Practicing Love

In his latest book (The Great Spiritual Migration: How The World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking A Better Way To Be Christian), Brian McLaren suggests that we need to learn the practical skills necessary to love well, starting with those closest to us. When those skills are practiced at home they can then be put to use out in the world with others.

His is an extensive list, and to my mind, there isn’t one that isn’t worth the effort. And, because the list is so expansive it might feel a little daunting to you as it does to me, so rather than take it all on at once, pick a few that beckon to you. Or maybe better yet, ask those near and dear to you which ones they would love to see you practice, which btw is practicing skills 7, 17, and 18.

1. Common Courtesies

2. Gratitude

3. Admitting Weaknesses & Failures

4. Self-Reporting Emotions

5. Expressing Hurt & Disappointment

6. Confronting & Forgiving

7. Asking For Help

8. Differing Graciously

9. Surfacing & Negotiating Competing Desires

10. Taking The First Step To Resolve Conflict

11. Upholding Wise Boundaries

12. Saying Yes & No

13. Winning & Losing Graciously

14. Creating Win-Win Outcomes

15. Speaking Truth In Love

16. Speaking Truth To Power

17. Asking Good Questions

18. Requesting Feedback

19. Expressing Affection

20. Opening One’s Heart

21. Giving Gifts

22. Seeking Wise Counsel

What better gift to give to ourselves, and to those we love this holiday season, than to diligently, humbly, and intentionally practice the skills of love. Love is, after all, the gift that keeps on giving.

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A Holiday Permission Slip

This Thanksgiving was one for the books.

We weathered tag-team illness, a midnight trip to the ER, free range grandkids and grand-dogs, emotional highs, lows and everything in between, more people than beds, and, and a Thanksgiving unlike anything we had planned. Perhaps the description that comes the closest is from Tom’s prayer of gratitude for the “Glorious Confusion”. It was all that and a bag of chips. As challenging as it was at times, we all hung together, and loved the Thanksgiving stuffing out of each other.

However, opening my eyes at the end of the weekend in the early morning darkness, it dawned on me that another holiday is just around the corner. In that moment all I wanted to do was hunker down deeper into the covers and wake up after Christmas. The more I thought about it and all the expectations that come with the season, the harder it was to breathe. That was, until this morning, when my sister’s text arrived on my phone.

’I’m giving myself permission to not care about Christmas for the time being.

Reading her words, a tiny bit of space opened up inside and I began to feel like I could catch my breath. Remember when your parents wrote you a permission slip to miss school? What if we all wrote out permission slips to skip the kind of holiday we think we should have, and give ourselves permission to have the one that we could have?

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End In Sight

A common theme with family, friends, and clients is the importance of ending whatever it is well. A conversation, a job, a relationship, and of course, a year. What better time to to consider what it means to end well than the last month of the year. For many reasons it seems that 2020 will call upon each of us to bring the best of what we have to give to the year before us. Ending this year well will set us up to do just that.

What will it mean for you to end 2019 well, so that you can bring the best of what you have to give to the year ahead? Whatever it is, today is the time to begin.

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Better Questions

Lately we’ve had a lot of conversation in our family about how to ask better questions when someone we love is in need of our support.

Question: Can I do anything for you?

Better Question: How can I be most helpful to you right now?

Question: What’s wrong?

Better Question: Can you tell me what’s going on for you?

Question: Are you ok?

Better question: How are you doing right now?

The question is, what are the better questions you can ask those you love when they are in need of support? The only way to find out is to ask.

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December 1, 2019

Time to embrace the last month of this year with gratitude and grace.

Let it be so.

The Wrong Question

When things aren’t going well for us and we find ourselves in some sort of emotional meltdown, being asked the wrong question only sends us further down the emotional rabbit hole from which we are trying to escape. What we need in our moments of emotional madness, when we are flooded with very real emotions that we can’t yet explain, we simply need you to be with us. We need your presence not your questions. Your support not your problem solving skills.

It can be so tempting to ask What is wrong?.

The truth of the matter is, nothing is wrong, it is simply real.

A No-Nonsense Thanksgiving

nonsense: words that have no meaning or make no sense

When it comes to describing our Thanksgiving this year, the words that have no meaning or make no sense are words like perfect, elegant, formal, fancy, flawless, tidy, or impressive. No one who will gather around our table has the capacity to pull off any of those words. Collectively we are worn out, adjusting to big changes, loving, raising and growing little humans, moving into new homes, having real conversations about real things, holding one another accountable for and loving each other in spite of ”our stuff”. It simply feels like life is as real as real can get.

When it comes to our Thanksgiving this year, the only words that make any sense are words like messy, simple, casual, imperfect, crazy, loud, emotional, and authentic. Thankfully we are finding ways to make sure that it is well-seasoned with ample amounts of love, grace, and laughter, because if we are hungry for nothing else, we are hungry for those.

I guess you could call it a No-Nonsense Thanksgiving, which might just be the very best kind.

Welcome Home

Whenever anyone in our family moves into a new house, the first order of business is to set up the bed, complete with sheets, pillows, comforter, and pillows in pillow shams. There is a good chance that for some time to come, the rest of the house will be in a complete shambles of partially unpacked boxes, packing paper, bubble wrap, and pizza boxes.

The task of moving in and making a house into a home is daunting at best, and there is a need to momentarily catch a glimpse of a light at the end of the move-in tunnel. A quick glance into the bedroom of the made bed is that glimpse. It is a reminder that you are home.

The Best Laid Plans

There’s planning for how things will work out, and then there’s how they actually do.

It isn’t that planning doesn’t matter. It truly does. However, there are so many variables and so many unknowns, we also need to learn how to roll with the punches.

Today was a great day to practice rolling with the punches that came my way.

And you know what?

Tomorrow probably will be too.

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Shedding Our Skin

There is a good chance that most of us have stumbled upon an old snake skin. It looks like the snake simply slithered out of the old skin, leaving it in one piece, a remnant of life before the new skin appeared. One of the reasons snakes shed their skin is to make room for further growth. The shedding of their skin is necessary because while their body continues to grow, their skin does not, and in order to accommodate the growth that has occurred, new skin is required.

Have you ever had the experience of slipping into your old skin? The one that served you once, but no longer does? While it might feel tight and a bit constrictive, there is a familiarity about it that, for the moment, feels comforting. We know that old skin. We remember that old skin. We even miss that old skin because becoming more of who we are meant to be means risking being in the world in new ways that are anything but familiar.

We humans do the same thing. We shed our skins too, just in smaller increments. A reminder that the skin held us together in the past is too small to contain us now.

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