Momisms

Two years ago, in honor of Mother's Day,  I wrote my Weekly Words of Wellness column about “momisms.”  This week several people asked me if I would please write about momisms again this year and several readers even sent me some of their favorite words of wisdom that they heard from their moms through the years.  I have included several of these new additions here.  My friend and author, Ann Stratton, wrote a similar column about her mom's favorite sayings, which I highly recommend.  You can find her column at http://aystratton.com. A momism is any of a wide variety of pithy, wise statements of advice and warning that all mothers seem to have stored in their collective memories, available to be pulled out and used at just the right moment.  Below you will find some of the all time favorite momisms, followed by a brief reflection on how each of these sayings offer us some insight into the deeper principles about personal and family wellness that our mothers were in fact teaching us--even if they didn't know it at the time!  The momism appears in quotes, followed by the expanded personal/family wellness principle being taught, in italics.

• “If you keep making faces like that (or crossing your eyes), one of these days they are just going to stay like that!”  Over time, the little choices we make turn into habits, which then become very hard to break or unlearn.  We create the patterns in our lives, and then the patterns create us.

• “For a friend in need, say a prayer and roast a chicken.”  Our spirituality is expressed well in our prayers, but it is expressed equally well by providing concrete, practical support for a friend in need.

• “If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all!”  Words create worlds.  Our words have the power to build up or break down the people we love.

• “Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you!”  Stay connected to those you love, even when you disagree--or especially when you disagree.  

• “How do you know you don't like it when you haven't even tasted it?!”  Be open to trying new things, to tasting new experiences for yourself and in your relationships.  

• “If everyone else jumped off cliff, would you have to do it to?”  Be an individual who lives life from the “inside out,” aligned with your core values and beliefs, not overly influenced by the dominant culture.

• “I don't care who started it, I want it stopped, now!”  It's not about being “right” when you are in conflict with someone, it's about staying in right relationship with them.

• “Don't use that tone with me!”  Words said with a harsh tone will escalate a conflict.  The same words, said with a soft tone, will maximize our chances of resolving a conflict.  Say what you mean.  Mean what you say.  But don't say it mean.

• “I don't know is not an answer!”  Choosing to “hide” by pretending not to know what you are really thinking or feeling will always lead to more problems later on.\

• “I see everything because I have eyes in the back of my head!  (Or I hear everything because I have ‘mother hearing').  We may think we can keep secrets from those we are closest to, but we cannot.  The truth always comes out.

• “You know, money doesn't grow on trees!”  Our well being, and the well being of our relationships, must be earned over time through the day to day small choices we make.

• “No matter what you do, I will always be your Mother, and I will always love you.”  Unconditional love is the single most powerful determinant of personal and family wellness.

A special thanks to our mothers for teaching us all that we needed to know to be well!

And to all the women in our lives, who bless us with their love and guidance, Happy Mother's Day. ***Do you have a favorite momism that I left out?  Please feel free to email them to me at scott@livingcompass.org.

Heightened Awareness

I am writing this week's column from Salt Lake City, Utah.  Our daughter will be starting graduate school here at the University of Utah and my wife and I drove with her from Milwaukee this past week to help her get settled. A good old fashioned road trip is always good for the soul. Along the way, we stopped for a few days of hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was our first visit to the area and while we knew we would only be able to scratch the surface of all that it had to offer, we were excited to get a taste of this rugged, majestic park.   As it turned out though, my wife and daughter did get a nice taste of the park, while I, on the other had, got a nice taste of altitude sickness.

I did not handle this well.  I kept thinking to myself, “We will only be here for a short amount of time and I simply don't have time for this.”  This, as it turned out, was exactly the problem.  We had driven from an altitude of a few thousand feet above sea level to 9,250 feet in just a few hours. What I now have learned about altitude sickness is that it is essential to give one's body time to gradually acclimate to the lower oxygen levels of higher altitudes, it takes time.  We had made the change in altitude far too quickly for my body to adapt, and because we only had two days to spend the in the park, there was not enough time for me to adjust and to enjoy a long hike.  I did, however,  push through the severe headaches, nausea and shortness of breath caused by altitude sickness to experience a few short hikes, for which I am grateful. But, it wasn't easy.

While things didn't go exactly as planned, I did learn yet again some very important lessons about change.  First, I learned that we are all affected by change differently.  My wife and daughter were not at all affected by the change in altitude.  They had no problem going on longer hikes while I sat on the porch of our hotel room holding my aching head. Remembering that we all acclimate to change at different rates is an important lesson for relationships and for families in particular.  The same change--a move, a job loss, a child leaving home, retirement, an illness--can have a very different effect on each member within a family.  One family member may be thriving and energized by the change while another is experiencing “nausea and headaches”.

This same principle applies to changes within organizations as well.  Restructuring within an organization or a congregation, for example, will have very different effects on people.  Some people will adapt effortlessly and be energized by the change.  Others will take much longer to adapt to the change and their initial discomfort may be mistakenly judged as resistance and refusal to change.

I was just beginning to feel a little better in the high Rockies when it was time to move on.  I have no doubt that if had been able to stay longer I would have eventually become fully acclimated to the conditions.  This was again, another important lesson.  Acclimation to change happens in real time, not in the time frames we tend to create in our heads about how we wish change would occur.

Perhaps you or someone you love is dealing with a sudden change and perhaps that change is accompanied by some uncomfortable feelings.   I hope my recent discomfort due to sudden change will help you have a little more empathy and patience for them or for yourself.  Giving ourselves and the people we love the time they need to acclimate to sudden change will in the end help everyone breathe a little easier.

The Spirituality of Imperfection

Phil Humber pitched a perfect game for the Chicago White Sox six days ago. For those of you who are not baseball fans, a perfect game is when a pitcher retires 27 straight batters without allowing any hits, walks, or errors. To put this achievement in perspective, there have been 300,000--400,000 opportunities for a pitcher to pitch a perfect game over the history of Major League Baseball, and this was just the 21st time this feat as been accomplished. The perfect game was six days ago. Last night, Humber returned to the mound for his first start since his perfect game. Needless to say there was great excitement about this moment. Humber had become an overnight sensation and people were excited to see how he would follow up his perfect game. No one of course expected another perfect game, but I'm also pretty sure that no one expected what ended up happening last night in his outing against the Boston Red Sox. Humber gave up nine earned runs in five innings pitched. If you don't know baseball, it's hard to imagine two such great extremes in a pitcher's performance within the same week, going from a perfect game to giving up nine earned runs in just over half a game.

This is what I love about baseball! It is a game that regularly reminds us that we are all imperfect. After all, a player can have a Hall of Fame career having only hit the ball thirty percent of the time. That means the player is "imperfect" seventy percent of the time. And even the best players can make errors on routine plays from time to time. Now that's something I can relate to!

There is a wonderful book called, "The Spirituality of Imperfection," by Ernest Kurtz. Here is a favorite quote from this book: "Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to 'blame' for our errors-- neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us first to see, and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the very core of our human be-ing."

What Phil Humber went through this week in is journey from perfection to imperfection is something to which we can all relate. One day we are loving and gracious to our partner and the next day we are irritable. One day we are patient with our children's behavior and may even find some humor in it, the next day we are annoyed with the very same behavior. One day we are in the "flow" at work--focussed and productive. The next day we are distracted and hardly get anything done. One day we practice great habits as we strengthen our physical or spiritual wellness. The next day we are lazy and don't feel like practicing our physical or spiritual disciplines at all.

Accepting that fact that imperfection is a natural part of our lives is not to bless it, or use this an excuse to not try and improve. Major league baseball players are always trying to improve their performance and consistency, and so are we. Accepting our imperfection allows us to stop being so hard on ourselves. It allows us to have a sense of grace and forgiveness about our "errors" so that we can move on to the next "game" and keep doing our best. Accepting our imperfection also helps us to realize that we are all in this together and that we need to make room for each other's imperfections as well. If you are having trouble accepting your own imperfection right now, you might want to get in touch with Phil Humber--I'm sure he could relate to your experience.

Baseball, like life, really is the perfect, imperfect game!

You Can't Hurry Love

One of the things my wife and I really enjoy doing as marriage and family therapists is offering classes to people of all ages, both single and coupled about the keys to building and sustaining healthy relationships.    We especially love to offer them to teens and young adults so that they can recognize and use  effective relationship skills as they begin to experiment with their first romantic relationships. When the movie Titanic was first released in 1997, my wife and I  began incorporating the movie into our relationship skills classes.  The movie was described then, and continues to be described today, as “one of the greatest love stories ever told.”  Now that the movie has been re-released we are grateful that we can once again incorporate the movie into our discussions.

What may surprise you is the way in which we use the movie Titanic in our relationship classes.  Rather than seeing it is a great love story, we argue instead that it represents everything that is wrong with the messages that popular culture presents about love.  Referring to the relationship between the fictional couple Jack and Rose, the young couple in the movie, as “love,” is misleading and dangerous.  These two people  met on the ship and knew each other for three or four days.  Granted, those few days were full of incredible passion and excitement, but a relationship that lasts a few days can hardly meet the standard of authentic, mature love.  Jack and Rose really barely knew each other, and if Jack had lived they would have eventually faced many challenges that would have had to be addressed for the relationship to continue and flourish.   Now if this or any movie actually told the story of a couple who spent several years addressing  their differences and in the process build a strong foundation for their future, that would indeed demonstrate  a great love story.  Just as three great at bats don't define a Hall of Fame career for a baseball player, three days of passion don't define a great love story.

The confusing message that popular culture gives about love is that love is primarily a feeling, and that it is especially associated with the intoxicating feeling that accompanies the very first stages of falling in love.  In our relationship classes we teach that real, mature love is just as much a decision as it is a feeling and it takes time.  Love is an act of the will, an expression of our deepest core values and beliefs, as well as being a feeling.  We teach that feelings ebb and flow in any love relationship, and that what sustains love through hard times is not feelings, but core values and commitment.

Perhaps the greatest words ever written about love appear in the Bible.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13).

Note that this description is not a a list of feelings, but rather a list of decisions that a person who loves makes day in and day out.  The feelings of love will then flow from the commitment to live out these values and traits over time in a relationship.

So if you go and see Titanic I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.  My wife and I certainly did when we saw the original fifteen years ago. It makes for a great movie and at the same time provides some great teachable moments about what authentic love is and what it is not.

New Buds

In Wisconsin this year, as with many other areas of the country, spring has come  much earlier than usual, with record temperatures in the upper 70's recorded in early to mid March.  There was even a period here of seven days in March during which a new record high temperature was established each day.  This early gift of warm weather has triggered an early blooming of our spirits, along with an early blooming of our trees and flowers.  Daffodils and forsythia along with cranberry bushes, cherry trees, and plum trees have bloomed a full month ahead of schedule . As wonderful as this early warmth and early blooming has been, it has been accompanied by a new anxiety.  The early budding of the flowers and trees has made them especially vulnerable to being injured, or even destroyed, if temperatures were to drop below freezing.  A cold front, which is not unheard of in early April in Wisconsin, could wipe out millions of dollars of farmers' crops across the state.  The unseasonably  warm weather that caused the buds to develop much earlier than usual, has made them vulnerable to being hurt by a sudden change in the weather pattern.

In a few days, Christians will celebrate Easter which is of course a celebration of resurrection and new life.  Jews will celebrate Passover beginning tonight, also a celebration of new life.   It strikes me that there is a great lesson about resurrection and new life to be learned from the experience of the early budding of our trees and flowers here in Wisconsin.  When you and I risk experiencing and living into resurrection in our lives, we are like the early buds in that we find that there is great vulnerability in the beginning stages of this new life.  We are vulnerable to being hurt if the conditions change suddenly, if a cold front were to suddenly blow in to our lives. Here are some examples of what I mean.  Two people begin to fall in love, and as exciting as that feels, they also experience a new vulnerability related to the possibility of being hurt.  A young person leaves home for college, work, or military service full of excitement about the budding possibilities, but at the same time worries if things will go as he/she hopes.  Two people who have been estranged from one another begin to take steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation, leaving them feeling both hopeful and scared.  A person who has been through a “dark night of the soul” experience of grief, depression or addiction and is just beginning to recover and now feels a combination of new life and vulnerability.

The experience of moving from bondage to freedom, from death to resurrection is always mixed with great hope and vulnerability.  If we find ourselves in the early stages of new life, of new budding, we need to seek out the warmth of friends and family to sustain us.  And if we know someone who is in this vulnerable place we need to surround them with plenty of warmth in order to help their budding new life continue to blossom.  Families, friends, and communities of faith are at their best when they create the warm, loving conditions necessary to nurture new life. Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all of you.  May your celebrations be filled with the buds of new life, along with plenty of warmth.