SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

The first step is admitting you have a problem. And this is your problem. You have an assumption. A basic, unconscious assumption about life:

Everything is going to be okay.

Not to rain on your parade, but, well, your definition of okay and the reality of what actually happens in your life are not going to line up.
Bad things will happen to you. Sometimes because of you, sometimes because of other people, sometimes just because. No good reason that you can see.

We don't acknowledge the truth that things aren't always going to be okay. Instead, we drift along with this mentality of inevitable triumph, regardless of the signs telling us otherwise. And we reinforce this (false) idea in each other.

• "Don't worry, everything will work out."
• "You'll figure it out."
• "Things will get better."

There is, however, no guarantee of things working out or getting better or even not getting worse. When you assume that no matter what, it's all gonna be okay in the end, you remove personal responsibility from the picture. You also remove reality from the picture.

Drop the Okay Lie

The Okay lie: You assume your kids are going to turn out okay... so you don't take your job as a parent seriously, you let things slide, you don't deal with bad attitudes when they first appear. The result: your kids end up rebellious, unhappy, and lost and you shake your head and wonder how that happened.

The Okay lie: You assume that if you work hard and don't mess up too bad, you'll end up with a good career and stable finances.... so you don't pay attention to economic problems, industry lay-offs, small business closings, cutbacks, or even the great opportunities (involving risk) that come along. You don't take charge of your own career/money in a proactive way. The result: you become a victim of economic shifts and don't know what hit you until you're 6 months into unemployment.

The Okay lie: [here's one from my personal experience] You assume that your cancer-stricken Mom will make it. She'll fight it off, the chemo will work, she'll get better, and she'll be there in your life the way you expect, and God won't let her die yet. Life is a right, after all, and God owes us this much. Right? The result: When you lose something that matters this much, you can't avoid being shaken. But if your core belief is "I deserve an okay life and God better work it out," then the not-okay stuff will shake you through the center and put your very faith in God into question. I spent a year not sure if I wanted to believe in God again. I finally came to this conclusion (basic, I know, but it took me a while): Life is a gift, not a right. The good things that we receive are blessings, privileges, not automatic rights that we can demand.

Rights vs. Gifts

It goes against Western culture to talk about our inalienable rights not being rights. But the concept is bigger than government-for-the-people; it's more about created-and-Creator.

"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?'
Does your work say, 'He has no hands'? Woe to him who says to his father, 'What have you begotten?' or to his mother, 'What have you brought to birth?'
Isaiah 45: 9-10

Now, here's the good news.

You can't (and shouldn't) walk around expecting Death to drop on your head at any moment. You can't live in fear (well, you can, but it won't be much of a life).
But when you drop the everything is going to be okay just because belief system, you can handle what does happen much better. Pretty quickly, you'll see that 99% of life falls into 1 of 2 categories:

1. Stuff you can control
2. Stuff you can't control

For the first category, losing the Okay Lie means you start taking responsibility for what you can control (how you parent, what you do with your money) and doing your best at it. Guaranteed better results with that approach, no matter what the area is.

Riches, Peace, and Freedom

For the second category, losing the Okay Lie means two things:

First, you start receiving every good day, every good things as a gift, a blessing, a privilege. You are thankful. You are grateful. You see how rich your life is, already. [Guess how thankful I am for good health. And for the fact that I have my Dad and sister. And for a mother-in-law and a stepmom who are such loving grandmoms to my kids.]
Second, you start trusting God the way He should be trusted, as Creator, not as giant-Santa-in-the-sky. And with that trust comes peace and freedom. Peace: I don't have to fight the inevitable truth that I will experience pain. I just have to remember to come to God with my pain. Freedom: I don't have to be in control of the things that I can't control. It's beyond my ability to guarantee a good life for myself and the ones I love. I am free to live, do my best, and trust God with whatever else happens.

Everything is not going to be okay. But that's okay.

atypical? untypical? nontypical? antitypical?

I'm thinking about my kids (I do that a lot when they're napping...). I'm not thinking that they are atypical but that, most likely, they will become so. They really have no choice. I've kind of accepted that our kids aren't going to get anything like a normal suburban American childhood. I don't think that's something either Joe or I can give them without altering ourselves beyond recognition.
And if genetics work the way I think they do, our kids would be bored by most of what is normal, typical.

At least I hope so, because that way I won't feel so bad about guaranteeing that they get the "weird" label applied straight out of the box.

I can't give you normal... but here's a cookie.

We can't give them normal, but I want to give them good, rich, full, secure, interesting. Maybe it's an atypical life, but it's better, at least for us.
How many "normal" ways and means and things I simply detest or do not understand. I do understand where William Morris was coming from when he said, "Apart from my desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization."

I can't say I feel strongly enough to say I hate modern civilization... but I really, really, really don't like it. Ummmm. Or at least most of it. Or parts of it. Or just the underlying attitude that's present these days.

We are, whether we want to be or not, a sort of foreign family within the boundaries of our own native country. (How many other families feel that way? Maybe a lot. I'm thinking of this post in particular.)

Much of this is due to our upbringing. Joe and I were both home educated, so there's something that's immediately going to make you different in one way or another. Much of it is due to our own adult Christianity. If you really believe in the Bible, you're just going to not fit in with the rest of the culture. Good luck trying.

i'm haunted, but it's not so bad once you get used to it.

And the rest, well, I guess the rest is just written in us, on us. And I like who we are. But I still struggle with loyalty and guilt and a trained sense (or is it innate?) of needing to fit in. The pressure to conform haunts us, I admit it. Or at least me...

For Joe, maybe because of his gender but more because of his personality, I think, it's not needing to fit in so much as the need to be affirmed and praised. But people don't tend to affirm and praise those beyond (or to the side of) the status quo, those living at the fringe... at least not till after their death. Consider what Nietzsche said: "So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but someone else's." (Um, excuse me, did you really stop and consider that, or did you just skim it and keep reading, hoping there would be a funny part somewhere? Be honest.)

There is always a pressure, implied or obvious, to conform.

Joe is okay with being different (actually, he kind of thrives on it) but he still wants affirmation. It's hard to get, when you're not typical. He pays the price of foregoing the praise when he chooses to do things that people may not understand. [Hi, honey, I'm talking about you again. Make it up to you later...]

I am just basically not comfortable being different. I tend to check the rightness of my choices by comparing to what others choose. I know that's one reason that reading is so important to me: it gives me a way to check in, to compare with people who have also made choices that are different, choices that help justify my own.

Books give me a way to step outside the cultural bounds and evaluate choices from a totally different view. Sometimes I find myself sighing with relief. Sometimes I find myself cringing at how I've chosen to fit in, how I've compromised myself in order to feel a little more at ease among my peers. When I compare those peers, and thus myself, to the great heroes and struggles and choices and stories, I see how cheaply I sold out. Shame on me.

to thine own self

In order to be true to myself, at times I have to look beyond my immediate surroundings and relationships for acceptance and affirmation. Sometimes God is the only one who can hear me, understand me, and answer that call from my heart. Many, many times Joe has been there to accept and encourage and affirm.

The funny thing is, nobody is standing there demanding that I explain myself. But beyond the sacred circle of our marriage, I feel this need to explain, to defend, to justify, to convince.

I'm not sure why. I'm trying to get over it...

{irritating questions intended to spur discussion}
1. Do you feel like you fit in? Do you feel like your family fits in?
2. Do you have a group, a community, a place where you belong, and feel known and accepted for who you are?
3. What does it mean for you to be true to yourself? What makes you different? What is a compromise that you make sometimes to feel like you fit in? Do you regret it?
4. Do you like me? Do you really, really like me??????

Answer here or answer at your own blog and pop the link into the comments.

I tend to avoid books when they are on the bestseller list; it's kind of a reverse snobbishness, I guess.

So I avoided Captivating the first time around, despite the fact that I'd read The Sacred Romance (by John Eldredge and Brent Curtis) and loved it, and despite the personal recommendations I received. I can't, thus, tell you much about how this revised-and-expanded version is better than the original.

But I can tell you that, if you are a woman this is a book worth reading. Not if-you-are-a-woman-and-a-Christian, just: if you are a woman.

Why? Not that the Christian thing doesn't matter, but that every woman struggles on some level with the issues that the Eldredges talk about. Their philosophy and, yes, their solutions are Biblically based; for non-Christian women, I can understand that might be a turn-off. But I urge you anyway: stride through the Scripture quotations and sit still for the stories and the truths that aren't tied up in church-speak.

And for Christian women, this book can help you step out of the easy answers so often given via church-speak and deal with the hurts it's quite possible to hide but impossible to truly forget. The heart of this book is about remembering, about dealing with the lies that tell us to forget-about-it, quit-making-things-such-a-big-deal.

This book helps us to understand why some things are a big deal, and should be, and how we need to look at them and find out what they're telling us. As we acknowledge, and remember who we really are, we can let go not in self-denial or resentment, but in true freedom. That's a good read.

Details:

Captivating: Unlocking the Mystery of a Woman's Soul. By John and Stasi Eldredge. Revised and Expanded. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2010. Purchase or get more information at the Amazon product page.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I don't know what has tipped me off. Maybe the guy who let the door close in my face while I struggled to carry my child, my purse, and my bag of groceries.
Maybe the waitress who never said you're welcome, but just kind of grunted in response to my thank you... five times in one dinner.
Maybe the mom who let her two kids climb all over the equipment at my husband's business, equipment worth thousands of dollars, and just got huffy when my mother-in-law suggested it might be dangerous.

Maybe one of those.

Or maybe it was the grocery store owner who helped me take my groceries to the car, load them, and then thanked me sincerely for shopping at his store.
Maybe it was the older man who held the door for me, my baby, all my stuff, and my entourage of children who don't go through doors quickly.
Maybe the nice Southern boys I met a few days ago who called me ma'am.

Maybe one of those.

The tipping off has happened, though, and I am putting together my own list of Good Manners 101. I think people need it, because of all the examples I've just mentioned where common courtesy is, obviously, not so common. I think people still care about manners, because of all the examples of courtesy still in common practice. Maybe we all just need a refresher course. So here goes.

Good Manners 101: The List

• When you ask for something, say please.
• When you need someone's attention, say pardon me or excuse me.
• When you bump into someone, knock their ankles with your shopping cart, nearly knock them over in a crowd, step on their toes, or otherwise cause them pain, however unintentional, stop, turn around, look them in the eyes and say pardon me or excuse me or even (for the radicals) I'm sorry.
• When you drop something, like a straw or a match stick or a gum wrapper, pick it up and dispose of it properly.
• When someone gives you a compliment, say thank you.
• When someone gives you a gift, cooks you a meal, or in anyway treats you, serves you, or helps you, say thank you.
• When someone says thank you, say you're welcome.
• Offer your seat (if there are no more available) to an elderly person or a pregnant woman or anyone hurt, disabled, or sick. (If you are a man, you should offer your seat to any woman.)
• Hold the door open for people behind you, especially for women, children, and the elderly.
• Look people in the eyes when they talk to you.
• Don't interrupt. If you have to interrupt, say excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt.
• When you are introduced to someone, say something like Hello, Mary, it's a pleasure to meet you. Then extend your hand for a handshake. (I am constantly amazed by how many people don't know how to meet people! Where were their mothers?)
• Introduce the people in your group. Do this even if it is only a group of two, and you are only chatting for a moment with an acquaintance who walked by. The exception to this rule is if you are in a very large group, in which case you should excuse yourself from the group, go have your moment's conversation, and then return.
• Wait your turn in line. Don't cut in front of people. Don't jingle your keys and tap your fingers and huff at the slow person in front of you.
• Don't text someone else while I'm talking to you. Really. I'll wait until you're done.

What am I forgetting?
Feel free to add to the list in the comments.

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Images

1. Don't even get me started courtesy of krossbow on Flickr.

"God does not coerce us to follow Him. He invites us... He tells us what to do, and we find our happiness in doing it. We will not find it anywhere else. We will not find it by doing only what we want to do and not doing what we don't want to do. That is the popular idea of what freedom is, but it does not work. Freedom lies in keeping the rules" (1).

I was pondering this whole concept of self-care yesterday on my solitary evening walk. Pondering it because there was a more-than-slight twinge of guilt about my own self-caring attitude.
Just that afternoon, my husband and I had been talking about our plans for the week and I was quick to clarify that my evening walk was important and had to be fit in, that I needed it, that it mattered just as much as his morning bike ride. Well, does it? Is it important, should it be fit in, do I need it, does it matter? Read the rest of this entry »

Liberation is an iffy thing.

Church and Feminism

The women's liberation movement of the 1960's drew two rather extreme responses from the Church: either we jumped right on the equal rights bandwagon and set up church day schools and child-care centers to help the church women pursue careers, or we withdrew in shock and horror and deemed anything not concerned with home or children inappropriate, even unbiblical, for women's interest.

Extremes usually fall short of wisdom. These responses are no exception.

Go Ahead and Roar

Woman was created to be a help meet to man. Every liberated woman will roar (as women are said to do) at this statement, but it is simple truth. God's promise is that the truth will set us free, so accept this truth as something that leads to greater freedom, not less, for us as women.

A Help What?

God says woman is to be a help meet. He does not say, “I will make a homemaker for him...” or “I will make a domestic slave for him...” or “I will make an additional income provider for him....”

Yet, O Women, have we not identified ourselves in such roles before? Homemaking is not next to godliness; neither is having a career. Neither pursuit is our God-mandated work.

At different times we may be called upon to be homemakers or to be assistants in a different sphere. Let us not confuse the means with the mandate. The mandate is to be a help meet. The means will vary.

Wrong Priorities

When any work becomes more important than the work of helping our husbands, we have fallen away from God's mandate. Sister, your house may be clean, your meals may be perfect, your children may be excelling at everything you put before them; but what is the motive of your work?

What is your heart? Have you forgotten the mandate in your busy, efficient home management?

Sister, your work may be valuable, your income may be treasured, your contribution may be unquestioned; but what is the motive of your work?

What is your heart? Have you forgotten the mandate in your smart, diligent pursuit of a career?

A Place Beyond Boundaries

Neither the home nor the office can claim exclusive rights over “a woman's place.” God has defined that place as something beyond physical and social boundaries, something that can change as the seasons of life change without compromising its purpose.

To assist our husbands in ruling the earth is a broader and greater work than we have deemed ourselves capable of. Let us walk in faith, and not be so small-minded as to limit our lives to only one small part of this work.

I Want to Be Equal, Too!

The curse of feminism is the cry for equality: I can open my own doors, drive my own car, earn my own money, make my own way. This kind of equality leads to women trying to fulfill the instructions given to men and women, not just the ones given to women.

It isn't that women cannot do those things that men are instructed to do; in most cases, women are quite capable of them all. But ability does not equal responsibility; just being able to do something does not mean you should be doing it.

Inferior? I Think Not

Cultural feminism tells us that when we do only what we find ourselves particularly suited to do, we have made ourselves inferior to men. Frankly, I don't see the logic there. It seems smart to me to do what you're good at and what you enjoy, rather than kill yourself trying to prove some obscure agenda to a faceless mass of imaginary patriarchs.

Men certainly don't kill themselves trying to prove that they're just as good at being women as we are. It seems just a bit silly that we would work so hard trying to prove how good we are at being men.

Don't Be a Negative Nancy

The Bible is not legalistic about what women should and should not do; it gives very clear but also very flexible instructions as to what our primary occupation should be.

There is a lot of room for interpretation in how we carry out those instructions. The over-arching theme is that of assisting our husbands; under that umbrella, we have all sorts of freedom to do and be and grow and explore and work and play and produce and rest and develop and create.

Some of us, of course, ignore the freedom and focus on the umbrella. What's it doing there? Why can't I do without the umbrella? Well, sister, you can do without the umbrella. Step on out there and stand in that cold rain by yourself. As for me, I find I can sacrifice a little bit of the view in order to avoid getting the unforgiving lashes of the storm winds.

That's what umbrellas are for.

5-Minute Marriage Check

Let go of the need to prove you can do it all; that drive comes from the left-over message of feminism that has saturated our culture. You don't have to do more or be different to be exactly who God made you to be.

Are there things you would let go of if you knew you wouldn't be judged for it? Would you bow out of an activity, a sport, a class, an organization, a job?

Try this: pretend the only person whose opinion matters is your husband. What would your schedule look like if you were just trying to please him? (Okay, I know it might be “sex/cook/sex/cook....”).

How can you simplify your schedule so it is less about living up to other people's standards and more about helping your husband with the priorities he has set for your family?

More food and more sex might not be a bad thing...

5-Minute Action Point

I challenge you to do five things to shake off that leftover feminist agenda.

1. Ask your husband for advice about something that is “your area.” Don't make something up; bring a real problem, ask a question, and listen to his answer.
2. Act on the advice he gives you from #1.
3. Clear a night this week of any house work, computer stuff, activities, events, and the like. It's an at-home date night. Make your husband's favorite meal, hang out together, play a game with the kids or watch a movie. Relax. Don't try to control the agenda. Flow.
4. Ask your husband for one thing you can help him with this week.
5. Put that one thing from #4 on your calendar. Do it.

Learn to love your umbrella.

Image courtesy of wonderjunkie.

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This post is Day 9 of the Build a Better Marriage Challenge.

It's a 30-day challenge to be deliberate about building a better marriage. We'll talk about some of the common obstacles to a better marriage (marriage killers) and some of the important habits for a successful marriage (marriage keys). We'll also work through some of the misconceptions that affect our marriage, faulty thinking we've picked up from our culture, our pasts, and maybe even from the church. Each day's reading will end with a 5-minute marrige check and a 5-minute action point, so you can take it on home.

Join in via the Mr Linky on the challenge page. You can also just read along, but remember that all challenge participants will receive a free copy of the ebook at the end of the challenge.

Here's to better, stronger, happier marriages!

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This post is a condensed version of these 2 articles: A Woman's Place and A Woman's Place, Pt 2.

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Culture-speak and God-speak

are rarely the same thing.

Define Normal For Me

A couple of thousand years ago, sharing your husband with a concubine wasn't a big deal.

A few hundred years ago, having no legal rights except those granted by your husband was just the way things were.

Arranged marriages are normal, somewhere. Walking five feet behind your husband out of respect is normal, somewhere. Covering your hair and face to keep yourself modest for your husband is normal, somewhere. Working side-by-side with your husband to till up and plant a field by hand is normal, somewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

I'm just saying: it takes a talented guy to use a phrase like "the ooze of oil" in a poem about the grandeur of God and make it work. Read on, read on.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Read the rest of this entry »

.

I need the van today, so I rode in with Joe. I was jumpy, ready to go, so I started radio-surfing for something fast and heavy. I found Miley Cyrus singing her little teenage heart out. Not heavy, okay, but the song has a great 80's beat and what woman among us didn't live through this at least ten times in adolescence: Read the rest of this entry »