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The Fall of the Berlin Wall and Me
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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 With the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall yesterday, it got my mind thinking back twenty years ago. I was actually in Berlin in August of 1989. We went through Checkpoint Charlie and took some great pictures in East Germany. My main impressions: nobody smiled. Nobody talked outdoors. The cars were tiny. The buildings were ugly. And there was nothing to buy.
Someone was shot trying to flee into West Germany that month. They would be the last to die before the wall came down.
I had an interesting thing happen to me after our trip, though, and I thought I'd share it with you. I wrote it a few years ago, but it seems relevant today. Hope you enjoy it!
We packed ourselves into the car like sardines. In fact, Rohanne went in first, and we crammed our suitcases around her legs so that she couldn’t move. We did all this in the dark, for it was 4 a.m., and it was time to leave Berlin for our mini-conference in Hamburg. It was the end of our summer missions.
Nine of us were travelling together that day, from eight differnet countries. I was one of the lucky ones. When we picked up our rental cars, we found out that they only had one small one left, so we were presented with an Audi at no extra charge. The others in the small Citroen were not as fortunate.
We loaded up, me, a Canadian, in the car with the American, the Jordanian, the South African, and most of the luggage, and in the other car another American, an Israeli, an Egyptian, a Sudanese, and an English woman. We were a pretty bedraggled lot, having spent our summer housed in a church with no shower and few laundry faciltiies. We made do with sponge baths and laundromats, but we looked ragged. And the lack of sleep didn’t help either.
Nevertheless, we left Berlin in high spirits, looking forward to the conference.
I was elected to sit in the front seat with Pietr, the South African, to talk to him to keep him awake while we drove. A little nervous about directions, he had asked over and over again how to get out of Berlin, and was told it was no problem; there was only one road going west, and you couldn’t miss it. You just drive through the checkpoints, and there you are.
So, reassured, we set out. The checkpoint was easier than we thought, although the guards looked suspiciously at our nationalities. Nevertheless, we drove through, drove over a circular roadway, and were on our way. While Rohanne and James napped in the back seat, Pietr and I discussed our summer.
We had been witnessing to Turkish Muslims in Berlin, many of whom lived in neighbourhoods that had yet to be repaired after the World War II bombings. They were the despised of West Germany, yet they were surprising friendly. Nevertheless, they were very dogmatic in their beliefs, and it had been a difficult spiritual journey.
After about an hour, I noticed Pietr looking a little worried. Finally he turned to me, and asked,
“Sheila, in Canada, where does the sun rise?”
“In the east.” I said. And then I looked ahead, straight at the sunrise.
“Funny.” He said. “That’s where it rises in South Africa, too.”
He quickly awoke the other two and had them get out the map. We started to look for signs, but could find none on the map. Then we realized the map didn’t extend for more than 10 km around Berlin.
“Maybe we should turn back,” said Pietr.
“But they said there was only one road.” James argued. We were all growing nervous. We had heard terrible things about East German authorities.
But then a new sign popped into view. “Look!” I cried, “It says Frankfurt. We have to be going in the right direction if there’s a sign for Frankfurt.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, we continued for another ten minutes, until Pietr noticed something else.
“Look at the cars,” he whispered, as if raising his voice would alert the authorities. And we did. We were surrounded by little tiny Eastern European cars, the kind that look like they’re made of aluminum and would break at any minute. Squeezed into these vehicles were tall men, obviously uncomfortable, staring confusedly at our large Audi.
In the back of the car, Rohanne suddenly hissed, “Look at the stickers!”.
 And we did in dismay. In Europe, all cars have an oval white sticker, bearing the initials of the country from which they come. Most of these cars had two ominous letters on them: PL. Poland.
“That’s it.” Pietr said. “We have to turn back.”
And we signalled the car behind us to follow, turned in the other direction, and continued on our way. We even made it to Hamburg in time for the opening worship.
That would be the end of the story except for two other points.
When we reached Hamburg, we checked a map to find out why there was a sign for Frankfurt on the East German highway. That was when we learned that there were two Frankfurts: the second one being a mere 10 km from the Polish border.
The other point was that all of this happened early in the morning on August 24, 1989. To many people that date means nothing, but to those in Poland it means freedom. For it was on that day that the first Communist European government fell; Solidarity had been voted in. And because of that, the Soviets had amassed 12,000 troops to the Polish-East German border.
So I do not like to think of how we would have appeared to those troops had we made it past Frankfurt. The nine of us, a motley crew from some of the most turbulent countries in the world, with our only plea being “we were told there was only one road.”
It was a wonderful summer, and I would encourage all to do summer missions. You meet people from all different countries, experience differnet cultures, get a chance to witness, feel God’s hand protecting you in your everyday life. But not only that. Sometimes you land in the middle of a historical moment. And so you come away with great stories to tell, too.
 Labels: travel |
posted @ 7:55 AM
 
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Little House on the Freeway
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Monday, November 09, 2009
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I read Little House on the Freeway while I was away at the marriage conference this weekend.
In it, author Tim Kimmell lists the seven reasons that we may feel too harried, ranging from "can't stand silence" to a "screen addiction" to an addiction to helping others. As I read the seven reasons (I can't remember all of them now) I felt immeasurably better because I realized that I really only suffered from 1 or 2, and not all 7. So that's got to be a good thing.
One thing that I've been thinking about lately, though, as I've had an incredibly busy couple of weeks, is that we aren't necessarily busier than in the past. We just FEEL busier.
When you look at time studies, the amount of work we do has increased slightly. But it hasn't increased a ton. If you combine housework and paid work, we're still, as a society, doing roughly the same as we did in 1970. Slightly more, but not like 50% more or anything. We actually have a fair amount of leisure time. The difference is in how we're choosing to spend that leisure.
Some of us are simply overextended with committees and extracurricular activities, as we have talked about on this blog over the last two weeks. But I think there's something else at work. When we choose to spend our leisure time in front of a screen (either the internet or the television), we often LOSE a significant portion of our day.
When you sit down at the TV, do you think to yourself, I think I'll sit here for two and a half hours? Chances are you don't, but often you find that that is exactly what you've done. Same with the internet. I sit down to "check a few emails" and suddenly an hour has gone by. When we spend so much of our lives in front of a screen, then we do have less time to get things done.
Also, my truly relaxing time isn't in front of a screen. I like to knit (sometimes I knit while watching a movie, but my primary activity is the knitting, not the movie). I need to knit everyday just for my sanity. So if I don't have time to knit because I've been on the internet, I don't feel relaxed, even though I've just been spending "me" time. Some "me" time doesn't actually relax, because you feel, at the end of it, that you have just lost two hours of your life.
I wonder, then, how much of our busy-ness simply stems from the crazy ways we spend our leisure time. I talk about this a lot in To Love, Honor, and Vacuum: When You Feel More Like a Maid Than a Wife and Mother , but sometimes I need to remind myself of the concept. Often we turn to time wasters, like TV and the internet, because we're tired. We're exhausted. And we just want to relax. The problem is that these things don't relax us. So we end up worse than we were before.
This week I'm going to try something different. I'm going to only go on the internet to do specific things (email checking, blogging, fixing websites), and I'm not going to surf for no apparent reason. I'm not going to get caught up in reading news sites. I may catch up on the blogs I really enjoy, and I may check headline news, but I'm not going to surf like crazy.
And, in turn, I'm going to make sure that I have time to knit everyday, and I'm going to make sure that I have good time to talk with my kids. Perhaps the reason that we feel so busy isn't that we're actually busy as much as it is that we realize the important things in life aren't getting done. If we took steps to prioritize those important things, then we'd feel better. We'd feel more productive. We'd go to bed at night knowing that we had had a good day. I'd really like that feeling again, and I'm going to try to catch it this week! Are you with me?
Please leave a comment! Tell me if you struggle with this, too. I'd love to know if I'm alone or not!
Labels: blogging, busy, internet, television |
posted @ 8:11 AM
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Marriage Conference Thoughts
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Saturday, November 07, 2009
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My husband and I are teaching at a marriage conference this weekend in Barrie, Ontario. We love these weekends. It's one of the few times we get away together as a couple, even if we do have to "work", but we also get to think about and talk about our relationship all weekend, which makes us feel closer.
There are usually about 100 couples at such conferences, and they range from those who are blissfully happy to those who just need a tune-up and all the way down to those for whom this is a last resort. It's always a challenge.
I thought I'd share some of my favourite quotations that I use at these conferences, and some of my favourite thoughts. So here they are, in no particular order.
1. Happy marriages begin when we marry the one we love. They endure when we love the one we marry.
Too often we're focused on whether this person is the right one; but in the end, it doesn't matter. Even if you marry someone totally great, life will get in the way. You are selfish. They are selfish. Crises happen. You get busy. It's not about marrying the right person; it's about putting your spouse first and becoming the right person.
2. More marriages were survive if more people realized the better often comes after the worse. We expect marriage to be great, and it isn't always great. But stick it out: the best is often yet to come. I know that's what we've experienced.
Keith and I often say that we've been married for 18 years, and happily married for 13. Life was hard at the beginning. But it's awesome now, and it's because we decided to stick it out and stop focusing so much on whether my mate was meeting my needs, and focused instead on how we can be the best spouse possible. It changes your attitude, and that changes your perspective and makes you happy.
3. Research says that if your marriage is in the toilet, it isn't necessarily time to flush it. In one study highlighted in the book The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher followed couples who had rated their marriages as either a 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 8, with 8 being lousy. They looked at these individuals for 5 years.
5 years later, those who had divorced were less likely to be happy than the individuals who had stayed married. Even more amazingly, 86% of marriages had improved, with 77% now rating their marriages as either a 1 or a 2. There's something about sticking it out. When you do, you make the decision that you need to fix things. You commit to turning things around. And quite often they do!
4. Marriage is hard work. There is a lot of pain out there. There are a lot of people suffering from addictions, or betrayals, or baggage from their childhood. I just don't think you can get through well without God. Ultimately we can't change things; but He can change us. He can grow us and stretch us and transform us.
You don't have to do it alone. What really works is just yielding to God and letting Him change you, bit by bit. It's amazing what an impact that can have on your marriage.
Sometimes we're scared to trust God, though, because what if He takes away something we love? Or what if He thinks we should change, rather than just changing our spouse? But go to Him. He has your best interests at heart. He loves you. And He doesn't ask you to do the impossible. All He says is: let Me do it. Surrender to Me, and I will do the hard work. But He can't do that until we let Him.
Those are some of my thoughts for today. Maybe I'll post some more later. But I hope that gives you a taste! And do check out the Family Life marriage conferences. We have one day conferences we'll do in churches, too, so if you live in Canada, look into it. It really is a great day.
Labels: marriage |
posted @ 10:57 AM
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Owning Our Problems
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Friday, November 06, 2009
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Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a variety of newspapers. Here's this week's. Read the update below the column; I regret some of it now. But it's a little late to have second thoughts! Sorry, too, that I'm late posting this. I had to leave home early this morning to drive to Barrie, Ontario, where my husband and I are speaking at a marriage conference this weekend. We're now happily at home in our room, and I thought I'd take a moment to upload this!
The British press was all agog a while back with the story of the Chawner family, whom the Daily Mail deemed “The Real Teletubbies”. The parents, together with their two daughters, 19 and 21, live off of welfare because, they claim, they are “too fat to work”. They have obesity related health issues, and assert that there is no way out of their terrible situation. By their own admission, they spend their days watching television and eating junk food, since everything else is too expensive.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe. If we’re too fat, it’s because we have bad genes, not because we don’t eat well. If we can’t make our payments, it’s the greedy banks’ fault for giving us credit cards in the first place. If we’re finding it hard to get by on government assistance with our three kids by different fathers, it’s the government’s fault for not giving us more, rather than our fault for not waiting until we were in a stable marriage to have children.
I think it’s time for a cold dose of owning up to our problems. All of us have made mistakes. The wiser admit it, learn from those mistakes, and try to act responsibly so that we can be happier, healthier, and more productive. The more foolish insist on always blaming others for their position in life. And if it’s always someone else’s fault, then there’s really nothing you can do to better your life, is there? You’re stuck, and things will never get better.
If we’ve made mistakes, life is going to be harder. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the work. It’s hard to lose weight, but I know a woman who has recently shed 150 pounds, and she glows. It’s hard to rebuild your life when you began having children at 16, and you have no education, but what’s the alternative? Do you want to be stuck forever in a welfare cycle, with a revolving door of unsavoury men coming in and out of your life?
It’s hard to quit alcohol. It’s hard to break a drug addiction. And often we turn to those things because we were severely hurt as children. Instead of receiving love from our parents, we received insults, smacks, and even worse, complete neglect. Some definitely have a harder road to walk. Just because something is harder, though, does not mean it’s impossible. And the more we keep excusing bad behaviour, the harder we make it for people to actually change direction and start taking responsibility for their own lives.
The government can’t make you into a responsible citizen. It can’t rescue you from bad personal decisions. Others can encourage you to get an education, offer to help you learn to parent, teach you to save, teach you to be pickier when choosing a mate, teach you how to lose weight. But you have to be the one to act on it. No one else can do that for you. If you’re always waiting for someone else to fix your life, you’re going to be waiting a long time.
There shouldn’t be shame in having problems or in having made mistakes in the past. We all do that. The shame should come when we blame others for those mistakes and we don’t do what we can to help ourselves now. Let’s own our problems, stop being victims, and build our lives again. If we don’t, we’re just creating a culture where everything is somebody else’s fault. And that would be a shame, indeed.
I wish I hadn't included "teach you how to lose weight" in the second last paragraph. I really didn't mean to lump it in with the other things; I was just trying to wrap it up and tie it in with the first paragraph. But I know many who struggle to lose weight who aren't anything like the Chawners family, and I didn't mean to equate them. So I wish I had left that out. But it's too late now! So accept my apologies if you're reading this and you're offended. It was dumb.
Labels: columns |
posted @ 3:51 PM
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How to Make Money as a SAHM
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Thursday, November 05, 2009
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A while back we had a long conversation on this blog about the cost of working. If you've got little kids, we asked, and you have to pay for childcare, then does working outside the home even contribute to your income in a substantial way?
For instance, one of the things that stay at home moms can do is to figure out how to live on less. We do have more time to do things like cook from scratch, make our own gifts, spend more time shopping for bargains, etc. We can only have one car, even though that may mean chauffeuring hubby to work so we can keep it for the day. I also find that when I'm tremendously busy, either because of speaking or because of events with the kids, it's harder to make dinner. That's when we go out or eat prepared foods, which adds to the budget. I know if I were working full-time I'd do the take-out thing more often, and so that would become more expensive.
Therefore, I'm not sure it always pays to work, depending on your potential income. But what do you do when you just really need money? I want to throw this question out there, because several of my long-term readers really need answers, and I thought together we could come up with something.
So here's the scenario. You aren't highly educated, and the maximum you could probably make would be $15/hour, and that's if you hit the jackpot. But you really need to bring home about $1500 a month just to make ends meet. So what do you do? Here are some choices that I see:
1. Work part-time. It sounds silly, but part-time work may be able to bring in more money. When you're not paying for childcare because your husband has the kids, and when you can still live on one vehicle, part-time work may actually leave more money in the wallet. Work two nights a week and Saturdays. Be a waitress, or work at a call centre or something. The disadvantage: you never see your husband. You don't really have family time. So I'm not a big fan of this one.
2. Sell Mary Kay/Tupperware. I'm not an overly big fan of this one, either. I've gone down that route briefly, and gone to all the sales conferences, and gotten all pumped up to sell stuff, and become a leader, and have people work under me, but it just doesn't work that well. You can work so hard at it for a few years and still have little to show for it. It works great for some--but for the majority it doesn't. And you spend your life out at nights and trying to convince women who don't really want to go to parties to go to just one more. Let me know if you think differently, but I know one of the women who needs money advice has already tried this and won't do it again.
3. Become a foster parent. Don't balk at this one right away. I'm not saying we should do it for the money. I don't know what all jurisdictions pay, but in mine, if you take in two kids you make up that monetary gap we were talking about. It's a lot of work. It's a big sacrifice. You have to define your boundaries. But if you are willing, it has a lot of upsides. You're really making a difference. You're living out your values. You are still able to stay home and be with your own kids, and if they're in school, you're able to get them on and off of the bus or be there for their field trips and sports games. You have to be careful who you take, but this can be an option for some, and given how desperate they are for good foster parents, perhaps it's one more of us should consider (even forgetting about the money!). Any foster parents out there? I'd love for you to comment on this option!
4. Help your husband to make more money. After all, you need more income. It doesn't really matter who gets it. So how can we help our husbands boost their incomes? Can we help them start a business? Can we help them with that business by doing some of the work at home? Can we support them going back to school for a time to get more training? Any thoughts on this one?
5. Save more money. The other way to make money, of course, is simply not to spend it. If you've got a major shortfall, look at what you can change in how you spend money to perhaps make some of that up. That's not always possible; I know a lot of people are already living pretty close to the bone. It's just a thought. 6. Start your own business. Lots of people are doing it. Sell on e-bay. Turn a hobby into a business. Especially at Christmas it's easier to make some money. Any concrete suggestions here?
So what do you all think? What's the best way to boost income when you want to continue to stay at home with your kids? And if someone absolutely had to get a job, any suggestions on what kind of job to get?
By the way: an anonymous commenter took offense at my post a few days ago, saying that I was denigrating working moms in my "stay at home mom" rant. I addressed that in the comments, but in case she doesn't read them, let me just say again: I didn't mean the post against stay at home moms. I had no idea it would be taken that way. I meant it against PEOPLE in general. In fact, the specific individuals I was thinking of aren't moms at all. Several are male. So I'm sorry if you were offended, but I really think it was just a misunderstanding.
Labels: SAHM, saving, spending, working |
posted @ 8:15 AM
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Wifey Wednesday: Where Do You Go?
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Wednesday, November 04, 2009
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 It's Wednesday, which means it's time to talk marriage! I introduce a topic, and then you all comment, or, if you have a blog, you write your own Wifey Wednesday post and come back here and enter the link in the Linky thing below.
So today I want to talk problems. Where do you go when you have problems?
Last Friday I was talking to a good friend of mine whose marriage has broken up. Her husband was involved in a lot of bad things, and finally she got the strength to kick him out. It's been a difficult road for her for over a decade, and for most of that she felt very alone. She couldn't tell anyone, because she wanted to be a good Christian wife. She wanted the church to still accept her. And he wouldn't have wanted her to talk about it.
I told her that sometimes I get frustrated because it seems that we aren't honest about our marriages. I know there are people reading this who are really hurting, but so often the comments on this and other blogs are from people whose marriages are great. Now, please, if your marriage is great, that doesn't mean that I don't want you to comment! And I'm so HAPPY that your marriage is wonderful! But where does one go if one's marriage isn't? Where does one go if one's really feeling desperate, and alone, and frustrated?
Maybe it's only in one area of your marriage. Maybe everything is great but sex (I've been there). Maybe it's going well, but your husband won't talk about money and won't let you in on the financial decisions. Maybe you love him, but you wish he would spend more time with the kids. What do you do?
Now please, don't go looking for the one area where things are bad, because it doesn't actually help to start trying to figure out what you're upset about, especially if you're not that upset at the moment. If you're pretty happy, but you start thinking about what you COULD be upset about, chances are you'll be upset pretty soon. I'm talking about those who are chronically frustrated and alone about some aspect of their marriage, and if you have to think about it, you're fine. If you really felt that way, you'd know it.
So where do you go? This weekend my husband and I are speaking at a marriage conference in Barrie, Ontario, at the Horseshoe Valley Resort. I'm so looking forward to it! There are always couples there for whom the conference is their last chance, and it is exciting when breakthroughs are made. Marriage conferences can be a great place to go for some help.
What about mentors? If you can find one person who has a good marriage who is a little bit older than you, she may be able to help. But it means being honest. We had a couple over for dinner once whom we knew were having problems. We told them about our struggles early in our marriage. We opened up. But they never reciprocated. Five years later, they're divorced. You can't get help if you don't talk.
Or what about reading some good books? Sometimes a new perspective can help you.
So I really want to know. Where do you go when you have issues in your marriage? What do you do about it? How do you eventually overcome them? It seems to me that the reason marriages break up is because people don't do anything with their frustration and loneliness while they still can, and then things become intolerable. So before they're intolerable, what do you do? Tell me in the comments!
And if you have your own blog, won't you write a Wifey Wednesday post? You can talk about this topic, or you can just offer any piece of marriage advice that you have. Or ask a question from the rest of us! Let's get the discussion going, so we all don't feel so alone.
Labels: marriage, wifey wednesdays |
posted @ 7:12 AM
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Stay at Home Moms are Busy, Too
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Tuesday, November 03, 2009
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I'm a homeschooler, so I guess I can't be classified as a typical "stay at home" mom. But there are some similarities. And this week I am very burnt out. Extremely burnt out. I'm tired. And so I would like to give an ear shattering rant, if I may. Please understand this is mostly tongue and cheek, but I have to get it out of my system.
We stay at home because we love our kids. We have a vision for our family that includes us being there to raise our children. We see this as a calling, not a vacation.
Therefore, we don't just sit around all day, doing nothing. We play with our kids. We take them to the library. We read books. We do laundry, wash dishes, mop floors, and vacuum carpets. We go grocery shopping with three kids in tow. We go to the bank with our purse filled with books so we can keep the kids occupied in line. We learn how to cook everything from scratch. We are busy.
So just because we're home doesn't mean that we are always free. Those of us who homeschool also have schedules. We have things we have to get done. You can't just call at any hour of the day and ask us to do you a favour (unless you're my best friend Susan. This isn't written against you, Susan :) ). You can't just assume I can do something for you in the middle of the week since I "don't have a job". Do you know how challenging it is to teach a child to write an essay? We take this seriously, and we do want to get through our teaching goals.
No, I can't always talk on the phone for hours on end. No, I'm not a bad friend if I have to say, "I have to go now", because I do have to go now. I am home for my kids, not so I can talk for hours on end with my friends. I love you, but you have to think of me as being at work. I'm not just automatically available.
I do want to help at the church. I do want to help with community projects. I do care. But I do not have unlimited time. I'm really not that much different from some of the other women in your church who do work. I just work differently, and I happen to work at home. But what I do is important, and I have to get it done.
I am not boring because I don't work. In fact, I probably know more about current events and social issues than you do because I spend a lot of my time researching things for school and keeping current on the internet. I am not a social recluse because I have a big network of friends I get together with who help me teach my children different things. But these things, too, are scheduled, and it seems as if those who are also stay at home moms and those who are also homeschoolers are much more cognizant of the fact that my time is precious than those who are not.
When I say I can't do something, it is not because I am lazy or selfish. It is because I know what my calling from God is--to raise these kids properly, and to reach out where God has given me opportunities--and what you're asking me to do right now doesn't fit with that. I need to keep my eyes on the prize.
I know you're in an emergency. I know you work and you need my help. But just because I'm at home does not mean that my time is always free so that I can be at others' beck and call. I do have things I need to accomplish, too. Respect that, and it will be much easier for me to respect your requests. Understand that I have a to-do list a mile long, as well. Do that, and all of us, working moms and stay at home moms, friends of all types, church acquaintances and pastors, neighbours and friends, will get along so much better.
Labels: parenting |
posted @ 7:45 AM
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Random Thoughts This Monday
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Monday, November 02, 2009
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It is 7:30 here on a Monday. It's light out and the sun is finally shining, after a week of hiding. I wish it made me feel more energized. Instead I feel like I am stuck inside a gigantic to-do list.
I don't have any big-tent thoughts today that are worth writing a big blog post on, so I thought I'd just tell you a few of the things that are on my mind right now.
First, Hallowe'en was weird this year. We had more kids than last year (we live in a subdivision and people come from all over to trick or treat in our neighbourhood). But I swear half of the kids we had (and we had at least 200) were over 12. And quite a few of the girls were dressed like strippers. It was disheartening, to say the least. For a while my kids were giving out candy, but it got a little embarrassing giving stuff out to kids who were older than them. Someone really should put a stop to this. Don't know how, though.
I'm a little overwhelmed with that to-do list I mentioned. A choir from the orphanage we support in Kenya is in town, and I'm hosting a fundraiser tomorrow night. Their story is amazing, and we're heading over in 2010 leading a medical team. I love doing something that makes a tangible difference, and my children have so benefited from participating in trips to Kenya. So I just have to remember that if my regular stuff doesn't get done this week, in the broader scheme of things it doesn't matter. We're making a difference, and that's what counts.
I'm finding it very difficult lately to balance different forms of ministry. I've been very involved with the youth in our church this year, and many of them are going through hard times. So I've wanted to be there for them. Then I've been speaking a ton, which eats up a lot of my weekends this time of year. I have extended family that really need attention. But I'm also a big believer in having neighbours and friends over for dinner. We haven't done that in ages because I just don't seem to have time. So I've been praying that God will give me a vision, even if it's just on a week by week basis, of where to place my ministry emphasis. Because quite frankly I can't do it all, and I need some downtime.
I've been pondering marriages lately. Not my own, but just the state of the institution in general. The truth is, marriage is tough. Really tough. And I'm starting to find that some marriages can't be saved, except by an amazing work of God. I wish people could face reality earlier, and deal with their issues before it rips their family apart, but few have the honesty to face their problems when they can still coast. I do think, though, that the typical Christian response to pressure for reconciliation at all costs can be misplaced. Reconciliation without fully dealing with the issues will not work; it just delays the breakup and makes it worse when it occurs. We need to, instead, surround the people with love, help them to grow in Christ, and help them both to be honest and to learn to love. As they learn to love, they may turn to each other again. But they may not. And if someone has grounds to leave the marriage, we need to give them the space. No one else really knows what goes on inside another person's marriage. Obviously we'd all like all marriages to succeed (as does God, I believe), but there is grace if one has been so hurt that for one's own sanity and the preservation of one's spirit that one has to finally say enough is enough.
The problem is that many say it too lightly. They say enough is enough when the real problems are more minor ones. But when they are about a controlling personality, suffering from major addictions, and violating the marriage vows off and on throughout the marriage, eventually the hurt spouse may have to just get out, even if their spouse isn't cheating at that very moment. It may have taken several years to build up the strength to get out. And I believe God gives grace at that moment. Our challenge, as a church, is not necessarily how to save the marriage at that point (I think we need to minister to each spouse and show grace, but not force reconciliation). Our challenge is how to save marriages like that five years before that happened. How do we identify marriages in trouble and help them before it gets so bad? I don't know, and I'd really like an answer.
Here's another question: Do all children automatically love their parents? I heard that again this week as a woman was giving a really touching testimony of being raised in a dysfunctional family with a dad who was rarely there, and who was often drunk. She said, "but I still loved him, because he was my daddy. And I wanted him there." I've heard that mantra all my life: I loved him because he was my daddy. And even though he was terrible, I yearned for him in my life.
The truth is, I didn't. Does that make me a bad person? I've never had problems loving others, but I feel very little emotion for my father, and that's always been the case. Perhaps it's because I didn't see him from the time I was a baby until I was about 4 or 5 I think, and then I only saw him for a week a year. Maybe I just failed to attach to him, which other children, who saw their parents more often, may have done, even if their parents were terrible. My dad wasn't terrible, he just wasn't there. So I'm having issues with this idea that kids automatically love their parents. Any comments? I'd really love to talk this one out.
Finally, I really would like some comments on my Saturday post, right below. What do you think on that take on things? Have Christian books become increasingly strange? What about this emphasis on happiness? What do you think about the emphasis on success in the career realm? I found the whole thing so bizarre, but it doesn't seem like anyone agrees. Perhaps I didn't write the post well enough, but please humour me and say something!
Thanks, and have a great Monday!
Labels: blogging, divorce, halloween |
posted @ 7:36 AM
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The Secret of Happiness
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Saturday, October 31, 2009
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Are you happy? Do you feel successful? Do you feel like a strong woman?
Those questions tend to make me feel defensive. Of course I'm happy! I'm doing what I'm called to do, aren't I? And what does it matter if I'm successful, if I'm living my calling?
And besides that, happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be, as I've written here on previous occasions. The secret to happiness is to not look for it. When we look for it, we're always going to be unhappy, because we'll see all the things we don't have. When we seek instead for purpose and joy in God, we tend to, in the end, find happiness as well. But it's a by-product of a life well-lived.
To me, the main questions that encapsulate the essence of one's life are more these: Do you know what you were called to do? Do you feel a calling on your life? Do you feel energized to live out that calling? Do you experience joy on a regular basis? See how those are quite different? I find this whole quest for happiness and self-fulfillment focused a little too much on the self and not enough on God. The truth is we are not called to be happy as much as we are called to be holy. But as we live out a purpose-driven life, we will experience joy, and our lives will be richer and fuller. The key is to look to God first, and not to our own hearts.
If I have that much trouble with the idea of happiness and feeling successful being the centre of your life, you can imagine how much difficulty I had with a book I was recently sent to review: Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham. I didn't agree with the premise to begin with, and quite honestly, I had a hard time with a women's book that featured a picture of a guy prominently on the cover, even if he had become famous on Oprah.
The book was sent to me, I think, because it is a Christian publisher, and it's about women. Nevertheless, God is nowhere in the book, except in a brief 3-page anecdote that is cute, but does not present the gospel whatsoever. I guess the publisher is trying to branch out.
Then, the beginning of the book was focused on him (again, the self-focus that really turns me off), and it soon became quite clear he was writing from a particular perspective that I do not share. For instance, I was offended by this sentence. After talking about how women can feel stressed at work, he says, on page 38:
The good news is that this isn't stopping women from on-ramping back into work after having kids, in spite of the media stories of a new generation of women choosing to opt out.
Why is it GOOD news that women are leaving their babies and going back to work? (He later reports it as a success that the majority of women with babies are working). I can understand being neutral about it, but lauding it? That seems very strange. Later in the book he says that we should never feel guilty about choosing to work and sending kids to day care, because in surveys, what kids want is not more time with Mommy, but for Mommy to be happy.
So what? Since when do children know what's good for them? And given the abysmal rate of kids retaining their faith, and the horrible rate of kids being involved in sexual activity at a young age, maybe we need more parents around.
My initial reaction, then, was quite negative. Nevertheless, there were some very good tips in the book, and some excellent strategies to maximize the positive moments in your life, rather than the negative ones. I'm using some of them already, but he put a name to them and explained them in a way I hadn't heard for before, which was helpful. And he reminded me of some other things I haven't been doing. So while I may not agree with the philosophical underpinning of the book (and I definitely don't think it's a Christian book, publisher notwithstanding), there's some good stuff there.
I think, over the next week, I'll point out some of that good stuff, and share it here with you, bit by bit. Let me just leave you today with some of the observations that he has about the state that women find themselves in today, with which I have no argument.
First, over the last few decades, women have become steadily unhappier, while men have become happier. Having more choice has made women unhappy, largely because when we have choice, we always are reminded of what we are not doing well. Too many of us are trying to multitask all the time, and it's stressful. Choice doesn't make you happy, even if you think it's a good thing.
Second, women became unhappier as life goes on, and men become happier. We start off happier, more sure of ourselves, with more hope for our futures. But as we have kids, and move into the work world, we lose that happiness, while men gain it. Why? I think because again we are feeling guilty for what is not being done.
Also, ironically, women with children are more unhappy than women without kids, even married women. And this is true across cultures, in huge surveys, as he has shown, so I do believe him. It is not that we don't love our kids; it is that they give a level of stress to our lives that is really difficult to integrate.
That's where women find ourselves. We are stressed. We are unhappy. We feel like we have too much on our plate. The solution, though, that I would offer that he did not, is to find a purpose outside of yourself. He does this in a secular way, asking women to find what they were born to be, and then to live that out in their career lives and their stay at home lives (there are no real examples in the book of women who have completely stayed at home, though he says the book is for women of all walks of life). And I believe that we should find what we were born to be.
But the question of being born to be something is essentially one of calling. How can we be "born to be" something absent God? The author is himself a Christian, so I think he knows that, he just isn't saying it explicitly in the book. But we need to figure out what God is calling us to, and then rely on Him for peace in that calling. We'll talk later this week how to do that effectively to experience joy, but if you've never had it out with God about what you were called to do, you need to. Without a sense that God is calling you to something, whether it's your family, or your work, or a ministry, or even just how to live your life, then whenever frustrations come you will wonder if you are outside of His will. They will be magnified.
So seek out His calling. Pray with your spouse about it. Talk to your friends about it. And then focus on how to live it out. If we are doing something purposefully, it will always have more joy than if we are just living in the moment.
And perhaps that's another place where I differ from this author. I've read other books that are secular in nature, but which FEEL right. They may not say the word "God", but they are in agreement with Scriptural principles. The two that come to mind are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by Scott Peck. Both have to do with how to find peace in everyday life, and how to find meaning in life.
The difference, I think, is that both take very moral approaches to it. You will never be happy or fulfilled, they say, if you violate moral standards. So you need to think in terms of right and wrong. I didn't get this impression from the book. What he was saying is find those moments when you feel strongest, when you feel everything coming together, and search after those moments. But what if those moments are when you're sitting in front of a slot machine? What if they're when you're with your lover? That's not exactly the recipe for a joyful life, is it? We need to weigh what we want to do in terms of whether or not it's right.
And the other thing that Covey really gets at is that we are called to be meaningful, not happy. And when we are meaningful, when we find our purpose, our lives are better. So he spends so much time talking about what you want to accomplish--not just in terms of what matches your personality (which is what this author says), but in terms of what values you want to see evidenced in your life. And you follow those values even if it means your life is a little more complex and difficult. Do you see the difference? It's starting with values (or God), and then coming to us. This book seems to start with us. So I don't get it. It just doesn't FEEL like a Christian book, regardless of the publisher.
One more thing. Perhaps the reason that women are becoming more unhappy, too, is that we are expecting too much out of life. We are expecting that it will be easy to meld a career and kids. We are expecting to experience happiness all the time, and we don't. And we blame others. But perhaps the problem is not our lives, but our expectations. We can find great joy being at home, and perhaps, if we as women celebrated it more in an honest way (without pretending that being home is always perfect), we would stop having these expectations that at all times we must have a powerful career and a home life and a stock portfolio. Being a mom is a wonderful thing. It is a privilege. You don't have to do it all. And that is a good thing.
Labels: purpose, social issues, working |
posted @ 8:03 AM
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Leaving Behind the Fountain of Youth
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Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a variety of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. Here's this week's:
This Saturday night, families will be stuffing warm sweaters underneath Cinderella costumes and Superman capes as they go door to door taking candy from strangers. Personally, I’m not a big Hallowe’en fan. I love the mini chocolate bars, but I’ve never liked walking around in the cold, especially since it seems to rain on Hallowe’en about 98% of the time.
But dressing up is a time-honoured tradition, and my daughters were never content unless they had make-up caked on their faces so they could look pretty.
Fast forward twenty or thirty years and it’s not really so different. Many adult women go to great pains to try to look pretty, too. I’m a big fan of lipstick, and moisturizer does wonders. A while back I bought a special “moisturizer for men” for Keith to use when he did all that snow shovelling—I figured that was the least I could do, since I certainly wasn’t about to go out there and help him—but he refused to wear it. Turns out he likes wrinkles. He thinks they make him look distinguished, like his father.
It’s acceptable for a man to age. It’s a sin for a woman to. Our glory days are supposedly in our youth, and it’s all downhill from there, according to magazine covers and our entertainment culture. What tripe. I’m a whole lot happier at just-a-few-months-to-forty than I was right before I hit nineteen. And I’m a whole lot more awake than I was just before I hit thirty, when my children were in the rock around the clock baby stage. I love much of what has already happened in my life. I loved my babies, I loved dating my husband, and I loved my university friends. But I wasn’t necessarily able to enjoy those days well.
Either I was worried about what was ahead—would I find the right guy? Would I do well in school? Would I have children?—or I was too busy to enjoy it. Sure it’s exciting when your life is a blank slate before you, but it’s stressful, too. And relationships aren’t as easy-going as the media likes to paint them, either. The best friendships we have with other women tend to come later in life. When we’re younger, we’re often more competitive, catty, and sensitive. In later life, you chalk it up to hormones or peri-menopause or hot flashes and you move on.
As you age, too, you become far more comfortable in your own skin. You’ve come to terms with that cellulite that mortified you at 28. And you come to terms with the rest of your disappointments, too. You know life does not always go as planned, but you learn to recover. You become stronger for it. You gain perspective. You stop sweating the small stuff. Even the sex is better as you age, according to studies. Those in long term, committed relationships tend to be far more satisfied than the young singles who “hook up”, no matter what Paris Hilton may want you to believe.
It’s time we stopped idolizing youth and start idolizing aging. Youth really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, with its insecurities and stresses and questions. When we age, we forgive ourselves. We focus our priorities and figure out what really matters. And that, I think, makes life richer, even if we do have disappointments and unachieved dreams. Life isn’t going downhill; it’s getting better. One day those under 30 will realize that the perfect life isn’t young Cinderella; it’s her middle aged neighbour who has survived all that drama and now gets to write her own story. And trust me, it’s going to be a good one.
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Labels: aging, columns |
posted @ 7:15 AM
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