X-posted from my buzznet photoblog.
This is my right ear. I could have used my left, but no matter. This randomly happens to be my right ear. It’s upside down because I used my cameraphone–long story. Suffice it to say that this is my right ear.
In a sense it’s just one little body part. In another it kind of represents an influence in my life that has shaped me perhaps more than I have realized over the years. It by no means, though, defines me. (more…)
I have heard people talk about feeling something so intensely that it’s almost as if their heart just can’t take it–as if it would burst. I find myself, today, feeling just that way. Ok, ok, I am completely willing to concede that the Midrin may have something to do with it. My husband just left with the kids, and my eyes completely welled up at the beauty of our family and what it has become in recent months/years. There have been times when I was certain that I was staring divorce #2 in the face, times when I was sure that Rob and Katy would never work through their personality differences and penchant for conflict. There have been times when there have been bruised feelings all around, and we were sure that we’d never find our feet again. Here we are, though, living in this phenomenal state of love and respect. The chaos and the conflict have gone form the norm to the rare anomaly. As time goes on, we continue to tease out different triggers and problem issues. We talk about them with frank and loving honesty, cull out the actual needs being expressed, and consciously put in place new mechanisms for meeting those needs.
It is amazing how much of one’s upbringing one has to deconstruct, examine, remodel, and replace in order for it to work in their adult life. Sure I sound all “touchy feely” here, talking about feelings and honesty, but there’s nothing wussy or lame about it. Being really honest in a heated moment, being able to talk until you figure what’s really driving you is about the hardest, most courageous thing you can do. We all treat our inner motivations like skeletons, never to be talked of outside the closet, when really, they are simply a communication of our needs. It’s basic self-respect, in the end, to look critically at one’s motivations, see them for what needs they are conveying, and find the most direct, honest, and healthy way to meet those needs. Of course, family is a near-constant juggling act of balancing everyone’s needs against the available resources. Given that those resources are limited, paring down peripheral drains tagged to various needs that manifest in unexamined base motivations helps those resources go further.
That’s where we are now. So many things have been looked at, talked about, pared down. Needs are being met. No one is going emotionally hungry. There are even days when our resources exceed our needs. Emotionally in the black–that’s cool. So often, in our society, we are told to look for someone who ‘completes’ us–someone whose strengths make up for our weaknesses. While it is important to have complimentary skill sets, I worry that, all to often, this truth gets twisted inside out such that we think that our partner can somehow make up for our own emotional lack. Be it a lack of security, a lack of self-esteem, a lack of self-control, or otherwise. The fact is that every partner in every couple needs to be whole unto themself. No one can make up for another’s personal lack. It’s a myth. You must each be whole unto yourself in order for a marriage to truly thrive (as opposed to just survive). I don’t think many, if any–certainly not enough–of us were told that side of the story growing up.
If we are fractured, or incomplete, in any way, then our ability to relate to others, to give them what they deserve from us in the way of healthy, honest, trustable interaction, is fundamentally hampered. This is especially true in regard to parenting. I recommend the book “Parenting from the Inside Out” for further reading on this idea. The basic gist of it is that we have to take care of ourselves before we can be able to actually take care of anyone else. It’s the same in a marriage. It’s not about what you can get from it, it’s about what you can bring to the table.
I didn’t know all, or frankly, any of this before my first marriage, and even now, I am discovering it almost three years into my second. It is here, though, and it is real, and the amount of emotional freedom that such knowledge has afforded is not anything I can convey in typewritten words. Our family has become something beautiful, a work of art in itself, a study in honesty, variations on a theme of respect, and a masterpiece in the deepst shades of love.
It could be said that the gospel accounts for the change, but, to be honest, we have been well on this path for a year and half already. The gospel has simply taken what we’d already worked on so hard ourselves, and given it the depth of celestial perspective. It has taken our existing joy and taken it up to a new level. What amazes me further is that this facility of love spills beyond our nuclear family. Our ward family, which I maintain quite heartily is the ‘teh best,’ has just been amazing. The spirit of service that is alive in the LDS church, the idea that charity is not alms, but the pure love of Christ deepens every interaction between members to an expression of that love, of that kinship, of the common family to which we all belong. I have been blessed to have been served by my fellow brothers and sisters for various reasons recently, and I am again and again, over and over, reminded of that heritage. They are like family. I know that not all wards are like ours, and I am so very grateful that this is where we live. This ward is what it’s supposed to be everywhere, and we are so blessed to get to be part of it. Love in action. Love in deed. Love in word. As if my heart were not full enough.
Even now, sitting here blogging away at 9:00 in the morning, my friend Sabrina just stopped by to bring me a phone number that I needed. My son is at Lynell’s house, so that I can continue to recover. Donna and Michael stopped by last night to bring us some cookies and get a quick ‘kid fix’. Duncan and his son came this weekend after the windstorm had uprooted a tree to help us cut it up and ended up removing a huge old Alaskan spruce snag that was becoming dangerous. All of these interactions, aside from their obvious service, serve to enrich our own human experience. It is the people, in life, that matter, and we are so blessed to have such good ones. So many friendships are forming and deepening, and, because of what I’ve learned in my marriage and family over the last few years, these are the best, the truest, the potentially deepest friendships that I’ve ever been able to have. I wish I could share it all in a few easy paragraphs, but I just don’t think I can.
I’ve become a bit of an interpersonal idealist, dealing with everyone from a place of humility, honesty, and chairty. Of course, there are associations in my life, where these ideals are not, for whatever reason, shared. I still haven’t figured out yet how to deal with those. I find it ironic, though, that most people, because they are so concerned with their pride, with ‘saving face’ will tell lies to cover up for mistakes. How is it that the lie does not count against them in their minds? It’s as if looking like a bigshot has become confused with integrity. There is no honor in hollow, dishonest pride puffing, and yet, that is actually the cultural norm in interactions these days. It does not have to be. Our family has found our way out of that, and the awful negative feedback cycles that such warped values engender. I am amazed at the beauty that is here, where we are, in a place of honesty and unhampered love, no doubt, but I am further amazed by the prevailing values along these lines. How did they become the standard? All the foundations of the earth are out of course. No kidding.
I am so grateful that our family has become an oasis of love, honesty, and respect in the midst of this crazy world.
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