got bigger. And I complicated the situation by adding awkwardness with this person to the picture.
When I realized my denials and explanations didn’t help anything, I told myself that I didn’t need to feel shame—that what I did was fine. It wasn’t a big deal. I rationalized that this person was out of place for calling me out on it. All these thoughts felt good for a moment, but eventually caused my irritation with this person to get bigger and caused me to withdraw from them socially. For a while I covered my shame in irritation with this person. However, the worst part was that my shame got bigger—now it was not only shame because of what I said, it was shame about all the thoughts I had about my friend.
When I had time to reflect on the situation, I realized this was a lot of drama—and all to avoid feeling some shame! I reminded myself that I knew how to process this. I admitted to myself that I was wrong. Immediately, I felt a new rush of shame.
I named it: “This is shame.”
I noticed how it felt in my body: “My cheeks are flushed. I feel my stomach tightening. It feels sort of heavy.”
I reminded myself: “This is just a chemical in my body. It can’t hurt me.”
I talked back to the shame: “Hi shame, I see you. Stay as long as you need.”
Frankly, it felt terrible. But in a few minutes, it went away. I felt fine. Then, when I next saw the friend who had called me out, I felt a new rush of shame. So I just processed it the same way. I felt yucky for a couple of minutes but then the emotion left. It resurfaced a few more times as I interacted with my friend. Each time, however, the emotion was less intense and stayed for less time. After about a day, the emotion was completely gone. And, best of all, I didn’t have negative feelings toward this person.
Processing feelings can be a powerful way to get rid of them. It seems ironic that inviting a feeling to stay would be able to help it leave, but that is exactly what happens. Just like the Chinese finger trap, the more we resist and pull away from our feelings the more our feelings trap us. To get rid of negative emotion, we must lean into the emotion, we must go towards it and embrace it. Only then do we become freed from the emotion’s tight grip.
What is a negative emotion you feel on a regular basis?
Next time you feel this emotion, notice if you react or resist it. What is the result of handling your emotion this way? Try processing the emotion instead. What is the difference in your result?
1. Name it
2. Notice exactly where you feel it and note what it feels like
3. Remind yourself that this is just a chemical in your body, the emotion itself can’t hurt you
4. Don’t be in a hurry to get rid of it. Allow it to stay as long as it needs
5. Repeat this process as often as the feeling re-surfaces
The word “should” seems innocent–even motivating but a closer look reveals that it leaves a trail of damage. It highlights inadequacies, robs us of motivation, and leaves us stuck in anxiety, disappointment and frustration. Removing the word “should” from your lexicon can make a big impact in how you feel about yourself and others.
I used to say the word “should” all the time. “I should have gotten up earlier this morning.” “I should have been more patient with my kids.” “I should have started dinner earlier.”
I even used “should” when I thought about others. “My kids should listen the first time!” “People shouldn’t cut me off in traffic.” “They should make this website easier to navigate.”
Sometimes I used it to describe situation around me. “This shouldn’t be so hard.” “This meeting should be shorter.”
I also used to feel discouraged, overwhelmed and anxious a lot of the day.
At first glance, the word “should” seems like a benign or even a helpful word. It seems like it’s helping us notice how things need to be different. By recognizing how things should be, it’s almost as if we feel we’ve compensated for the fact that they aren’t that way. It makes us feel more decent and more responsible.
However, as I’ve become more aware of my internal dialogue. I’ve realized that the word “should” is quite insidious. It leaves a trail of devastating damage behind. Should doesn’t help me do or become more. It has the opposite effect.
The word “should” causes me to notice all that I am NOT doing and all that I have NOT become. It accentuates others’ faults and weaknesses, and highlights the less than ideal in circumstances around me. Because we feel that we and things around us are inadequate, it can decrease our motivation and leave us feeling anxious and frustrated. You can’t beat yourself up into being better. You can’t beat others into being better either–“shoulding” others strains relationships because it feels like criticism. It doesn’t mean we stop making requests of others or ourselves, it just means we don’t keep flogging ourselves with the expectation that it “should” be different.
Here are some alternatives to the word “should” when you notice it creeping into your own internal dialogue.
I feel _____________ when I ___________.
Instead of saying “I should have changed out of my yoga pants before I picked my kids up at the bus stop.” Say, “I feel so much more confident when I take the time to get ready before my kids get home from school.” This helps you focus on the end result which motivating instead of on the action you didn’t do, which is discouraging.
It’s important to me to ________________.
It’s easy to say “I should be on time to church.” Instead say, “It’s important to me to be on time for church.” It’s much more motivating to be on time when it’s couched in terms of what you value instead of what you “should” do.
I could _______________.
Just substituting “would” or “could” instead of “should” can make a big difference. It makes our requests much more pleasant and loving.
“It would make our home so much more pleasant if you could hang your backpack up when you get home.” Consider the difference between that and this. “You should hang your backpack up when you get home so our house doesn’t look trashed.”
I wonder why I am/they are ________________.
Using should takes us out of the present—it makes us think of something that didn’t happen in the past, or something that needs to happen in the future. Most of these thoughts come with stress and other negative emotions. Bringing our attention back to the present can help us abate some of this negativity.
Instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t have yelled at my kids.” Think, “I’m feeling really irritated right now. I wonder why I’m feeling irritated?”
Getting curious about what you’re thinking and feeling has a powerful impact on helping us become more of who we want to be instead of just reacting to things around us.
Getting rid of “should” can be so freeing. I’ve been working on this for a long time and I’m still working on it. My shoulds everyday are a lot fewer than they used to be. As a result I feel a lot more confidence, and I feel a lot less frustration with others.
Shoulds are a fixture in our lexicon. It takes some practice, and some patience but the payout in personal peace and motivation is big. Saying less shoulds to ourselves allows us to focus on what we ARE doing, and what we WANT to be doing instead of what we’re not doing. Removing “should” for others can give space in relationships allows people to feel loved as they are; this enables deeper connections. Eliminating “should” thoughts about circumstances lets us accept the things we cannot change and move forward instead of staying stuck in wishing things were different.
Try observing when you use “should” and how it affects you.
Try substituting a different thought when you notice yourself saying “should.”
In modern life, most of us move at least once, if not several times during the course of our lives. In previous generations it was more common to stay in the place we grew up and retire at the same company we started with. Current studies show that the average time at a job in modern society is around 5 years. Often job changes mean moving. Learning to handle moving with grace can be a tremendous benefit to your happiness and your family’s well-being.
During college, I spent some time living in Kenya. I lived in a small slum outside of Nairobi and traveled each day by matatu (old VW buses repurposed as public transport for 15 people) to a rural school. We spent our days teaching children hygiene. They used frayed branches as toothbrushes and had to wipe themselves with their hands after using the toilet if they didn’t bring their own toilet paper. I’ll never forget the day I asked the children, “Where to germs come from?” They said, “Satan!” My eyes got big, and I realized we had some basics to cover! One of my favorite days was teaching the children how to dance the Virginia reel and kicking up red dirt as we twirled and laughed through it. Their natural exuberance was contagious as was their curiosity.
Part way through my time there, there were some government misunderstandings, and skepticism about our work. We were told we had to “shift.” I had never heard of this before. Our neighbors explained it meant, we had to move. We had to stop working, and change apartments. I was heartbroken—I had come to love the children and I felt I had made some in-roads with teaching. Regardless, it was time to “shift.”
As I have moved many times since then—I have come to love the idea of “shifting.” When we move, we literally do more than simply transport ourselves and our possessions from one place to another. We change. Just as a shift key on the keyboard changes a letter from lower-case to upper case, moving allows us to change who we are—to up level ourselves to something even better.
We can all expect change. We will have to move, people pass away, our health deteriorates, we lose jobs. Even changes we want and choose can be hard; when we graduate from college and enter the work force, when we get married, when we have a baby, when we leave the work force, when our last child enters kindergarten, when we retire and the list goes on. Change is a constant.
I find I often resist change because it is an ending—it means losing something I had, was, or wanted to be. Even if it’s something I don’t like, knowing something is at the end brings with it some mourning. Part of letting something go, is acknowledging how much something or someone meant to you. It’s recognizing how it’s been part of your life and imagining what life will be without it.
When we resist the emotions of disappointment, discouragement and sadness, they turn into resentment and anger. It’s such a tremendous relief to accept a sadness. Resistance requires a lot of mental and emotional space. Letting it go, frees our brains and hearts to be open to how to adapt to the change and how to solve the problem.
One way to give voice to our loss and sadness is to create rituals. Rituals can help us acknowledge endings. Our family has a little ritual at the end of each of our international postings. Each child gets to list a few places that are most important to them—a favorite restaurant, school, church, a beach, a park etc. We take a family drive and video all of our favorite and frequented places that have become part of our daily pattern in a place. We enjoy talking about them as we drive and it’s a way of saying good-bye. We try to do the same with people we love—plan a chance to say good-bye and acknowledge their presence in our lives.
Another way acknowledge pieces of our old lives in an on-going way is to hold “country nights.” We include a holiday for each country we’ve lived in on our family calendar. We celebrate our time in a particular place on the holiday for that country—we wear traditional clothing, eat local foods from that place and watch pictures from our time there. Recently we celebrated “May Day” or “Lei Day” for Hawaii. We wore leis, ate Dole Whip and watched pictures from our time there. It helps us continually bridge back to the past and commemorate our significant connections.
Grief is a clean emotion—it’s cathartic and healing. Self-pity is an indulgent emotion. There isn’t much positive that comes from it. There is a fine line between mourning and becoming a victim. I love the way CS Lewis describes this tricky space. In “A Grief Observed,” a book he wrote after his wife died he says, “I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it–that disgusts me.” We need the catharsis of processing our emotions and acknowledging them. However, once that has been accomplished, continuing to “indulge” in the “sticky-sweet pleasure” of our self-pity becomes harmful. It is when we cross this line that it’s time to channel our inner Elsa and “Let it go.”
I find the time I most want to indulge in the sticky-sweet pleasure of self-pity is a few week to a few months after we move. It’s takes tremendous energy to start fresh somewhere, particularly when it is in an unfamiliar place, culture and in an unknown language. Making friends takes time. At first everything is new and fresh, and then the newness wears off and the difficulty sets in. It’s when everything seems “hard” in our new home that my brain wants to whine and indulge in what we’ve left behind. It’s beyond the feeling of loss of our last home—it’s all the drama my brain is offering me about creating the new life and how hard it is. This is when it’s time to let go. Staying in the self-pity keeps us spinning our wheels. We just dig deep ruts instead of moving forward.
One of the things I find has helped me keep from spinning my wheels, is to create a vision of what I want our life to look like in our new place. I try to fill the void of the old with something new. One of our favorite things to do is to make a bucket list for each place we live—places we want to go and things we want to do while we live there. Often we even map out trips to nearby locations and when we will take them.
I love working out the details of the flow of our new home…who will share a room, which door will we come into, what will each child’s chores and family contributions will be. I love to research opportunities for our family to contribute in our new community. I feel like it’s easier to start new family patterns in a new place. There aren’t the old patterns in place. Everyone is shifting mindsets and starting new family plans pairs well with a move.
I love to dream big—I love to think about who I want to be in our new place. Some of the thoughts I have had include “I want to be an on-time person in this new place.” “I want to be more balanced with self-care in my new home.” “I want to be deliberate with spending.” Shifting is a bonus new beginning.
It’s hard to create amazing things without have dreamt them up first. Knowing what we are going helps us leave things behind more easily. It also gives us a template and momentum to begin creating a new life.
Even if we have mourned and visualized a new future, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with moving. It’s a lot of work logistically and emotionally to start over. Just the boxes and re-organization alone are overwhelming, not to mention meeting new friends, finding new places of worship, and stores to obtain what we need. Often when we feel overwhelmed our natural inclination is to consume. We eat more, we watch more Netflix, we indulge in anger or irritation. We look at others and expect them to reach out to us—we want to consume their friendship. These things cause us to feel a temporary relief, but don’t address what we really crave which is happiness in our new life. When we feel the urge to consume, we can create instead. We can begin creating organization in our home, we can begin reaching out to others to invite them over to create new relationships, we can begin creating the person we want to be in our new home. It is creating that will fulfill our deepest cravings for peace.
Often our biggest enemies and intruders in creation are our own thoughts. It’s common to say things to ourselves that we would never tell someone else. “This will never work.” “It will never be as good.” “What was I thinking?” “Why did we do this?” “I’ll never make friends as good as I had before.” “I hate it here.” Ironically, these thoughts sabotage our ability to make our move a good experience.
Changing our thoughts can provide the momentum to create the new life we want. We can replace negative thoughts, with thoughts like “I got this.” “I don’t know how this will all work out, but I know it will.” “I have faith.” “I’m excited to see how this all works out.” “Hard is good.” These types of thoughts give me so much more confidence and energy to do the work of creating something new. Sometimes that sticky sweetness of self-pity seems so tempting, but being willing to set it aside and to do something new is so much sweeter.
It means introducing myself over and over again our first few months. I try not to wait for others to reach out to me, I take the responsibility of seeking people out and getting to know them. We have people over to dinner. We invite friends over for playdates. I plan the first few times I go anywhere that I will probably get lost and it will take a long time to figure out the navigation, parking etc. It usually DOES take a long time, but I expected it so I’m not frustrated. On particularly difficult days, I try to find humor in our situation and tell the events in the most dramatic way possible at family dinner or to a friend. Laughing about it is almost like an escape valve that lets of the pressure. There are always setbacks. I try to plan on them—lots of them! But the more I get out and begin creating the positive momentum the more courage I gain to keep creating.
The process of change is messy and frustrating. The process of mourning, letting go and creating new is not a neat step ladder process–it’s all mixed up at times. Sometimes I experience all of them in the same day or the same hour! No matter where I find myself in the process, when I view it all in the context of shifting to something new, something better it gives me hope and courage to keep trying.
What is a change in your life right now?
1. Think of change as a chance to up-level yourself like the shift key on the keyboard.
2. Envision the new, but make space for the old (rituals).
3. Don’t get stuck in the sticky sweetness of self-pity.
4. Start creating.
Most of us feel broken in some way–we feel unworthy or unappealing or less lovable because we less than our own ideal in some way. For some it is being overweight, or not having the financial means to have the home or clothes they’d love. For some it might be feeling like they just can’t stay on top of their home, they yell at their children, they can’t perform to the extent they’d like at work, or are doubting their faith. More substantial struggles like losing someone we love, divorce, infertility, abuse, trauma, or having a significant health challenge can all be things that can cause us to question our own wholeness. Ironically it is our brokenness that allows us to come to true wholeness. God loves broken things–it is what allows him to heal us.
I saw my husband’s elbow brush the edge of my favorite Talavera plate hanging on our bedroom wall, but it crashed to the floor before a warning escaped my throat. The bright ceramic colors were strewn across the floor—some large, others tiny fragments. There were too many pieces—it seemed impossible to put back together. The plate was gone. My husband felt terrible. We scooped it up and the pile of shards sat on my desk for several days. I kept looking at it. I considered tossing it. I noticed the empty plate holder; the room seemed a little duller without it. And the days went on. One day, I pulled out the ceramic glue and tried to piece back together some of the larger pieces but there were cracks and chipped fragments. I left it for a while to think about if I even wanted it anymore, it just wasn’t the same.
There is something about us that doesn’t like broken things, we resist them. Things that are broken seem less useful, unworthy and less appealing. Why is that? Breaking is a powerful metaphor. People break, relationships break. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. When we feel broken, the natural response is to ignore it, to fix it, or to hide it.
When my mother called me to tell me she had been diagnosed with stage four Ovarian Cancer, her first words to me were, “We’re not cancer people.” She refused to be broken. She underwent surgery, chemo, remission, lots of natural healing methods and chemo again. In the in-between she undulated between gut wrenching sickness, longing to live to finish raising her family.
Of course, she did what any of us would do—fight to stay alive. With her characteristic optimism and quest for knowledge, she was constantly on the lookout for new healing protocols. We loved her for it, and cheered her on. Her work and discipline was inspiring, I believe trying new things gave her hope too. She would often tell us her tremendous hope that a particular method would be successful.
We rode the waves of hope and disappointment as she tried various methods. While I unfairly depended on her for her reassurance, there was always an underlying anxiety. I was never quite sure how she really felt or what would happen “if” the new idea or protocol didn’t pan out.
As her health declined, her search for healing became all consuming. This was understandable and certainly what any of us might be inclined to do. It took most of the day each day to scan the internet for new alternative healing methods, to make all fresh foods and do a variety of protocols with exercise, heat etc. It was a time of grasping at anything to try to get more time.
We wanted her around for more time–but I confess that selfishly at times I longed for her to stop trying to get more time, and admit she might not have much time left. I wished she would use the little time she had left to focus more on spending time with me and with her family and friends. That was the time we knew we DID have. I remember changing our flight plans to be with her at Thanksgiving right after her diagnosis and she insisted we not come—saying “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” When I tried to record some of her stories about her life, she resisted. It felt to her like admitting defeat. This was absolutely understandable, and I would probably do the same thing in her shoes. However it was interesting to be on the opposite side. As much as we wanted her to keep trying things to keep living, sometimes resisting the cancer meant separating herself from spending time with her loved ones and writing down her experiences.
There were times she did accept her cancer and let us be part of her world. A few of my favorite were when she took us wig shopping with her and we all tried on ridiculous wigs and giggled at how silly we looked. One time she got wigs for every member of our family and we all did a photo shoot together. She let me come with her to get a hair cut when she knew her hair was about to fall out, and let me cry with her as she had to cut off the hair cut she had recently grown out. She let me make her mashed up sweet potatoes to help her nausea during chemo–there was something sweet about getting to serve my mother who had always served me. Another thing I loved was to hear her insights from the amazing things she was learning. She read a stack of cancer books taller than she was. She was overflowing with interesting perspectives on faith, healing, nutrition, health and so many other things.
Certainly learning how to deal with a terminal illness was a learning experience for all of us. Perhaps the most difficult was when she wouldn’t tell us what was happening with her health. I believe she did this to protect us–so that we would not feel the depth of worry and heartbreak she had to feel. I love her for this. However, ironically the more it was unspoken, the more anxiety I felt. When I would call on a bad day, she usually wouldn’t answer the phone. It was often several days of silence until she’d come to a better place and then she’d tell me how low she was and how much better she was now. In the interum I worried, and wondered what was happening. I hated not being able to love her and listen to her when she felt most broken. She seemed to only be able to be broken in hindsight—it was too vulnerable to be broken in the moment. Having never been through this but having watched her, I can imagine there were days she simply couldn’t talk. She felt too sick or was too emotionally low to share. This was a new and terrifying journey. She was doing the best she could and the best she knew how. Still, I wonder how it could have been sometimes if I could have accompanied her more on the difficult paths of her journey–particularly in the earlier phases of her cancer.
She did break. Not all at once, but slowly.
The summer before she passed away, she had a paradigm shift. She had asked a fellow cancer survivor for her book list on cancer cures at a yoga class one day. Her friend refused; she lovingly put her arm around my mother and spoke words that echoed through her heart. “You are in a frantic frenzy. You need to stand still and let God.”
My mother did. She had a profound realization of her anxiety or resistance against being broken. With tremendous courage, she made a deliberate decision to stop “fixing” and stop “hiding.” She stopped scanning the internet for solutions. She stopped following every undulation of her blood tests. She accepted that she was sick but decided to stop panicking about healing and instead feel peace in the time she had left. She did do a few things to keep up her health, but it did not consume her. As she relaxed and accepted her “brokenness,” she began to feel tremendous personal peace. She knew Christ was the ultimate healer.
Peace began to permeate our family as well. Her own peace was contagious. Knowing she was at peace, allowed me and my siblings to relax and connect with her in a new and deeper way. When we visited she cleared the calendar and chatted, laughed, shared, and sat. She had tea parties with my daughters in the backyard, she ate more chocolate, and we laughed while we watched “I Love Lucy” re-runs together. She called all of her children more often and took all of us and her grandchildren on a family history tour of St. George, UT that summer. She wove into our stories our grandparents’ stories. She even compiled all our family recipes for each of us–a way of acknowledging she may not be here to give them to us in the future. These actions were so different than a year or two before. These are some of my most cherished memories of her. After this paradigm shift, she seemed willing to share more of her difficult times as well. This allowed us to be part of her journey. Though it was difficult sometimes to hear of her struggles, there was much less anxiety and so much love as we got to accompany her.
Just a few months later, the cancer returned and spread throughout her body. This time she surrendered; she knew she was broken. This time it was not “fixable.” But interestingly she continued to feel hope. It was not hope in a new protocol, a new diet, or vitamin. It was a deeper hope—a hope in Christ. As she deliberately chose to set aside the anxiety and stop resisting, God was able to heal her spirit. I distinctly remember a phone conversation we had in which I asked her if she thought it was her time to die. She said she thought it may be. She told me that while she wanted to stay and be part of my life and each of my sibling’s lives, she felt at peace that it was her time and that she was at peace with God.
I was living in China at the time, and I received an emergency call one Saturday morning that she may only have a few days to live. I frantically boarded a plane and sobbed all the way to Colorado hoping to be able to hug her one last time and tell her I loved her. I was privileged to get to hold her hand and be with her the last few days before she passed away. She was in tremendous pain. She didn’t try to resist it–she accepted it. It was almost as if she had to labor to get out of this world, just as mother’s labor to bring children into the world.
One day my Aunt Nanny and I laid by her and asked her how she was feeling. Her response was, “I am feeling great peace.” In her willingness to let her body break, God could finally heal her heart and give her true hope. Her acceptance gave us all the peace and courage we would need to deal with her passing.
When she did finally pass away, we all knelt around her bed and watched her as her breathing slowed and finally stopped. It was a sacred and beautiful experience largely because she had accepted her own brokenness. Having her gone, meant that I felt “broken”. For a long time I felt that it defined me in some ways, to have lost my mother. I have had to learn how to be “broken” and beautiful in my own way. See Hope is The Thing: Getting Through Grief. After all, God loves broken things. It is what allows him to heal us.
Brokenness isn’t something to fear, we are all broken in some way. We have broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, these are the raw material of hope. When we resist our brokenness…try to hide it, fight against it, and try to prove we are not broken–it gives our brokenness power over us. God loves broken things. As we surrender our brokenness to him and accept our brokenness ourselves, He gives us hope and peace through his grace. He mends us. Sometimes the mending looks different than we expected. But it is always more beautiful than we anticipated. Our brokenness is a gift.
I think I will keep my cracked Talavera plate. It reminds me that brokenness is beautiful—it’s what spurs us to change and grow. It is what allows God to heal us. The new wholeness is stronger and more powerful than it was in the first place, because now there is a story of pain and picking up the pieces and creating something new…something even stronger and even more beautiful.
When have you felt broken?
What if you owned your brokenness instead of resisting it? Have you allowed others to see it? Have you asked others for help? If you could rebuild, what would you do?
I love this new song by Calee Reed called “Broken and Beautiful.” It expresses a similar idea.