How To Be a Perfect Parent

 I told myself that I would do things differently.

The truth is, I did. Poorly at first, but then I learned better, got help and did better. 

But what I’ve learned is this: 

I can do the best I can as a parent, but it will never be good enough that my kids won’t have problems. 

I could never say a negative word about my body or anybody else's and my daughter still might have body image issues. I can be a gentle parent and my kids might still struggle with pleasing people and perfectionism. 

There are no perfect parents, and there are no perfect kids. There are no perfect relationships. There is conflict in all relationships, and there are flaws in all people. 

Regardless of my performance as a parent, my kids will still be sinners who need a Savior. And I am not that Savior. 

What I’ve learned about parenting, and relationships in general, is that the quality of the relationship is dependent on the quality of the repair that takes place when something goes wrong. 

How do I make amends when I make a mistake? How do I react when I realize I’m doing something wrong or I’ve hurt my kids in some way? What do I do when I feel negatively toward my husband? When I feel bitterness creep in? Do I blame other people, or take responsibility for my part? Do I share how I feel and what I need or do I wait for them to read my mind? 

Show them how to make amends with God, themselves and other people. It's like teaching a hungry man to fish . . . they will be fed for life.

Church Hurt

I sat in shocked silence while I listened to someone I thought I could trust relay a private conversation I had just had with them, to another person.

I was sitting in my living room. They walked outside to the front porch and made the call. I still don't know if they know I heard what they said, but I did. 

I was hurting, and trying to process what was happening. I turned to someone I thought I could trust to process through it. They shared what I said with the person that some of the processing had been about. 

I wasn't even allowed to think through things in a safe environment. When I didn't immediately choose the side they thought I should, they didn't give me the basic rights of relationships. I felt hurt on top of the pain I was already going through, and it made their side of the argument seem less right and clear. It muddied the water further, which made it even harder to discern what was right.

This isn't the worst thing that has happened to me in the church. It's the thing I feel comfortable sharing about.

While I believe that there is a degree of truth with the above graphic. I think it dismisses the responsibility that we have to make amends, and it allows people who run over other people with their verbal/mental car in the name of Jesus to run rampant and unchecked. 

I have sat and listened while people show contempt for others who have left the church, but I know the circumstances from the other side. 

People did hurtful and wrong things in the name of Jesus. They ran over people with their car in the name of Jesus and then show contempt and a lack of compassion when the people they ran over and others who saw it happen don't come back to have a relationship with them. 

Being right doesn't give anyone the right to act wrongly. 

I wonder how many people who were "right" are going to have to give an account to Jesus for their actions when they were "right"?

Let's love people and make amends instead of shaming people for how they reacted to their pain. Expressing remorse and gentleness can go a long way to healing and restoration. 

I have received two apologies from people about ways they had hurt me because they thought they were right. When the Bible says that love covers a multitude of sins, it ain't lying. I never expected to get any apologies, but these two apologies made it so much easier for me to forgive all the other people. It works, and it should be done.

Scrupulosity

I counted on the belief that being baptized would solve the problem. It didn’t. Before I got home from church on the night I submitted to baptism the first time, the overwhelming sense that I was unworthy of God’s love and so full of sin that I was too rotten to save engulfed me like a title wave of quicksand. Over the years, intrusive thoughts that I was unsaved because of my inability to perform perfectly to a standard that I wasn’t quite sure of led to cycles of depression, hopelessness, giving up, deciding to retry, depression, hopelessness, and on and on and on. I was a compulsive confession-maker in my mid-teens. I remember feeling the compulsion and wracking my brain to think of what to say in the confession. I often resorted to “I haven’t been a good example” because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. In my late teens, I gave up. It felt useless and hopeless to try. I couldn’t gain any ground. I resorted to seeking comfort where I could find it. I did things that a person caught in the clutches of satan would do. Desiring reconciliation, I resubmitted to baptism at twenty. Consolation eluded me entirely. I’ve had two periods of peace that each lasted about two years. The last five years have been the hardest of my life. My lows got lower than I thought were possible. All of these intrusive thoughts led to a dark period of doubt, endless rumination, and trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. Words have so much power. Reading this one and learning what it means felt like a plug I didn’t know existed was pulled from my spirit, and all of the anxiety drained. I felt seen for the first time. Scrupulosity. It’s under the umbrella of obsessive-compulsive disorder but seems to affect religious people particularly. My story with this word is way too long to tell in one essay, but it’s been life-changing. Realizing that all of these terrible thoughts aren't true, that there is a name for this, that I'm not the only one, and that there is an established protocol to help is an answer to prayer. The level of gratefulness I feel is indescribable.

Value: Perception Vs. Reality

She asked the question. 

I gave an answer that I hadn’t rehearsed and didn’t know I could give. 

I was experiencing flow. The sense that energy spills from my spirit without incurring a debt against the stores that exist there. My heart, mind and soul were in communion and produced a result that none could give on their own. I was truly and entirely myself. 

But the space and people that had supported and assisted in the laying of the foundation, the ones I thought were safe, became unsafe. The ground encompassing my foundation began to quake. It could no longer support me. So I hefted that foundation and everything laid upon it to another location. One that wasn’t prepared for the relocation. 

What had felt beautiful and whole, began to feel haunted and flawed. Like a restaurant that thrives, so the owners open a second one in another location and it…flops. Like regional fare that is passed over outside of the place it originates from. 

I’ve felt lost and unseen. Stuck inside my “shell”. 

I’ve inspected the foundation and house I had built on top of it over and over. Was it what I thought it was? Was I mistaken? Was it an illusion? Did I see a castle where a haunted house existed? Was my foundation flawed and the structure built upon it shabby? 

I think the answers are: it was what I thought it was. I was not mistaken. It wasn’t an illusion. I saw a house, not a castle and it isn’t haunted. My foundation wasn’t flawed and the structure isn’t shabby. 

I just can’t allow other people's opinions and perception of my usefulness to define the reality of those things. Because they don’t.

Sometimes people just don’t have experience with something so they don’t recognize what they have. Maybe the people who first discovered coal didn’t know its purpose. Maybe it took a while for cotton to reach its full potential as a useful material. It took a while for Cincinnati chili to grow on me. Now I look forward to a visit to Skyline. 

It’s just taking a while for people to recognize the design and value of my foundation, structure and the amenities and resources they provide. Or maybe the people in the place where I moved won't ever find me valuable or useful. That also doesn't change it, and it doesn't mean they are bad. Not everything resonates with every place or person. There are no Skyline Chili's in Texas, and that's okay.

Grief: Not Belonging

 Desperate, my heart grasped at a mirage of belonging. My soul embodied a perpetual and pervasive sense that I didn’t belong. 

Contortion, compliance and attention seeking by any means became my modus operandi. 

I embraced, embedded and seared shame and blame like a tattoo on my heart. Interpreted the lack of belonging as a judgment of my worth. 

Belonging eluded me, I settled for attention and tolerance.

When I finally realized that attention does not equal belonging I withdrew, consumed by grief. If I don’t belong, and no amount of attention will fill the void - what am I left with?

Acceptance. 

I don’t belong, but it isn’t anyone’s fault. Not theirs. Not mine. I just . . . don’t belong. They aren’t my people and I’m not theirs. And that’s okay. 

Love can still exist, a relationship can be salvaged - minus the striving for belonging, the grief when I don’t, and the shame of wondering what’s wrong with me. 

Cultivating Fruit

 I ask them to complete a task . . . like to clean the kitchen. When I get home, I see that they haven’t mopped the floor. In my head, mopping the floor is a part of cleaning the kitchen, so when I asked my child to clean the kitchen…I assumed this would be done. But my kids don’t live in my head and I had never communicated my exact and complete definition of what a clean kitchen is. 

Being the mother of grown children along with being the grown child of parents is a strange experience. Having the benefit of the two perspectives has given me many opportunities for thought. 

It is very common for people to communicate incompletely. It’s an epidemic, and the cause of a lot of resentment and conflict in relationships. 

We are in our own heads, and we forget that other people are not. Since we have the benefit of understanding where every thought is rooted and where it leads, it can be easy to communicate part of the intended message while leaving gaps that the other person then fills in for themselves. This leaves room for miscommunication and conflict. 

I think this happens generally with love. A lot of the things I’ve done have been motivated by love for my children and from a desire to promote their welfare. But all of the things I’ve done to promote their welfare has left me stressed out, overstimulated and tired many times. So I snap at them when they ask me a question or I yell at them to clean their room. All of the love that provoked all the work I did is drowned out by their feeling unloved because I was unkind. 

The Bible says that people will know me by my fruit. Am I cultivating the fruit I intend to cultivate? Or am I cultivating something to its detriment? Am I communicating to the people that I love that I love them? Or am I so busy in doing things to promote their welfare that I end up communicating that they are annoying or too much? 

Questions to Ask When You Can't Stop Repeating the Same Pattern

It felt like being compelled. Like a force greater than myself took over my body and performed actions I didn't want to take against my will. 

The truth was, while I didn't want to perform the actions, I didn't seem to be able to stop them. 

Changing the patterns of my own behavior has taken a lot of work, but making progress is worth the effort. Having a moment when I realize I can't remember the last time I did the unwanted behavior feels amazing. 

When I am faced with a habit or behavior that I want to change, I start by asking myself some questions:

1. How do I feel right before and during the behavior? Am I tired? frustrated? overstimulated? hungry? afraid? disappointed? embarrassed? 

2. When was the first time I remember performing the habit or behavior? What was I feeling? What was the context? 

3. What triggered this habit the first time? 

4. How can I interrupt the feelings and thoughts that lead up to the unwanted behavior? Do I need to remove myself physically from the environment? Do I need to eat something? Take a nap? Take some deep breaths? Go for a walk?

5. What need am I trying to meet by doing this habit or behavior? Am I feeling abandoned and doing this habit or behavior to get attention or to lash out at the person I feel abandoned by? Do I feel disappointed by the other person and I am trying to punish them for disappointing me? Do I feel vulnerable and I am trying to posture to hide it? Am I tired and trying to hurry other individuals to get the job done quicker so I can rest?

6. What boundaries do I need to put into place so I can interrupt the cycle of feelings, thoughts and behaviors that lead to the habit I am trying to change? Do I need to do the job alone? Do I need to set parameters for the hours I can work? Do I need to leave the room and do some deep breathing? What do you need to do in order to stop the cycle of the unwanted behavior?

Discerning the why behind the behavior empowers me to interrupt the pattern and insert new stimuli so my outcome can change. 

Guilt v Shame

Shame on you!

I spoke the words in order to provoke my children to heart change. I thought shame was an essential parenting tool. 

The truth is, I was telling my children they were bad. NOT that their behavior was bad, THEY were bad. I had confused guilt with shame. 

There is a difference. 

 

Guilt is focused on the behavior. Shame is focused on me. According to Brene Brown, "guilt says "I did something wrong", shame says "I am wrong"'. 

Believing in an intelligent and loving Creator, when I first heard this I wondered what the original mechanism for shame was. After reading through Genesis over and over, I am convinced that shame was never an emotion we were intended to experience. We experience it because of "the fall". 

I think that the difference in shame and guilt made the difference in the outcomes of Judas and Peter. Peter felt the godly sorrow that leads to repentance - guilt. He did something wrong, felt the conviction of guilt - "I did something wrong" and took action to correct it. Judas felt the worldly sorrow that leads to death - shame. He was wrong. 

Shame is extremely harmful because it leads people to isolate. Isolation breeds more shame and more shame breeds more isolation. The more isolated we become, the less likely we will find healing.  Isolation leads us to believe we are the only one, or the worst one. Neither of those are true. 

Shame is an effective tool of Satan. It's similar to when Satan quoted scripture to Jesus. It sounded ALMOST right, but it wasn't. Shame is the same way. Satan has convinced a lot of people that guilt and shame are the same and good. They aren't. Guilt cultivates spiritual life, shame cultivates death. They both cultivate, but they cultivate opposite things. 

Healing is found in community, in bringing things out into the light. In confession. In gentleness. 

Respond to guilt, but put shame in it's place. 

If I feel the need to hide in response to a mistake - it's shame. If I feel the need to confess and ask for forgiveness - it's guilt.

I would rather my kids confess and ask for forgiveness than hide their mistake, wouldn't you?

Communication Techniques that Perpetuate Conflict

Butterflies flittered in my stomach as he called the meeting to order. 

I knew he was going to confront them. 

But as I listened intently as he addressed them, he wasn't saying what he said he planned to say. He was saying something adjacent. 

This was the beginning of a major conflict that triggered a massive crisis for me. 

More than once I have been a confidante for people on more than one side of the same argument. Each experience has had it's own set of circumstances, but the roots and the actions that perpetuate the argument are always the same. 

What is at the root of every conflict I've heard more than one side of?

1. Incomplete communication. One person makes a statement that is the tip of the iceberg of what they actually mean. Maybe out of a desire to avoid conflict, they say just enough to convince themselves that they have communicated what they needed to, but not enough so that the other party understands exactly what they are saying. It's like two ships passing in the night. 

If I don't communicate the entire iceberg, I cannot expect anyone else to accurately discern the whole iceberg. They may fill-in a completely different iceberg, or fail to understand that there is a bigger iceberg. 

It's understandable. Conflict is uncomfortable. I lose my nerve when I'm face to face with the person on the other side of the conversation. But anything less than exactly what I need to communicate is a failure to communicate and will perpetuate conflict.

2. Passive or passive aggressive communication. Communicating passively leaves the other parties to fill in blanks with inaccurate information. So both parties THINK they know what has been communicated but actually, both parties have very different understandings because they have filled in the blanks differently. 

This also feeds resentment and contempt, both of which are detrimental to communication and successful relationships.

3. Withdrawal. Withdrawal leads to less communication. Then the involved parties project what they assume are the thoughts and feelings of the other people onto those other people. This is followed by even less communication. This leads to the objectification of the other people involved, which provokes people to vilify each other. This objectification and vilification provides the grounds that are needed to dismiss the people on the other side as immoral or otherwise unworthy of consideration. 

What I take away from this is this:

1. Communicate courageously, accurately and completely. Resist the urge to hint at what I want the other person to know. Say everything I need the other person to know with kindness and completeness. 

2. Be assertive, but compassionate. Say what I need to say openly, accurately and kindly. 

3. Lean in, and get curious. When I am tempted to withdraw, lean in. Spend more time getting to know the thoughts and feelings of the other person. Resist the urge to back off or withdraw. Learn to accept people for who they are and get comfortable with allowing people to disagree with me without moralizing it or vilifying them. 

How to Eliminate Drama from Relationships

 

1. Communicate clearly - write contracts. 

When agreeing to fulfill a specific role for someone I know, I should always write a contract that specifies the expectations of both parties. 

This can feel awkward because it isn't common. You know what IS common? Drama. Drama is common and stressful. Do I want the awkwardness of writing and signing a contract, or the stress of ongoing drama? If I want to mitigate drama, I should write contracts that lay out expectations and boundaries that will define the relationship/role. 

For instance, if I agree to help my friend decorate her home, I should write a contract that lists clearly and explicitly what my role will be and what I expect from everyone else involved. Even things that seem obvious to me should be written down. If I don't want to receive texts about decor after 8pm, I should specify that in the contract. The role of each person directly involved in the decorating should be clearly explained in painstaking detail. Deadlines should be clearly communicated. 

As things evolve, those new details should be written down and shared with all parties. 

If I have a phone call where we decide that someone needs to call a plumber - whose job is that? when does that need to be completed? who will communicate with the person the task is assigned to? who is the contact point if there is a problem with this task? 

If decisions need to be made - who needs to make them? and what is the deadline? who do the decisions need to be communicated to?

After the conversation or phone call, I should follow up the conversation with a text or email or other written communication that summarizes the conversation - including explicitly listing the job of each person, what the deadline is, who will communicate with the assigned party, and how we will follow up if there is a problem. In addition, I should request text, email or written confirmation of the information from the person I had the conversation with. Then, this should be added to the canon of the original contract. 

This reduces the chances of miscommunication and different understandings of who is responsible and what the responsibilities are. 

2. Own my part. Did I miscommunicate? Did I gossip? Was my ego triggered, resulting in me acting in pride? Did I make an assumption? Did I communicate with the wrong person? Did I expect someone to read my mind? Did I project something onto the other person? Did I fail to keep a commitment? Was I defensive? Was I arrogant? Was I unforgiving? Did I speak harshly? 

Drama isn't perpetuated by one person or one side of the argument. It takes two to tango. It takes at least two sides to perpetuate drama. 

3. The buck stops with me. When drama comes my way through gossip, complaining, etc., it doesn't get passed along. I don't repeat what person A said about person B to person B or anyone else. Also, when person A tells me something about person B, I stop them and tell them to talk to person B about the problem. 

4. Get comfortable with uncomfortable conversations. When I first become aware of conflict I should go directly to the person the conflict involves and speak to them about it. I shouldn't give myself time to ruminate about it, but rather go and deal with it immediately. 

Talking to someone about a conflict we are having is vulnerable and can be uncomfortable, but take into consideration the alternative. How does it feel to overhear someone talking about you behind your back? How does it feel to be told someone else said something unkind about you? How does it feel to find out that the person I said something unkind about actually heard what I said? Is that better than taking the initiative to deal with the conflict immediately, as soon as it appears? 

5. Approach conflict as allies who have a problem to solve, rather than opponents trying to get our way. 

6. Ask questions. If I am confused by someone else's behavior or it seems to be odd or inconsistent from what I would expect, ask them for clarification as soon as possible. Don't assume, project or spend time ruminating about what their behavior could mean. Have a conversation immediately. Do not text. Speak in person if possible, call if it's not.

7. Spend equal amounts of time listening to all parties in a conflict. Don't take one parties word for what has been done or said. Ask questions, clarify. Set the record straight. Don't allow what one person says to change the way I think of or interact with someone else. 

8. If I haven't said something explicitly, don't assume that someone else already knows it. Even if I have said it explicitly, I need to get comfortable with repeating myself as many times as needed. 

9. If a text or written communication seems to convey conflict or negative feelings, stop texting and call or have an in-person meeting. 

10. When conflict has been resolved, stop talking about it. If you can't stop thinking and talking about it,  talk to someone you trust to tell you the truth. If not being able to let go of negative feelings is a pattern, you may need to address this with a professional or with a person who can walk you through repenting of unforgiveness and resentment. 

11. Allow people to make their own decisions about themselves. Don't exclude someone from an event, conversation or opportunity to help you because you think they won't be able to participate or don't want to participate. Allow them to make their own decisions about their ability, desire and boundaries. It's not my job to protect other people or make decisions for them. Ere on the side of inclusion. 

Purpose in the Darkness

My eyes scream when I flip on the light switch, but I'm not taking the chance of one of the bathroom snake stories I've heard happening to me. 

So I turn the light on. The unpleasant eye strain is worth the peace of mind of being able to examine the bathroom for snakes. 

In a lot of instances, light is a positive thing. Light illuminates, it helps me to see. 

But the truth is, the darkness plays a pivotal role in our wellbeing as well. Light at night disrupts our bodies processes that lead to our bodies functioning optimally. It disrupts melatonin production, which makes our sleep not as restful, which disrupts the tasks our bodies do while we are asleep. 

Darkness, in the right context, is right and good. It's like gangrene. In my childbearing years my midwife explained to me that gangrene helps a babies umbilical cord to fall off quickly. If I get gangrene at any other time, in any other part of my body it has devastating effects. 

I've come to recognize the pivotal role that my Dark Night of the Soul has played in my spiritual and mental wellbeing. 

I believe the Dark Night provided me the means and fortitude to take the rest I needed. To differentiate from codependent relationships. To learn to trust myself. To take responsibility for myself. To exist without striving. To tread spiritual water. To be consistent for the sake of being consistent. 

There was no snake in the darkness, and no gangrene to consume me. It was darkness that provided me with rest and revitalization. That empowered restoration, concentration and clear thinking. 

To read the next installment in this series, click here.