We must do things differently!

     Today as I was driving back to church after a meeting, I was stopped at a red light and noticed a very skinny and very dirty homeless man who clearly had some mental health issues, standing on the side of the road staring at his fingers and talking to them.  

    Suddenly a police officer drove through the red light, stopping in the middle of the street.  He jumped out, grabbed the homeless man, threw him on the ground, grabbed his arms in a way that I am certain broke at least one of them, kneeled on his back, screaming at him the whole time and eventually handcuffed him.  I swear, if the light hadn’t changed, I would have been able to video at least the end of this unfortunate encounter. I couldn’t believe it.  Or rather, I could believe it but the fact that this behavior still continues is utterly baffling to me.  This was a 6 lane road, so there were many of us who saw this, but the officer didn’t care and didn’t think he’d be challenged or corrected, probably because, again, this was a homeless and mentally ill person: someone many feel it is okay to reject and to treat like they are sub-human.

    Someone reading this might say that I had no idea what proceeded that and they would be right.  Nonetheless, this man was not putting up any resistance at all, he was laying on the ground crying in pain but not fighting this officer at all. He had nothing on him, nothing with him, nothing that could have been damaging.  There was no reason at all why this officer could not have talked to him politely, asked him questions, taken him gently in, if that is what needed to happen.

    When will we start caring about people enough to take seriously that this kind of behavior from the people who are supposed to “protect” us does not, in fact, protect us, but instead creates a society of violence, retribution, vengeance and fear? This behavior will never lead us to remember that we are all connected, and that those people we dismiss as “other” and “not worthy” are our siblings: they belong to us, and we have a responsibility to care for them, to HELP them, rather than harm them more.  

    I keep thinking of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenging it?”  She said that a long time ago, but have we moved any closer at all to true understanding, compassion, and caring for one another?

    Our Old Testament law of “an eye for an eye” was supposed to mitigate the amount of retaliatory damage we could inflict on the other.  Jesus took it even further, “I say to you, do NOT return evil for evil!”  So many people claim to believe and yet I know very, very few who really want to help those who do damage rather than seek vengeance and harm on them.

    The truth is that our retaliatory responses make nothing better.  Our punishments do not lessen the amount of crime in our society.  I’ve written about this before so I will not go into the details here.  But this doesn’t work.  Restorative justice DOES.  It goes so much further in terms of changing people for the better so that crimes are not repeated and people can re-enter society better and more able to be well-functioning and contributing individuals.  

    This has to begin with what we see as acceptable responses by our law enforcement to those they don’t like or those with whom they are angry.  Being okay with the way police abuse even those we reject has to stop.  And it has to stop with us.  

We become what we believe ourselves to be

        I've been thinking about a person I knew who was a professional victim.  What I mean by that is that this is a person who, given the attention of anyone at all, would take the opportunity to share how their life, their parents, their current family members, their friends and their community were unkind to them and had done them wrong.  This was such a central part of their identity that at a job interview for a leadership position, they lost the job because they took the interview time as an opportunity to share how badly they'd been victimized by their life.  

    With prompting, this individual finally chose to go to therapy.  But unfortunately, the therapist they chose and loved was someone who supported them in this victim stance.  The therapist would listen and lament about how horrible this person's life was and how awful it was that she'd been treated as she had.  For those of us who knew this professional victim well, we saw a different picture.  We saw a person who manipulated and controlled those around her with this victim stance.  If she whined long and hard enough about something that she believed was "unfair," those around her tended to jump to fix it or give to her what she wanted, even when it was unhealthy and damaging for her or those around her.  Her victim position was one of power, but an unhealthy power.  Those who loved her grew tired of being made out to be her perpetrators, those who loved her also grew tired of her choosing this position of what appeared to be weakness when she had so much potential for true strength and joy.  Unfortunately, it was a rare individual who offered her a different way of being in the world, one that celebrated the gifts in her life and gained strength from surviving what was difficult in her past. The rare people who did offer this different option were usually, then, added to her list of "perpetrators" who did not understand her, could not help her, and did not love her when it fact it was out of love that a different possible view of the world was offered.  She believed herself to be a victim at every turn, and could not begin to see other options for how she might walk through this life.  She was never able to move into a different stance, and I believe fully that her therapist caused more harm than good in this woman's life.     

    Another person I know similarly decided that he was a failure in life, could not function normally, was "broken" and could not heal.  This person, too, found a therapist who would support this self-view.  This therapist even used the phrases, "deeply wounded," and "broken" to describe her client.  The individual with this self opinion had functioned in life: he graduated from an esteemed university with honors, was invited to be part of significant and important conferences, held down good jobs, and was even at one point written up in the local paper as someone who was extremely gifted and capable.  But he chose to entrench in a self-image that said he was incapable. As a result of that self-definition, he chose to no longer be functional.  He decided that his life wounded him too deeply for him to do even the basic behaviors necessary to live in this world. As a result of this self-image, he became the person he decided he was.  He became the incapable, broken person he believed himself to be. And like the professional victim above, he blamed those around him, with the support of his therapist, for his "brokenness." Honestly, it was heart-wrenching to watch.

    When my family was going through our terrible trauma, I went to seek help from a spiritual director.  In contrast to the two therapists mentioned above, this person told me that there are three responses to trauma: we can become victims, we can become survivors, or we can thrive through our traumas to emerge better and more whole.  This spiritual director told me that he saw me as that third kind: the kind who was a thriver, growing stronger and clearer about who I am in the world and how I choose to be because of my traumas, not in spite of them.  He told me that being a thriver did not mean I would always be happy: tears, and genuinely going through the trauma with all the emotions attached of anger, grief, even despair at times, were part of emerging as a thriver.  But making the choice to go on, to continue, to do what needed to be done and to do it as well as I could, to focus on who I chose to be and what I chose to do rather than what had been done to me, but more, to look for the good, to find things each and every day to celebrate and to be grateful for: to seek out help for myself from appropriate people in appropriate ways that would allow me to continue to care for the others around me (like my family and congregation) who were also in pain: that these were the choices of a thriver.  He said this with such conviction, and emphasized repeatedly my strength and my thriver choices to seek out and live in gratitude, that I became who he said I was.  I leaned into being a thriver, someone who has grown from my traumas, rather than being hemmed in or restricted by them, someone who claims my own decisions in life rather than living in a place of blaming others for my situation.  And I continue to be a person who looks for the good, who chooses gratitude for the gifts of each day, and who works hard to grow and be better tomorrow than I am today.  I choose to be a thriver because someone whom I trusted told me that was who I was.  Again, this does not mean I don't have feelings.  To the contrary, I continue to believe we have to go through the traumas, through the feelings, through the hard times to come out the other side in a healthy way.  But I choose to do that, knowing that on the other end I will still be a thriver who can function and who makes the decision to live fully and with gratitude and joy.

        While this may sound like an anti-therapist rant, it is not.  There are very good therapists out there, and I believe most of us can benefit from a good therapeutic relationship at one point or another or even throughout our lives.  This is also not an "avoid going into your past or the things that have hurt you" proclamation.  There is great power in looking at our pasts to see what has shaped us and what struggles we still need to work through in order to emerge as thrivers.  

    What I am trying to say is two things: 

    First, do not let your past determine who you are.  Work it through so that you can move forward into being who you are called to be. Deal with those early hurts and then let go of the stuck blame game which will not help you to be the person you are meant to be.  It will also not help you to have positive and loving relationships if you are continually blaming those around you.  You are adults.  You make the choices you need to make for your lives.  Step into those choices and take responsibility for your lives from this moment forward.

    Secondly and more importantly: we need to be careful and intentional about who we decide we are, and how we let others tell us who we are.  Who we believe ourselves to be greatly impacts who we become.  Our self-image, then, can be either a gift or a curse, depending on what you tell yourself and what you allow others to tell you about who you are.  

    Let me be the first, then, to tell each of you my readers: You are loved. You are beautiful. You are STRONG to have made it this far and to live each and every day in a challenging and difficult world.  You have been gifted with every breath you take, with bodies that, even if they have some challenges, still carry you through each day, with friends and family who love you, with the seasons as they come and go, with the birds that sing and the gardens around us, with music and dance and books and art.  All of this has been given to YOU because you are worthy to receive it all.  You are kind, you are smart.  You are loving and generous. You are capable.  Most of all, you get to have a hand in deciding who you will be as you step forward into the rest of your lives.  Take that opportunity.  THRIVE!

Hurry! Hurry! Offer ends soon!

     We are bombarded with ads that come to our houses, to our emails, through our televisions, on the websites we visit, and even through our phones via texts, apps and phone calls.  There is always an urgency in these ads: "Hurry, hurry!  Offer ends soon!" 

    We know why they do it this way: if they can create a sense of urgency, people are more likely to purchase whatever it is before their rational brain can kick in and point out that we don't actually need whatever it is they are selling, and often we don't even want it.  There is danger from companies that want to sell more! more! more! in giving people time for them to think about what they are doing.  There is also the fallacy that if you buy something on sale that you are saving money.  You are still buying whatever it is.  You are still paying money for that item.  Unless it is something you were looking to buy and planning to buy that you then found on sale, you have not saved money.  You have spent money on something you probably didn't need.  Most of the items people buy in this way might be used once, maybe, but then end up in the drawer or garage and are not used again.    

    While some of us can see through these sales tactics, other people also use this same method to trick us into believing certain things or reacting quickly in other ways.  If they use the scare tactic of, "If you don't do this NOW, then these bad things will happen!" it effectively turns off people's ability to think and make rational, logical decisions.  Propaganda ads use this urgency to convince you that dire situations will follow if you don't vote such a way, for example.  

    Scammers also use this urgency effectively.  Those phone calls from "the IRS" that insist you better head down to your local target and buy copious amounts of gift cards or else you will be arrested within an hour affectively scare people into failing to consider how likely the whole scenario really is.  I was reading an article about the latest scams, one of which is to use AI to impersonate loved ones' voices who urgently ask for money to be wired in order to keep them out of jail or to save them in some other way.  Scams using Zelle or Venmo have also become common, and again, one thing they all have in common is the urgency with which they push you to respond.  

    I've seen this happen so often that at this point, anything that is presented to me with urgency I receive with great suspicion.  

    But today I found myself wondering if this manufactured urgency is part of the mental health crisis in this country.  That urgency creates anxiety, and if that anxiety cannot be addressed or attended to, it can lead to serious depression. We run around feeling that we have to move fast, fast, fast to get things done.  We make decisions based on urgency and how quickly we can move so that we have time for other things that we will also zoom through as fast as we possibly can.  We aren't living in the moment anymore.  We aren't taking time to enjoy the day.  Everything feels urgent.  

    My challenges for all of us today:

    First, be very wary of the urgencies others bring to you.  The faster others are pushing for something to be done, perhaps the slower we should move to respond so that we genuinely have time to think things through with our non-anxious, rational brain.  

    Second, and again, this is for all of us: I want to encourage us all to breathe!  This life is for living, for enjoying, and that means we need to take time to be in each moment and savor what is good, what is beautiful, to see where God is, where the good is, where love is, without letting our brains run to what must be done next.  

     Finally, try not to let the urgency of others become a contagious way to functioning in the world.  We change the culture by acting differently in the world.  For today, I encourage you to find the moments of quiet, of peace, to rest in those moments and to slow down.  What must be done will be done.  What does not need to be done in this moment or today can wait.  Maybe we will find it didn't really need to be done at all!      

How We Communicate... or Lessons in Vulnerability

    I've been thinking about what we communicate without intending to do so... what we say with our words, our tones, our facial expressions that leave people with impressions other than what we'd hoped or planned.  

    I see the difficulty in communicating that happens between other people all the time.  Most of the time when people are offended or upset, it is usually a misunderstanding of what the other has said: there has been a miscommunication.  To say it another way, what was intended to be communicated was not what was actually communicated.  This is why one of the counseling tools I've often used when couples come into my office is just to ask each person to tell the other what they have heard the other say.  Most of the time, it is not what the first person was trying to communicate.  This is more true when people are having conflict.  What you hear when you are already upset tends to be skewed in the direction of your upset.  We give each other more grace when we are happy in a relationship of any kind and therefore if we aren't sure what the other is communicating, we are more likely to ask.  We are also more likely to assume the best intentions of the other when things are going well.  

    But lately as I've thought about this, I've been taking it to a more personal place.  What I mean is that it can be difficult to see what it is we are communicating.  And if others aren't clear with us about what they are seeing or hearing, we often don't realize what we are communicating that was unintentional or even the opposite of what we are trying to say.

    Recently I was told that there is a disconnect between the way I write and the way I present myself at my job.  If I understood the person correctly, in my job I come across as competent and capable, but in my writing I come across as broken and hurting. I have to be honest and say this was surprising to me: VERY surprising to me. I write about what I have experienced as a way to connect life lessons to real stories.  I write about what I am experiencing as a way to connect with others' stories and experiences so that we can all grow together.  I always end my posts with hope, with lessons, with the gifts of each day.  But that is not what is coming across.    

    So, let me be clear: I am not "hurting" or "broken" except in the ways that all humans are.  We all have challenges or traumas we work on, deal with, and grow from. And while I have been choosing to share those, it is from a place of strength that I can be vulnerable and open in my sharing. I have lived through many things that have been incredibly difficult.  Whatever I experience now cannot possibly compare to those things, and I came through those times with strength and courage.  I do the same now: I am resilient and I know how to take care of myself.  I also know where there are resources if I need more help and I'm not afraid to ask for help.  Again I share my own journey as a way to help others learn the lessons and find the hope that I find.  I am not, ever, asking to be fixed.  Nor am I asking for sympathy or pity.  I am certainly not wanting people to be concerned or to feel they have to walk on eggshells around me. 

    Henri Nouwen talks about there being, in general, two kinds of pastors.  The traditional pastor is distant, removed, and appears, as apparently I do in person, as competent and capable.  The other is a "wounded healer": someone who shows their vulnerability and wounds as a way to be more accessible, but also as a way of communicating that they, too, are human and understand the pain that those around us experience. I have always tried to be transparent because I cannot relate to the distant traditional pastor and therefore have never wanted to be that. 

    Nonetheless, I learned early in my ministry not to use my personal stories in sermons unless they were resolved.  I use stories of past injury or past struggle as a way to present that honest but human "wounded healer."  I learned early on that I cannot share current stories or people will feel they need to step in, to fix me, to "help" me.  That's not an appropriate role for parishioners, so I don't share current struggles in sermons unless, again, they are resolved.  But I felt that, if I could make it clear in my blog that I was not asking for help and that I found hope and goodness and lessons for the journey in the daily struggles, that I could be more current in my writing, present a more authentic "wounded healer" who is on the journey of life as you all are.  

    I realize now though, that I can't, though I feel very sad about this.  Like the lesson I learned early on about not preaching current struggles since they would be misunderstood and distracting, I hear now that there are parishioners who read my blog in this public place and when they are about my current challenges, that my words are, again, often misunderstood and distracting for people; causing worry rather than inviting people to reflect on their own lives and to see both the lessons and the hopes that their own circumstances and situations share in common with my own life walk.  

    I am writing about this here for two reasons: first, to say that I will work to omit current challenges from my blog.  But secondly, I would like to challenge those who read my blog, have read it, continue to read it, to do two things.  First, I encourage you to read more closely.  Again, my intention is to share in a way that we all understand we walk this journey called "life" together, that there are lessons we all learn on the way, and there are experiences we can relate to our own lives in ways that help us to reflect and grow as well.  And that leads me to my second request: rather than focusing on me when you read my writings, I invite you to take it into a place of self-reflection to see where you, too, have similar experiences and how my own words might touch your own lives.  Most of the feedback or comments I receive on my blog have been from those who do exactly that.  And for that I am grateful.  

    As I always do, then, I choose to end this blog with the lessons learned and the hope I carry forward.  The lesson for me is one of paying more attention to the needs of those with whom I interact: in this case, the needs of my parishioners who read my blog.  The lesson for my readers, I hope, is also one of paying more attention: reading more carefully for the lessons, the gifts and the hopes in what they read, and applying it to their own lives.  The hope, then, is that we can grow together, as the hope for me always is.  That we can learn a way to be, even in this blog space, that is not upsetting or hurtful, but is still honest and vulnerable.  For again, the greatest strength is not found in protective walls, but rather in honest vulnerability.   

Good News?

     I receive daily a good news journal in my email.  I started doing it for the congregation so that Sunday mornings I could offer a moment for hope.  This has become, for me at least, a very important part of our Sunday morning service: taking a minute to lift up a reason to be hopeful.  It is frankly difficult to hold on to hope when we look at the increasing violence in our world; the senseless wars; the racism, sexism, heterosexism and more that are on the rise, world-wide; the unconditional support for people who do horrible, inhumane things while villainizing those who are already living on the edge because of unjust and broken systems; the anger and rage we encounter in greater and greater amounts; and the HEAT that is just a glimpse of what is to come in the next few years along with the fear that we will not have a planet we can live on for much longer because of human refusal to, very simply, care.  I can no longer listen to the "regular" news because I find it so distressing and so lacking in hope.

    So I signed up to receive this good news every day.  The e-zine I subscribe to usually lists 4-5 stories each day of good news, of humans being kind, of communities doing good work, of reasons to be hopeful.

    But I have to be honest, most of them are hopeful because they are countering a situation that is dire and lacking in kindness.  

    For example, today I read a story about how Jon Bon Jovi saved a woman from committing suicide who was about to jump off a bridge.  While the story did not detail why she wanted to commit suicide, the very fact that there are so many people in that state of wanting to take their own lives is deeply distressing.  But more to the point: the episode was caught on video.  And what surprised me was not the fact that Jon Bon Jovi stopped to talk to her, but that many people walked by her as she is hanging on the far side of the fence on the bridge with very clear intentions to jump, WITHOUT stopping!  Yay for Jon Bon Jovi, but really!  Shouldn't it be the exception that people don't stop for each other, don't step up, don't get involved to help?  Why is it the exception when someone does?

    The second story was about a woman who is taking old tennis balls and making furniture out of them.  She's doing this because most tennis balls end up in landfills where it takes at least 400 years to decompose!  Well, again, I'm thrilled she is doing something.  But why do we continue to use up the land (dare I say rape the land??!) of its resources to create huge, unusable garbage dumps with materials that cannot be reused or recycled?!  Why are humans so greedy that we feel the land is ours to use and abuse without care for future generations?  Why aren't more people demanding that we use renewable and recyclable resources instead of non-renewable resources that will run out and which, in the meantime, harm our planet, and often do damage to the people tasked with the jobs of extracting those materials from the earth?

    Today's third story was about a native tribe, the Chumash, who for the last 40 years have been trying to get legal protection of some important tribal land here in CA.  The good news was that now they are being heard, though it will still take more time to implement what they are requesting, which is protection of land.  But again, 40 years?!  And shouldn't we all want protection of our lands?

    The last story today was about another billionaire choosing to give $1million to a school.  He is donating less than 1% of his annual income, but it makes the news because it is so much in terms of the mighty dollar.  What if all these billionaires actually tithed, giving the ten percent that many give to help others?  What could be done then?  But no, those with more become greedier so that the small percentages they do give are seen as extraordinary and make the news.

    These stories, all of them, were just what came to my inbox today.  And as I'm writing this, I'm aware, again, that all of these are supposed to be good news, and yet each one of them said something very negative about humanity as a whole that I find very discouraging.  

    As always, my job is to pass on hope.  So what can I say about this that does offer hope?  It is hopeful that some of us can see how wrong the situations are in the first place.  Until we see what is wrong, until we can name it, there is no chance for change.  There is hope that there are a few people stepping out to make a difference.  Just as greed, anger and evil seem to be contagious, goodness and kindness is absolutely contagious.  So, as more people choose to do what is right, we can trust that their kindness will inspire others to also see the bigger picture and respond with care and kindness.

    From a faith perspective, we also put our hope in a God who can take our small efforts for good and grow them into bigger changes for the world.  We are called to trust that even when we cannot see the good we have done, that God can use it and grow it over time.  

    Perhaps these small pieces of hope don't feel like enough.  If that is the case I challenge each of you who are reading this to be the hope.  To be the kindness and to step into places of making a difference that we are each called to do.  Give more, even while knowing that it won't be reported to some good news magazine.  Care more, even while recognizing that your acts of reaching out to those who are struggling may not be caught on video.  Love more and serve more, even while seeing that you may start as the exception, but that as we continue to do the work of loving and serving, others will be inspired by our examples to do the same.

    We are the hope.  And we can trust that this is, indeed, good news!

More Gardening Lessons

     I continue to be amazed by what my garden has to teach me.  Here are some of the lessons I've been especially focused on recently:

    1.  When I am pulling weeds, if I tug them too hard, they simply break off.  When I am gentle at pulling out each weed, I am often able to pull long and intact roots along with the weed, insuring that at least that particular weed will not grow back. I think the same is true in life.  When we try to fight or force solutions, tugging out our problems or issues, it might look for a time like we have solved the issue.  But we've just broken it off at the soil.  The root of the problem remains and as a result, it will come back, grow back, often stronger and with more force since the roots have had time to continue to grow and strengthen.  I think the current divisions in our country, the strong stance of opposition that each side takes reflects this intractability of the issues.  We have not worked with each other, we have not tried to dig down to understand the different values and beliefs that form each other's viewpoints and choices.  As a result, the roots of each side have continued to grow and develop, unbeknownst to the other side.  The fights, the issues, might be cut off at the base for a time.  But the issues themselves will come back unless there is a deeper dig into what is causing our divide, truly, underneath what we see.  Until we listen, are gentle with each other, and dig down deep into understanding, there can be no movement, no healing, and no solutions to this divide.

    2.  On Saturday, I was sheet mulching under a large tree in our front yard.  I stood up too fast and hit my head, hard, on the tree. Several things had happened: first I was so focused on what was right in front of me that I forgot to take in the bigger picture of what was around me.  I forgot to notice the tree and that failure to see ended up causing me pain. This too is mirrored in our culture.  We get caught up in the little things and sometimes forget to see the big picture.  When that happens, we can again, head down paths that may suit us or serve us for a time, but will not serve us in the long run.  Our need for instant gratification, for wealth, for comfort has caused us to become blind to the damage we are doing to other cultures and to the earth, for example. We stop seeing. We stop feeling.  And in the end, it may kill us all.  

    3. The second thing I learned from the tree incident was that I need to avoid pushing so hard that I become too tired to function properly.  I wanted to get the sheet mulching done.  I'm not comfortable having a load of mulch in my driveway and wanted to move it all to where it would finally be in its place.  But after a couple hours of loading mulch into the wheelbarrow, moving it and then scooping it out and spreading it, I was so tired that I fell twice before finally hitting my head on the tree.  I had been trying to get the mulching done too quickly and that insistence on continuing to work when it was obvious that I was spent just slowed me down in the end.  It also meant that my gardening project stopped being fun and life-giving for me that day.  It became something I was dreading and resenting.  And I'm now angry at the tree that I have loved, despite knowing that actually it was my own fault. Yes, there is value in pushing ourselves farther. But recognizing when we've reached the limit is also important.  We won't reach the finish line if we fall off the track completely in utter exhaustion.  Knowing when to pause, to stop, to rest: these are lessons I should have learned during sabbatical, but apparently need to learn again in a different, and hopefully deeper way. 

    4.  I mentioned this before, but some plants live and others don't.  I'm not ultimately in charge of that.  I can do my best to help them grow, but in the end, all I can do is what is in front of me to do.  The results of my work, the results of the plants growing or dying: that is not in my control. The results are up to so many things that are beyond my control: the plants themselves, the weather, the soil, God. I have to give up the reigns of power when it comes to what thrives in the garden and what does not.  And this applies to all I do.  I can only do what is in front of me to be done.  If it leads to something positive in the world, great.  But even if it doesn't, that's all I can do.  The results are not mine to dictate.

    5.  Gardens take time, and they take intention.  Now that I'm back to working full time, finding the space needed to garden is harder.  Also, as the days get shorter, the options of going out in the early morning hours or the late evening hours are diminishing.  I am needing to be intentional about the things that matter to me.  And this applies not only to my garden but to other areas of my life.  David and I have had a hard time finding time together lately.  My day off is Friday.  His is Saturday. During the week, my evenings are packed with meetings more often than not.  At this point we have to schedule time together, and that needs to be okay.  Marking off those times for us, and marking off those times for my gardening: these are things I need to do.  As I had mentioned in my "lessons from sabbatical", I also need to be intentional about making time for friends, for walking, and for writing.  This is the time of life I am in.  I cannot afford to just hope that time will be available for what I need and want to do.  I have to work at it, and that has to be okay.  If I want my garden to be beautiful, I need to find the time that it needs to become so and to stay so.  I have to prioritize, and be serious in that commitment.

    I love what my garden is teaching me.  And I am working hard to internalize these important life lessons.

Parenting Part III

     The last two days I've written about the parenting challenges I've been having with my son and my youngest child.  Now we come to the eldest.  At 24, Jasmyn (they/them pronouns) really is an adult.  Sort of. Regardless of their status, I find Jasmyn the hardest to write about and yet for the last couple years Jasmyn has been the one I've been most concerned about.  They are the hardest to write about because it is not as easy to write about parenting them without betraying personal information that they would not be comfortable with my sharing in this format.  With Aislynn, I wrote about a situation she is in that I have found challenging.  With Jonah, I wrote about our relationship from my perspective.  But with Jasmyn?  My concerns about Jasmyn have much more to do with personal factors.  So I will do my best not to be "revealing" while still sharing the challenges of being a parent to my first child.

     Jasmyn is currently living at home.  They are attending an on-line graduate school.  That is their "work" for now and it made sense, then, for them to save money by living at home while attending school.  But this has been challenging for both of us.  

    In many ways parenting adults is harder than parenting kids in that we can step in when our kids are young, we can "take control" when we see that things are not right, we can insist on doing things a certain way.  When they are adults, it is not as easy.  I still weigh in, I can't help but do so.  However, that is as far as I can take it, especially with my 24-year-old. So when they make decisions that I think are unhealthy, even hurtful for themselves or others, I can say my piece but then I have to let it go.  That is hard. In some ways we've worked this through. The first year Jasmyn was home was really tough.  I had a hard time letting go of expectations for their involvement in certain activities that I felt were family activities and family commitments, for example.  But we did work that through.  I've been able to adjust my expectations so that now, if they decide to accompany us on something that I previously would have said was a "family event" I am very pleasantly surprised.  If they don't, that's their choice. It took work on my part to step back, but I've done it and so that part feels better.  

    But there remain these areas where I have a much harder time letting alone.  I have wishes for all of my children that I don't think are outrageous: I want them to interact with their world in ways that are positive and helpful.  I want them to find work that is, ideally, meaningful, but even if it isn't meaningful, I hope that it will be satisfying work for them.  I want them to have dreams and visions and to work towards those ends. I want them to have friends and positive, healthy relationships with others. I want them to have a spirituality that is life-giving and meaningful to them. I want them to pursue positive and healthy activities with their free time. But more than all of these, or maybe as a sum of all of these, what I really hope for them is that they are functional and have joy in their lives.  

    What happens, then, when they aren't?  When all of my hopes for them are not being fulfilled and when I cannot help them because they don't want my help, don't want to hear what I have to say, don't want to take my advice, don't want my interference, and don't want to do any of the things that I "know" would help?  I've tried so many different approaches: sharing articles, my own struggles, stories I've heard. Mostly I've just been direct.  But I can't fix this.  I cannot make my adult children make better choices, and I cannot help fix things or improve situations that they don't want me to fix.  And wow, is it hard to let that go!

    As I've said many times before, their pain is my pain.  When they hurt, I hurt.  So my job here is two-fold.  First, I need to learn to be okay with hurting for my kids and not trying to fix it.  I need to learn to sit in the pain and not try to move it out for my own sake.  

    Secondly, I have to learn how to love from a distance: to figure out how to live my own life and how to find my own sense of wholeness and joy, even when I see them struggling.  This second one is really tough.  

    There is a song that I first heard a few year ago now that used to remind me of my son, but now reminds me of number one child.  It's called "little flower" and some of the words that move me so deeply include: 

                                                            "I won't walk beside you. 

I won't take you home.  

But I'll hold your heart from a distance 

as all your blossoms come and go....

And when you wake all alone in the darkness

As the autumn winds are blowing cold

You might hear a voice in the distance

A love that never let you go"

    Jasmyn is with me, but in so many ways, Jasmyn is no longer with me.  This first child who used to be my shadow, my mirror, and in many ways my best friend, has gone in a different direction, even while home.  Jasmyn still lets me in, but it is very different now: there is a distance, a way of keeping me separate and apart, that is difficult when I want their life to be better, more full, happier and I am no longer allowed to help.  To love from a distance, while physically close together, is a new experience for me.  And it calls from me everything I have to give as a person and as a parent.     

    Parenting is both the most rewarding and the hardest work I've ever done.  I think I may be closer to the kids than I otherwise might have been because of the traumas we've experienced together.  But this particular stage of parenting, this one of letting go of each of them in different ways and to different degrees calls me to pull from resources deep within to learn to love from that distance. That kind of love feels even deeper than when I loved them up close as young children.  It is a more independent, respectful, and equal love.  But it also requires an ability to trust and to be okay with a distance that is new for me. 

    As I said when I wrote about Jonah, that first day, I imagine God must feel the same as we ebb and flow in our relationships with our creator-parent.