Your Current Balance

The last two weekends my wife and I have led retreats based on our Living Compass program on both coasts of our country. The first weekend we were in Westport, Connecticut, an hour outside of New York City. This past weekend we were in two cities in California--Sacramento and Sutter Creek. As different as these three communities are from one another, the people at each of the retreats all reported that they were looking for the same thing in their lives--a greater sense of balance. This tells me a couple of things, both good and bad. The bad news is that maintaining a sense of balance in our lives is becoming more of challenge in our world today. The good news though is that people are more aware of the consequences of living chronically out of balance and are becoming more intentional about making the necessary choices that will bring greater balance and wellness to their lives.

I was thinking about balance when I stopped by my local bank this morning to make a deposit. When I finished the transaction the teller gave me my receipt which conveniently showed me my "current balance." Because I had just made a deposit, my current balance had increased. As I begin to make withdrawals of course my current balance will decline. This same basic accounting principle applies to my current sense of life balance and personal wellness. If I have been making more deposits than withdrawals in my relationships with family and friends, then my current balance in that area of my life will be increasing. If I have been making more withdrawals than deposits in regards to my physical wellness, my current balance in that area of my life will be decreasing. If that trend continues I will become overdrawn and will most likely become sick. At that point I will have to start making some deposits regarding my physical wellness in order to restore my health.

The current balance in terms of my emotional and spiritual balance works the same way. The ratio of deposits and withdrawals I have been making will determine whether I am experiencing health or "dis-ease" in these areas of my life. A chronic feeling of tiredness or exhaustion is usually a warning sign that I have been making more withdrawals than deposits in the areas of my spiritual and/or emotional wellness.

Your bank is the best place to turn to find out the current balance of our checking account. Who can you turn to help you find out your current balance in terms of wellness and wholeness? The best person to turn to for this is you! Take a few minutes--maybe even right now-- to reflect on your state of physical, spiritual, emotional and relational wellness. Listen to what your body, heart, soul, and relationships are telling you. Where do you find yourself in or out of balance right now? In what areas of your life have you been making more withdrawals than deposits? Decide on a few specific deposits you can begin making right now to correct any current imbalances.

Maintaining our wellness and wholeness is as simple as checking our current balance on a regular basis and then changing the ratio of deposits to withdrawals in the areas that need rebalancing. It is as simple as that and as hard as that, as we learned from our recent retreat experiences. The rewards are so worth the effort though, not just for ourselves, but for everyone else in our lives.

So next time you are making a deposit at the bank, stop and reflect on what other kinds of deposits you can make to enhance your current balance and wellness in your life. And besides, don't we all want to avoid the discomfort and embarrassment of becoming overdrawn?

Haunted Houses

Haunted houses spring up all across the country this time of year as a way of celebrating Halloween.  Every year our local newspaper provides a guide to the local haunted houses complete with a rating system that rates each house for its fright factor.  Instead of the star system that is used by the movie critic, the haunted houses receive ratings on a scale of one to five ghosts.  This system helps parents and children alike to choose the house that matches their appetite for fright. When it comes to our emotional wellness, one of the many important influences that effects our well-being is the kind of home in which we grew up.   Some of us were blessed to grow up in homes with a stable emotional atmosphere.  Others of us grew up in homes that were haunted with high degrees of emotional turmoil; homes that may have been haunted with verbal abuse, untreated mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, or domestic violence.

There are obvious and significant differences between the haunted houses of Halloween and haunted houses of emotional turmoil.  The former are not real and the latter are all too real.  A person can choose whether they want to enter a Halloween haunted house, but no one gets to choose the home and family he or she enters at birth.   The good news though is that we can choose to leave behind the effects of a home that was haunted with emotional dis-ease and turmoil.

It is one thing to physically leave our childhood homes, it is quite another to leave them emotionally and spiritually.  A person who grew up in a critical, shame-based home may not be aware of how much those ghosts of shame and criticism influence the way they treat themselves and others.   A person who grew up in a house haunted with anger, alcoholism or other drugs will have to be quite intentional to prevent those ghosts from residing in their own emotional houses as adults.

So if you are aware of some ghosts that are haunting your emotional, spiritual or relational house today, what can you do?  Or in the words of a movie that is always popular this time of year, “Who ya gonna call?”  The answer, as we know from the movie, is “Ghostbusters!”

Here are a few brief ghost busting tips to help with your emotional wellness: First, and most importantly, if you are struggling with some ghosts from your past, break through any denial that you may have and face the issues directly.  You cannot work to rid yourself of the ghosts that may live in your life if you do not first acknowledge that they are there.

Let others in and ask for help as you work to leave these ghosts behind.  Seek support from friends, family members, a counselor, a support group and your faith community.

Seek help from God or your Higher Power.  Spiritual support is invaluable as you discover that there is a higher Love that can cast out the fear of any ghosts from your past.

Be patient and gentle with yourself.  Celebrate the fact that you are on a journey of healing and wholeness and that real change and growth takes time.

Happy Halloween everyone.  And remember, if you do find yourself entering a haunted house of any kind, never go alone.  Be sure to surround yourself with others to help keep you safe.

What Cancer Cannot Do

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  All of us know someone whose life has been touched by this disease.  There are currently 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States, with nearly 200,000 new diagnoses of breast cancer each year, including 2,000 men who are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. Breast cancer survivors need many kinds of support.  In addition to the best medical care, they need strong emotional and spiritual support from their families, friends, colleagues and faith communities.  To that end, there have been many recent studies that confrim the importance of spirituality in supporting the whole-person wellness of people with breast cancer.

A 2006 study that was published in The Oncology Nursing Forum (Vol. 33, No 1) backs up the belief that a strong spiritual life is a great support when a person has cancer.  The study assessed both the patients' sense of “a clear meaning in life” and whether or not they had a regular practice of praying.  Here are some of the conclusions from this study:

Having meaning in life and practicing prayer are associated with greater psychological well-being during cancer.

• Meaning in life mediates the effects of breast cancer on well-being.
• Aspects of spirituality, such as meaning in life and prayer, lessen the impact of  breast cancer.

These results support what I have witnessed first hand in my thirty years of ministry.  Just as a tree with a strong root system can better weather a strong storm, a person with a strong spiritual life is better able to survive the storm of breast cancer or any other adversity.  While the best time to develop a strong spiritual root system is long before a storm arrives, I have seen many people deepen their spiritual roots right in the middle of a storm in their lives.

If you know someone whose life has been touched by breast cancer, take this annual reminder to reach out and support them and maybe share with them the poem below  . It came to my to attention when it was shared by a friend at the time of my father's diagnosis of cancer earlier this year.  It is a great reminder that cancer does not have the final word!  These words remind us that cancer can not take away much of what is precious in life and that our spirits can be well when our bodies are not.

What Cancer Cannot Do (Author Unknown)

Cancer is so limited... It cannot cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot eat away peace. It cannot destroy confidence. It cannot kill friendship. It cannot shut out memories. It cannot silence courage. It cannot reduce eternal life. It cannot quench the Spirit.

Let's Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

The Milwaukee Brewers have a decisive game five in the National League Divisional Series later today. Fortunately for them, this game will happen right here in Milwaukee on their home field, Miller Park. This is fortunate because the Brewers have the best home field winning percentage of any team in baseball this year. Counting the playoffs, the Brewers are 59-24 at home, which means they have won seventy-one percent of their home games. Remarkable! While there are probably many factors that contribute to a home field advantage, clearly the support of forty thousand cheering fans gives the home team a tremendous boost. As the fans sing so clearly during the seventh inning stretch of each game, "we'll root, root, root for the home team!" With this type of support twenty-six of the thirty teams in Major League Baseball this year had better records at home than on the road, showing clearly that rooting for the home team really does make a difference. This is a column about wellness though, not about baseball, so what does this home field advantage phenomenon have to do with personal and family wellness? Quite simply, what I think we can learn from this information is what a positive difference it makes when we have people rooting for us! Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and other professional athletes are not the only ones who benefit from the enthusiastic support of a home crowd! Fans at a ball game know what their role is and they do it with reckless abandon as you can see when watching any of the playoff games. They root, root, root for the home team. What if we could adopt this same role as friends, spouses, parents, families, colleagues and faith communities? Who better to root for one another than friends, families and congregations? Life can be challenging for all of us and so we certainly can all benefit from a strong home field advantage. Is there someone in your life that needs a little extra rooting for right now? Do you know someone who is going through a hard time, someone who is unemployed, or dealing with a loss or illness, or just a challenging time in their life? Why not do something to let them know you are rooting for them? Why not become their biggest fan and root for them so that they know that they are not alone in their struggles? I don't know if the Brewers will win later today or not. Rooting for the home team does not guarantee a winning outcome. It will, however, inspire the best possible efforts by the team. That is why rooting for one another is so important, whether in baseball, or in life.

The Universal Wisdom of the Twelve Steps-Part 2

This is the second of a two part column about the universal wisdom of the Twelve Steps from Alcoholics Anonymous.   I want to thank  all of you who took time to write in response to last week's column and to share your own stories about your recovery or the recovery of someone you love.  You are truly an inspiration to us all!! I am writing these two columns about the Twelve Steps because September is National Recovery Month, a time when we celebrate those already in recovery, as well as a time to reach out to those who are considering walking that path

in their own lives.  While the Twelve Steps form the foundation for most recovery programs, they contain a spiritual and psychological wisdom that applies to everyone.

Last week I discussed the first six steps of the Twelve Steps.  In this column I will discuss steps seven through twelve.

Steps seven through nine of the Twelve Steps are:

7.  Humbly asked God (as we understand God) to remove our shortcomings.

8.  Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make

amends to them all.

9.  Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do

so would injure them or others.

These three steps build on two of the themes of the first six steps.  The first theme is the importance of taking an honest inventory of the mistakes we have made and the hurt we have caused people we love.  The second theme is that we need a Power higher than ourselves to help us reorient our lives.  Notice that the first word of step seven is humbly.  The Twelve Steps are an exercise in humility, which is an essential characteristic of all spiritual and emotional wellness.

Steps eight and nine remind us that when we are truly ready to grow and change we need to be willing to be make that change and growth specific and personal.   For example, if a person says, “I've hurt a few people in my life and I feel bad about that,” this will not usually lead to much growth or healing.  In the spirit of steps eight and nine of the Twelve Steps, if this same person specifically names someone they have hurt and then takes the additional steps of making amends with that person, healing and growth are bound to occur.  Some would describe these steps as not just talking the talk, but walking the talk.

The final three steps of the Twelve Steps focus on what a person needs to commit to doing to stay on the road of recovery.

10. Continue to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly

admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with

God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us

and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to

carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our

affairs.

Step ten speaks to the ongoing need for personal inventory and reflection.  The practice of regular and honest self-reflection is one of the most essential practices for maintaing emotional, spiritual and relational wellness.  Step eleven follows from step ten because maintaining conscious contact with God also helps us to maintain the practice of regular self-reflection.

One of the fruits of wellness is that when we are practicing the steps that maintain our personal wellness, we are in a place to spread that wellness to others.  Step twelve of the Twelve Steps invites people in recovery to do just that, to offer their message of recovery and wellness to others who are in need of hearing it.

The final words of the twelfth step are “to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

These words confirm the point I have wanted to make in these two columns that the Twelve Steps provide great wisdom and guidance to help us order all areas of our lives.

The word recovery means “to regain consciousness, to regain health.”  The Twelve Steps can help us to do both in our lives.   In honor of it being National Recovery Month I want to thank the millions of men and women who show us the real power and truth of the Twelve Steps by living them out in their lives one day at a time.