Perspective on Healing after a Break-Up

[lovelycrumbs] Refining

The dark of night is creeping across the sky and I feel the disappearing.

The anguish of the unseen. Heart wrenching and cracked. Writhing to be free of the desire for love. Free of desire.

I cannot stand carrying the weight of it. The crushing force of longing. The gravity of need.

Heart spilling out. Wounds bared open. The pieces of me thrown about the room. Muscle aching from the violence of lamenting. The agony of a soul crying out in complaint. A Trusting heart weeping with the blood of dreams slipped through fingers.

And I am found. In the anguish, the obliterating explosion, suddenly my face is again there in the mirror. In the eyes looking back, I see it, the spark of me. The Life.

There is cost to the striving. The slow disappearance that makes your own features unrecognizable. The becoming invisible. It is cost. Immeasurable.

And when you notice. When suddenly in passing the mirror there is not vacancy but eyes familiar. When you look long and there is a trace of smoke – the smoldering ember of the self you buried deep. Then what?

When the wounds stop oozing and dry out. When the last strands have frayed. What then?

What guiding compass is there? What choice held out before you?

Him. Only Him.


Only. Trust. Only. Clinging.

To choose the very heart beating in my chest. That is the hardest part. The constant battle.

The words that repeat over and over… “you are valuable”, as if in some persuasive debate.

Words I’ve never believed. Words that slip over me like a silk sheet falling to the floor. Slipping from fingers to weak to grasp.

But He breaks in, crashing. A tornado inside my heart. Cleansing the darkness in me.

The strong command of a Loving Father. “You must know your Worth.”

And that, that moment is where the crawling begins. The scraping across the gravel, picking debris from my wounds.


The Refining.

“I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.” Isaiah 48:10 NLT

A Perspective on the Media’s Portrayal of Men

I heard a trailer on a new dad movie today that sounded awful. I couldn’t help wondering how long are we going to put up with the media making fun of men, portraying men as comic figures, losers, sex fiends, generally worthless and clueless buffoons?

How can men stand it? Don’t you guys mind being the butt of jokes? The new humor? Is this the fallout from feminism? Does it mean that we are uncomfortable with men being men? We can’t tolerate men who care? Men who stand up for values?

The best regular casting of men is detectives in crime investigation. What does this mean? Can anyone tell me? Has the feminist movement succeeded in undermining masculinity until there isn’t any left?

What has happened to cause us to lose our men?

What has happened to our view of men?

Do we still have men who care deeply about their children and grandchildren? Do we still have men who are secure? Men who know who they are and what they believe? Who walk with God and have faith? Men who will stand for right and not be rigid and harsh? Men who are well read? Men who respect themselves and women? Men who aren’t afraid to lead without force or control?

Does God have any real men out there? Men of passion and faith who interact with their kids and talk to their wives, who don’t just sit on the couch and watch TV every night? Who aren’t afraid to be there, to listen, to get involved? Who are actually engaged in life and relationships?

And if He does, why can’t the media show some of them? And make them look good? How about some inspirational men? More movies like Invictus?

A Pair of God’s Over-alls

I hit the wall again tonight. Hate to admit it, but there it is.

Overwhelm.

Hormones too low, expectations too high, fears rising. I can’t do this. I didn’t mean for it to be like this. Suddenly the whirlwind in my head becomes a tornado, and I have to get up.

I had gone to sleep ok, a welcome escape from the oppression I’d been fighting all day. But then a noise from my husband woke me and he jumped. Finally he woke up, welcome relief…he’s ok, but now I’m awake, and my mind takes off. I get up, because I know from long experience that there is only one thing to do. Run to Him, He’ll be there.

And of course, He is. I should have gotten up an hour before. Why do I  allow the winds to gather?

So I pour out my heart, my fear, my inadequacy, and then I stop and listen, tell Him I need to hear His words, and He speaks. It is what I’ve heard before, but so personal, so warm, so full of support, so to the point. A client had shared a bit of Oprah’s story from her Lifeclass, so He said if He could help her with her stress, He could certainly help me. It is just what I need and I am ready to go sleep again.

But first I will share His perspective. It’s one He’s given me before. It was shocking then, now reaffirming. He said I had a lot of beings cheering for me, a whole support system of followers out there. “Think more about that and less about your ability,” He said. “Lean on Me more. Gratitude, praise, trust, depend. Be so glad you have the habit of meeting with Me.”

I am, Lord, I am. Thanks.

 

 

Great Perspective!

“Some people are so poor the only thing they have is money.”

My daughter told me about this quote she saw on pinterest. I loved it. What great perception!

When you have tons of money you may not develop delayed gratification. You never have to wait and save for what you want. You don’t have to choose between what you kind-of want or what you really want because you can just get both.

And then maybe decide you don’t like either, leaving you frustrated. But instead of really struggling with it and figuring it out, you are onto the next distraction you can buy. But do you do anything? I mean do you really struggle with trying to accomplish a skill, or do you just pay to have it done? Or if its a skill like art, go buy it?

Even creativity takes effort and patience, practice until the lines fall into the right places. Till others also appreciate… Maybe you don’t even have to deal with rejection, because if your work is ghastly and expensive enough, people will buy it because they have so much money it’s newsworthy to pay that much for something so poor. You get attention for your bad choices. And then you can defend them. Another distraction.

I never realized that being rich could be so distracting. Do you ever stop distracting yourself, I wonder? Do wealthy people (especially people who grow up wealthy) ever get down to the real struggle–who really am I? Do they ever get past money to character, to the simple, but extremely hard, parts of life about choices and meaning?

Do they ever figure out what they really believe? Or are they just too distracted to stay on an exacting, and sometimes painful, course of thought.

Do they really enjoy? Or are they so jaded by superfluity that interest only lasts a moment and then need a new stimulation?

Do they ever get to just enjoy something natural and simple like running through the streets of Copenhagen early in the morning just for the love of it? Like the blog I read this morning on WordPress… beautiful!

Perhaps it is really true, the true poor have only money.

A Universal Perspective on Suffering

We attended an aunt’s  funeral on Saturday, a friend (42) died of a heart-attack Saturday night, and Sunday my niece (41) has cancer. It’s been quite a weekend.

Someone asked how I was doing with all this, and I said, “There are things worse than death.” My friend asked what, and I said, “Turning on God, blaming Him for it.”

That is the worst. Then next worst is being one of those whose life is shattered by the loss. How do you deal with your husband playing basketball, collapsing and dying when you have two little boys?

All I know for sure is God is good, and this is when you need Him the most, and when you get the angriest that He didn’t exert a little of the omnipotence He  has. But of course, that would be undermining our freedom, now wouldn’t it.

Who knows but what Geoff had a thought to not play basketball that night. We often have thoughts we overrule without a second thought. We can’t live in fear. And God doesn’t want us to.

So the other thing we can know, but only by faith at a time like this, is that God knew what was going to happen,  even though He didn’t cause it,  and He will carry us.  He has our back, and a plan to get us through it, and will even bring good out of it if we can bring ourselves to trust Him.

If you can stretch this far, suffering may be an honor, as it was in Job’s case, in the Old Testament scriptures. God knew He could trust Job to not turn on Him, and to not give into despair. Job was an exhibit of righteous trust for the whole on-looking universe.

I’ve been thinking about things from a universal perspective since I was a child. I’m not sure why, it just seems like it has always been there, at least since age 7 or 8. But it is awfully hard to think like that when you are the one being “honored” with God’s trust, the pain tends to eclipse those thoughts.

Nevertheless, He has promised to get us through it, and that the true honor is yet to come: honor for helping Him win His trial before the universe. That trial is about if God is trustworthy. Was He telling the truth when He said You don’t need to know evil. It will kill you. ?

It’s About Time Science Caught Up!

I was excited to see a special report on sugar and illness on the news last night. It is about time! Health enthusiasts have known this for decades. And not just about Diabetes either.

Sugar Blues came out in the 70′s or 80′s.  And of course a lot of people pooh-poohed it. They didn’t want to know. But the “What-you-don’t-know-won’t-hurt-you mentality doesn’t change cause and effect. And we have seen the effects in our society–an epidemic of obesity, Diabetes, heart disease and cancer. (The auto-immune diseases have come more from the sugar substitutes.)

Thank God, finally science has caught up. Two different doctors doing research on it have labeled it a “toxin” –good for them.

I was trying to remember how long I have known about this, and then I realized that I wrote Tommy Tortoise Gets the Sugar Blues 36 years ago. It is a children’s picture book, I just published this year, about an animated tortoise who learns in school, from his caring teacher Mr Toad, that sugar causes cavities.

Tommy is sick, not wanting to know this, because he loves sweets. His life is ruined. Then he realizes that he has no teeth, so surely this doesn’t apply to him, which he happily shares with his mother. Feeling exempt from consequences, he revels in his new freedom, and loads up on his favorite food–sugar.

Yes, he has symptoms of irritability, difficulty focusing and paying attention, being especially tired, but he is too young to connect the dots, and consoles himself with eating sweets. Trying to hide any mishaps or problems from his mother, who is noticing anyway.

He gets sick and Dr. Owl comes to pay a visit, and finishes Tommy’s education about sugar (the cover picture). He also shares with him that treats don’t have to be bad for you, and brings him some to try. (Recipe is in the book–you can buy it at http://createspace.com/3731716).

The University School of Health, where I went to graduate school, was doing research on this forty years ago, but as typical for humans, we usually have to experience the pain of consequences before we learn. We are like Tommy, we don’t want to give up something we like, even if we find out it’s bad for us.

My daughter just called and told me that she gave the little boys chair to the baby who loves it. They were so excited about him getting books from the shelf and going and sitting in the chair, that they didn’t even mind giving it up. She said they probably thought they were going to get something better anyway.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we all were like that about giving up something we like! If we were so secure in God’s love, and so sure of His goodness, that we knew anything He asked us to give up wasn’t as good as what He will put in it’s place.

A Perspective on Bullying

Bullies are insecure, scared, people who don’t feel they have power.

For instance, in school children where the news has been focused, bullies may feel scared at home.  Perhaps a parent is a bully, demanding obedience without consideration or listening, acting out his own stress.  If a parent is  loud, harsh and overbearing,  because he is much larger the child is frightened and intimidated. The child feels helpless and so goes to school and finds someone he can wield power over: a younger, smaller child he can intimidate.

Or maybe parental divorce or fighting is causing insecurity.  The child is afraid but has learned either at home or at school that it isn’t OK to express fear or weakness.  So he does what he sees modeled by the adults in his world, he turns his fear, sadness, worry into anger and aggression.

In psychotherapy we call this projection–putting our own feelings on someone else, or displacement–acting out feelings of fear against someone who doesn’t cause fear in us. The point being that we aren’t taught to be OK with our own feelings and work through them, or at least contain them without acting them out.

You can help your children by listening to their feelings, encouraging them to tell you about their day and then really paying attention.  If you treat their feelings with respect and don’t discount them, they will tell you if they are being bullied. Then let the school know, and if they brush you off, let law enforcement know. The bullies need help too.

Of course, the best is to bully-proof your children by making them secure in your love.  Bullies almost never pick on confident, happy children. They go after the kid who is shy, timid, or feels inadequate or bad about himself. Kids who live with disrespect, either towards them or between parents, feel bad.

Don’t be afraid to tell your kids that you love them.  Sometimes we think that is weakness–it isn’t.  Also don’t be afraid to set boundaries and tell them no. This also makes them feel secure.  Kids need to know that someone is in charge, just not disrespectfully. You don’t like to be disrespected either.

Let them know that you will always do your best to keep them safe, that they are adequate–hardwired for struggle–and worth your time and attention. Actually be present with them and LISTEN when you are with them. Let them know that they don’t always have to agree with you, even though they do have to obey, because it is your job to keep them safe.

Kids need rules, but not shame. They don’t need your anger or fear.  Children need love but not permissiveness, thinking they can do whatever they want. They don’t need bullying that pretends to be parenting.  And bullying can also be letting them do whatever they want and giving them everything.

Kids just need you to be you, taking care of you, so you can be strong enough to attend to them wisely. If you (or they) are being treated disrespectfully, set boundaries.  If your boundaries aren’t respected, get help; you are a victim.

Steve Pavlina and a Perspective on Stress Aging

Steve Pavlina has some great insights from time to time, and his last one was on stress. He said,

“On average, each highly stressful year that you endure shaves about 6 years off your lifespan.”

And he even explained the mechanism responsible–how it happens.

“People experiencing high stress have been measured to lose their telomeres much faster than normal. Telomeres are the caps at the end of your DNA strands that keep them from fraying. You slowly lose these telomeres as you age, but stress can speed up the process dramatically, effectively causing your body to wear out much sooner.”

Telomeres are an interesting body part (well, maybe they are too small to actually be called a part), but they are also where your reactions are recorded. For instance, if you react in fear or anger to some triggering event, you will likely react that way again because it is recorded in your telomeres.

They are responsible for making your patterns of behavior.  Say you blow up at your kid or your husband/wife because it appeared they did something you had asked them not to. Later you find out that it wasn’t how it looked. You feel like a fool, but the worst part is the wear and tear on you.

Not only does it age you, but it also sets you up for another explosion. So now you are aging doubly. First you have the stress which ages you. Plus you are more apt to do it again. Not to mention that anger creates free-radicals that hammer your cells.

What can you do?

You can choose to breathe the next time before responding. I had a client who had a problem exploding over everything, according to his wife. (Even he admitted that he got angry easily.) Everything just set him off. He didn’t know what to do about it.

So I taught him to breathe in for seven seconds and out for seven seconds three times when he felt his anger or frustration level starting.

He came back so excited! He said it just smoothed everything out inside. He said it was the best thing I’d ever taught him.

Sometimes the simplest, cheapest things are the best!

A Perspective on Irreconcilable Differences

Yesterday I listened to yet another marriage dissolving over Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). That’s two this week. Having an NPD spouse (male or female) is a tough road, not impossible as I can personally attest, but very difficult.

I was musing today on why I have a good marriage. Usually I think it is because my husband has changed so much in the last 12 years of our 22 year marriage.  He really has, with a little divine intervention.  Maybe someday I should tell the story here; it’s quite a story.

But this morning, I was thinking about the things we enjoy doing together and how we have made them work for us. There aren’t many, maybe three. We think very differently about most everything, (part of that is just male and female I know) but we have learned to appreciate the good in the other and build our own lives while really enjoying what works between us: spirituality, gardening, movies, and sex. I guess there’s four! You can make a nice life out of your own fulfillment and those four.

We start the day by reading scripture together all snuggled up in bed. Sometimes we make love, sometimes we just snuggle, but we both agree it is one of the best parts of our day. Then he goes off to the gym and I exercise with my body ball.  (I hate the gym; he loves it.) Many days we go out and garden together. We don’t agree about that either, but we both love being outside together, and we have decided that we love each other more than being right. We enjoy the same movies on the nights I’m off, and reading together in the evening.

It’s a simple life but it’s good.

Choosing how you look at things really makes a difference. All of us bring baggage into a marriage, being willing to look at your own, your beliefs your lies, and get them healed is terribly helpful in cleaning your side of the relationship street. Each person has a side to clean.

Today, I read the following quote in an email and thought, I used to do that all the time, thank God that has gotten better!

 ”Negative attributions-finding an unfavorable explanation for what a spouse does-constitute one of the more common thinking problems in marriage.” (p. 165,  Love is Never Enough)

Aaron Beck says it’s common, and am I glad, because it was one of the hardest things for me to get over. I had beliefs inside that took awhile to get to, beliefs that said everyone was out to get me. (Because my older brother was jealous of me and made life hard.)

So if you are struggling with huge differences in your marriage, put the best possible interpretation on your spouses actions, usually they aren’t trying to make you angry or hurt you, but you might be set up to see it that way. 

Stop mind reading. You’re no good at it. Ask for an explanation before you assume. Get your beliefs healed by asking God to tell you the truth. And then find some things you can agree to enjoy together. Research shows the more you play and laugh together, the safer you will feel together. That is good.

If you are married to a narcissist there is more to it. But this is a good start.

God in-a-Box, Jesus’ Perspective on God, in your Inbox

This is going to be a short one. I’m launching a new blog. This one is very different.  Each one is 150 words or less and is delivered to your email inbox  five days a week if you sign up.

At least that is how it is supposed to work.

It is God in-a-box–your inbox, and I hope gets launched today. It is a two week trial–at this point–we will see if there is a response. It is designed to take you through the life of Jesus, 150 words a day, in a year.

Why Jesus? His main purpose in being born here was to show the universe who God really was.

Did you know that God had put Himself on trial? He did. Because He had an enemy that said He wasn’t fit to rule. That He exacted everything and gave nothing. It came down to who was telling the truth because God’s enemy was so good at deception, twisting things. Ever experienced that?

God wasn’t satisfied to have “My word against his–you’ll just have to trust Me.” He knew that would breed fear and distrust.

So He (They–in my mind) decided to go on trial before the whole on-looking universe, and Jesus (who was probably Adonai then) volunteered to become a man–the second Adam,  succeed where Adam had failed, and show the character of God (Love), the character of Lucifer (Satan), and the nature of sin (it destroys).

How appropriate that we are launching it on Valentines Day–hadn’t planned that! We’re just late! The link is http://howtohavearelationshipwithGod.com