Category: Relationships

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Relationships

The Joy of Getting it

Isn’t it exhilarating to finally understand something you have been trying to learn?! I love to learn and I love to teach. There is always reason to celebrate whether I am doing the learning or I am helping someone else.

Most of the time we have to use words to explain something and that can be troublesome when it’s hard to grasp the meaning of a word. I am often looking for a definition that aids me in applying a word to my life. I’ll share here a few words that I have learned to put to work.

Delight

For example, when the Bible tells us that the Lord delights in us or when we are told to delight ourselves in the Lord, I want to know how I can describe and experience what delight looks and feels like. Somewhere a long time ago I read a definition that satisfied me and gave me an experiential understanding of delight. It is this: to love with enthusiasm.

Ponder

Or take the word ponder. It says in the Bible that Mary pondered what was told to her. It is not a word I use. What does it mean to ponder something? I was helped by this definition: to ponder is to give something mental consideration with heart approval.

Love

What does it look like to love others. On several occasion I heard people say incomprehensible things like “I don’t really like him, but I love him in the Lord.” Now what does that mean and how do you do that?

Is love a feeling? If so, how do I love those I don’t know? I don’t want to be overly simplistic here, but when I wanted to get a handle on this, I was helped by a pastor who said when we love other people we have “a relaxed mental attitude toward them.” Of course, that is not the whole of love but it is a starting place. When I apply that definition, I realize that it is not possible to judge someone at the same time I am having a relaxed mental attitude toward them.

Grace

Or take the huge concept of grace which I am forever experiencing and learning about. I learned about saving grace when I became a child of God. I learn every day about living grace. And I watched Joe Ann experience dying grace. I don’t know that there is a single definition that explains it although I know it from experience.

When I asked about its meaning as a child, someone said, “Grace is God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” That’s a nice acronym but it wasn’t satisfying.

One day while watching a tennis match I caught a tiny piece of its meaning. Everytime a player was a point away from winning the match, the announcer would say, “Advantage, Williams” or whatever the player’s name was. At that moment it occurred to me that God announces that in every situation in which I find myself. “Advantage, Joyce.” I have the winning edge in things that are frustrating, joyous, sad, perplexing, or any situation in which I find myself; he gives it to me. The match may not be over, but the advantage I have is that I can meet the challenge in him.

Attitude

We have all heard the word attitude invoked many times. We’re told to have a good one, change one, or get rid of a bad one. This brief definition of an attitude is my favorite because it tells me what it is and suggests how I can deal with it. An attitude is an emotional habit. When there is a recurring attitude, I recognize it for what it is and know that habits are not easy to break but they can be broken.

The definitions I share with you are like shorthand to me. I like them because I often have to put these words to work on the spur of the moment. These definitions help me understand what I am doing or what I need to do.

Do you have some to share? I’d love to hear them.

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Relationships

Being Held

I like this image for its symbolic value – being held by a hand. It is a tiny reminder to me of the hand of the living, eternal God that is infintely bigger than me and able to hold me.

For years I have gone to bed at night thanking God for the everlasting arms that are beneath me. I also quote the lines below from Martyn-Lloyd Jones almost every night. The realization that I am a day closer to home allows me to go to sleep with joy. 

Here in the body pent,
               Absent from Him I roam,
               Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
                 A day's march nearer home.

Those words become sweeter as each year goes by. I often speak them to God by changing the word Him to You. Not every night is naturally joyful, of course. There are nights when I add these words from Zephaniah 3:17, “he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” and reword them as a request to God.

You may wonder why I am sharing so personally in a public blog. I do it because I believe there are people who crave and need the intimacy with God the Father that is available to those of us who are His children and we are invited to it. Maybe there are others who enjoy this intimacy but could use a reminder today that they are being held by an everlasting, loving Father.

In this new year I have had people dear to me who have died and others who are actively dying now. The comfort I have felt is in knowing that those leaving know the Lord Jesus and will be with him.

Others I know are entering unknown but difficult paths of different kinds of separation. Those of us who are left can walk beside them, offer the touch of Jesus through our hands and arms and through our presence.

While moving my books around recently, I picked up one written 50 years ago that I have had in my library almost that long. The title is Loneliness by Robert Weiss. He wrote that there is very little research and writing on the subject of loneliness and hoped that his book would encourage other social scientists to write on the subject. I paged through my copy to see what I had underlined many years ago.

Picking here and there I found these things worthy of reflection even as I think about intimacy with God. Loneliness is an experience of relational insufficiency, particularly an intimate relationship of knowing you are known and understood without having to explain. There is trust in that kind of relationship and the sense of knowing the other as well.

Our lonely self is tense, restless, unable to concentrate, driven. I know that self, although I sometimes deny it is my “real” self.

Loneliness is not the product of being alone; one can be lonely in a group. It is the absense of an intimate relationship.

Weiss writes, “our problem in estimating the prevalence of loneliness is that loneliness is not a condition like a broken leg, which one has or doesn’t have, but it is nearer to fatigue, a condition that can vary from the barely perceptible to the overwhelming. How much loneliness must one feel for it to be counted?”

In Ecclesiastes we read that God has planted eternity in the human heart. We are made for a relationship with God, which we know through Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh. While God is physically absent and invisible to our physical eye and inaudible to our physical ear, we see him and hear him in his Word. And he sees and hears us.

One of the beauties of this relationship to me is that we are not equals. He is Creator and I am creature. He is father and I am child. His love is perfect and mine is not. He is never changing and I am always changing. When I understand these roles, I can grow in the relationship.

I never have to wonder where he is or how he feels about me. I never have to fear rejection or separation or abandonment. Human intimacy is wonderful and we need intimate relationships with others but it has none of these guarantees and cannot be compared.

This morning as I got ready for another day’s march toward home, I was reminded “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Being held by God is a comforting experience at at any age.

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Relationships Self Reflections

The Love of Learning

The image above was painted by my dear friend, Johnni Johnson Scofield, who took up watercolor painting when she was close to 70. I have always called this painting her self-potrait. Johnni loved learning.

Earlier this week my bookcase looked liked this. Then, I invited a young pastor, who is a real student of God’s Word, to come and help himself to what he wanted of Joe Ann’s theological library, half of what you see on these shelves. There is a wealth of theological exposition in those volumes; just looking at them made me feel rich. But like all of our riches, what good are they if they are not used? I picked up a volume of the set of fouteen by Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the book of Romans and paged through it. The underlining and the notes show they were used by Joe Ann. As much as I think I would use that set, I know I will not. Why should they and others be left until I die?

When he left my house, the bookcase looked like this and I was deeply satisfied. The exercise of relinquishing treasured things has been good for me. It was a reminder that there is much more I need to release that can be used by others. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but I am hoping that I will expend the time and energy in the months ahead to let go of more tangible objects. I suppose the reason I have so many in my storage area is that it is the easiest place to put something I no longer need or use or that is taking up space I want for something else. It takes thought and work to decide what is junk that needs to be discarded, what needs to be given away and where or to whom, and what should be kept and why.

My bookshelves are full again. They now hold books with my notes and underlining. As I sat quietly this morning sipping a cup of coffee with my little dog on my lap, I began to think of intangible things I also need to look at and about which I need to make some decisions. Just as we sort through piles of material things and put them in boxes to be dumped, given away, or kept, I know I have a storage room in my head that needs to be decluttered. There are things there to let go of that are junk and of no use to me or anyone. I have tried over the years not to allow too much of that in my storage area. But there are many more things that if I took them out, unwrapped them, or dusted them off would be wanted and useful to someone.

Don’t we all have things like that we should and could let go of? One of the greatest things I learned from those who see the value of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and practice them is that they share their experience, strength and hope with others. And those who hear them can take or leave what they want and can use. AA and similar meetings remind me of a potluck where everyone brings something to share and all those attending can take what they want. If you come to a potluck without anything yourself, there is more than enough to go around.

There have been more times than I care to remember when I have left a person or a group and felt stingy. I really hate that word and I hate that feeling. Not offering a word of encouragement. Not acknowledging someone’s pain. Failing to give praise due. Not extending my hand to touch or arms to embrace. Holding back a compliment needed for a good effort or a task completed. Not seeing something and saying something.

I know the greatest gifts we have to give one another are not tangible. I started out writing about the love of learning and it seems that I may have taken a detour. Not really. I have gained much that is intangible from tangible things like books. But maybe more of what I have learned is from the stories of people’s lives spoken and unspoken but shared. I have nothing new to pass on. Like giving away Joe Ann’s used books, I’m just passing along what has been underlined in my own life. Those tested and worn gifts are what I like best from others too.

One man gives freely, yet gains even more: another withholds unduly, but comes to proverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.

Proverbs 11: 24-25

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Relationships

Breaking Unwritten Rules

family dysfunction

Thanksgiving Day and Christmas are just ahead of us. The kind of image we see here is not what we want but it is what it is. Dysfunction within our relationships is often experienced at this time of the year when families gather for holiday celebrations. From generation to generation we can become carriers of dysfunction actively repeating behavior we once experienced passively as children and passing on dysfunction to those with whom we should have the healthiest relationships.

What we live with we learn. What we learn we practice. What we practice we become.

No one is 100 percent dysfunctional nor is anyone perfectly healthy. If we look at ourselves and our families honestly we will see that we are somewhere on a contiuum with the possibility of moving more towards healthy, maturing relationships.

In this post I want to talk about three unwritten rules that are part of unhealthy scripts learned in the roles we play opposite each other and how we can begin to break them. It takes time and work but is worth the effort. I know that from personal experience and from years of working with addicts and their families.

Don’t Talk

This is the first unwritten rule. Don’t talk about the painful things that go on in the family. Don’t talk to those in the family about anything really important and certainly don’t talk outside the family. Most children growing up in dysfunctional environments learn this well by the time they are eight years old or earlier. It is a pattern carried with them the rest of their lives and leaves them guessing at what healthy is and struggling with a certain level of loneliness.

Even when we don’t have secrets in our families, if we are unable to talk to one another we are susceptible to moving further apart rather than closer to one another when faced with a crisis.

Don’t Trust

The second unwritten rule is don’t trust. Experience teaches those in dysfunctional relationships that promises are made and promises are broken. They cannot count on what others say. People they thought were trustworthy are not. The only thing that is consistent is inconsistency. Among other things this leads them to grab what they can at the moment because it may not be there later.

Don’t Feel

In these settings where needs are not met family members also learn a third rule: don’t feel. No one will validate their feelings. People tell them how they should and should not feel about people and experiences. They also have others tell them how they are feeling or not feeling and how intensely. They come to doubt and question their own feelings.

These unwritten rules isolate family members from others and isolation keeps them from realizing how common their problems are. The only way to begin to get help is to break the unwritten rules.

For any of us, whether we have a mildly unhealthy relationship or a seriously dysfunctional one, we can do something that will make a difference.

Breaking the rules

When I was growing up my relationship with my father was not what I wanted it to be. There was no abuse or problems to hide in the family. There was simply silence; we didn’t talk about anything significant or important to us and therefore we didn’t know each other. As an adult, I didn’t know how to change the relationship until an activity I did with a university class I taught gave me an idea. On the first day of class I asked the students to introduce themselves and tell the class something they liked about themselves that they got from either of their parents. I told them I would start so they would have a moment to think.

I told the students I liked my love for learning, my creativity, and my curiosity and those were characteristic of my dad. When I got home that day I wrote a letter to my dad and told him about the class and what I had said and thanked him for modeling those things for me. We never talked about that letter but I know he kept it. However, that was the beginning of a 12-year journey to disclose more to one another and appreciate each other more. When he died, I still did not have the full relationship I wanted but it was so much better and I had no regrets.

Another activity that I have done with those I want to know better is to share with each other what we consider the most memorable event of the first 15 years of our lives. I like this kind of activity because it allows each person to choose what they feel safe in sharing. Telling my grandmother and my dad about an experience I had with this activity led them to spontaneously share their memories. My grandmother told us of her brother coming home from the Spanish-American war. Dad said he remembered the end of World War I and the German kaiser being burned in effigy at the end of a streetcar in downtown Holland.

These are tiny things that are like baby steps in getting to know and understand each other better and they can add joy to a family gathering. What was dysfunctional in my relationship with my dad was not huge but it was there and I’m glad I didn’t ignore it.

Breaking the rules in major dysfunctional relationships takes more, of course, but it is worth every bit of the time and work it takes. Support groups made up of people with a common problem are often a good place to start. For years Joe Ann and I participated in Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-anon groups respectively. They were safe places for people to break the unwritten rules. They provided a place to learn to talk, trust, and feel. We saw miracles happen in the lives of those who kept at it.

Knowing and understanding others and being known and understood by them is what we all want, isn’t it?

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Relationships

Transitions and Support

Transitions are hard. I’m feeling it because I’m in one now.

I recently lost someone I loved with whom I had shared 34 years of life and ministry. Joe Ann was nine days shy of 90 and her health was such that I would not have wished for her to stay. Although she is gone, I am still here and must go on living. It has been four months now and taking time to get out my fall and winter clothing and put away summer things pushed me to go through her belongings and do something with them.

To keep myself focused on the task, I asked a young friend to come and help me. We took care of most of her clothes in four hours. I decided what I would keep and she carted off sacks of things to donate. Then I sorted through her family pictures which are to be sent to her niece and found some items to pass along to others. It’s a beginning.

I lived alone for many years and I know I can do it again. But after 34 years of companionship and conversation and shared commitments, being alone doesn’t come without work. I am aware of my needs for some changing relationships in my life.

But awareness is not enough; it is the starting point. As Joe Ann used to say, “It’s the ticket for the movie but it’s not the movie.

Sometimes transitions are less difficult, especially when we initiate them and they are positive moves. But they are harder when they are unwanted and out of our control. The thing about transition is that it is about change – moving, adding, subtracting, modifying, adapting. Getting married, having a child, changing jobs, going away to school, moving to a new residence, retiring, getting divorced, dealing with illness, and losing someone we love are just some examples of transitions. Often they come in multiples.

Some of us deal with change better than others. But all of life is about change so it is wonderful when we have some kinds of support that make a difference for us as we move through the process.

Years ago, I read about three kinds of support important to help us make transitions in the healthiest way possible. They were described as a need for affection or to be loved, a need for affirmation or to be believed in, and a need for assistance or to be helped.

One fall when I was the principal of a K-12 Christian school, I thought it might be useful for all of us on the staff to be reminded that every child coming to school was transitioning to a new teacher, a new classroom, and new learning experiences, and some new relationships. Both to remind ourselves and to let the children know we were there to support them, I had heart-shaped campaign-style buttons made for all of us on the staff to wear as school began. They read: I love you. I believe in you. I will help you. I don’t know how much they meant to the students, but I know when I put mine on, I became more conscious of what my attitude, words, and behavior were to portray.

For a good part of my life, I went through various transitions without being able to articulate what it was I needed when I was feeling alone, inadequate, or anxious. Even if we can name what we are feeling, we may not know how to ask for help or where to find it. It is my tendency to protect myself by withdrawing rather than reaching out.

In my most painful transition, I also found that some of those close to me backed away out of fear of not knowing what to say or do. I felt it acutely in 1982 when my youngest sister committed suicide and left behind a husband and two children. Friends who were my greatest help were those who had learned their presence with me was more important that anything they could say.

The truth is that our needs are met in relationships, not a single relationship but multiple ones. None of us can meet all the relational needs of others when they are going through difficulties. And we cannot expect one person to meet all our needs when going through difficulties ourselves. And meeting needs or getting our needs met is not a one-and-done event. Change is a process that takes time.

At my age, I don’t have the daily contact with others I once had. I know that if I don’t take the initiative to build new or use current relationships to meet needs my life will become constricted and my world will grow smaller. I can’t let that happen.