A true friend...

It is so easy to focus on the negative. I am struggling right now with the end of winter - wishing and hoping for sunshine, springtime, and flowers. With that discouragement, it can be easy to focus on how tired I feel, and how much I wish for this stage in my life to be complete, and how ready I am to move on to the next. A general sense of dissatisfaction of life can easily overtake me.
My husband and I are working very hard to start a business, focus on our marriage while we are just the two of us, and to be able to provide spiritual, emotional and financial stability for each other. Believe me though, it is easy to focus on how far away we are from our goals, how many hours a week we put into work, and how tired we are when we are at home. Making a better life for us and our future child(ren) is hard, hard work.
I really think that it is a true friend who instead of letting me complain, whine and generally "kvetch" on my life, helps me to re-frame my experiences and see how current decisions are laying the foundation of a very solid life. It is also incredible to me that I am blessed with so many friends who provide the "reality check" I need to focus on the positive things happening in our lives.


Re-framing, I believe is a skill second only to learning the "adult voice" (see previous blogs), required to help find satisfaction and happiness in life. Re-framing is a skill where instead of focusing on how issues or incidents have every appearance of being a negative impact on your life, its seeing the baby-steps towards growth, or seeing the way this negative can be used for a positive solution. One of my friends always points out to me through this process that even though we are tired, discouraged and generally whiny at times, that my husband and I are becoming a better team, learning how to communicate, trust, and rely on each other more and more each day. You know what, she is right!!


And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2)

Re-Frame: (v. t.) To frame again or anew

Choosing a positive focus over the negative it appears.
Making Strength based decisions
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Viktor Frankl (Austrian Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist) Man’s Search for Meaning

Before I met my love....

When you don't have a "valentine" of your own - the Valentine's holiday can be a rather depressing day. A day filled with how come so and so has someone and I don't, or even a private pity party held on your own behalf. For a long time, about 5 years, I didn't know whether I would ever have someone to call "my love." They were busy years, full of education, developing my career and beginning professional and personal relationships that I treasure to this day. However, I find myself disappointed in how I managed my own emotions regarding the holiday of love.

Here is what I would do if I had a chance for a do-over:

Babysit my friends or family members children for the holiday (yes, even if that means they get a romantic date). Children are tons of fun, especially when they belong to someone else.

Take my parents out to dinner. They were and are my first loves, and I wish I had recognized that more when I was younger.

Make a scrapbook or video for my Grandma. I think she would have enjoyed being even more a part of my/our life.

Spent the day fasting. Fasting is still seen as one of the ways to show absolute submission to God and a beautiful way to spend a holiday about love.

It can be easy to get caught up in what I do or don't have. I remember the snide comments of those who married much younger than I and how being married had somehow made them a complete person, something I clearly was not since I clearly could not get married. Don't believe that nonsense... Who you are before you marry, is who you are after you marry, only that much more intense because you are trying to join two different lives. It is by only the grace of God, (and a strong commitment to marriage) that marriage is possible (and a good therapist on stand-by is also helpful).

Happy Valentine's Day <3

Rejection

Out of all of the experiences I have had - the ones that are burned into my memory - always deal with rejection. I can feel the wave of shame come over me, and the difficulty relating to others sets in and I am emotionally overwhelmed by a rejecting experience. In fact I could probably tell you some of the dates that I have experienced such overwhelming rejection. Last fall (2009) I continually struggled with rejection to the point my husband and I had to come up with a plan to help me deal with rejection in a constructive manner.

The plan was simple:

For each situation that occurred - I would tell my husband "I felt rejected when...." (a colleague didn't listen to me, a client expressed displeasure with service, etc.) that way I could share my emotions without revealing confidential information.

Then I would get a hug from my hubby for each of those experiences that day. I think I ended up following the plan only 5-10 times total, but the emotional stability it provided me was immense.

This came to mind today as I helped a client, by making phone calls to various agencies trying to find out if there were openings for someone in crisis. I realized then that I am better at taking a "no" or rejection on behalf of someone else, then I am on my own behalf. When I receive the rejection I take it personally, when someone else is in desperate need of help, I thank them and move onto the next one on the list. I am determined to find the "yes" for someone else. It gives me hope that through these lessons I am learning, I can de-personalize rejection and become determined to find a "yes" for me instead of so quickly losing hope. I also realize that when emotionally someone is in crisis, and so often in Human Services we give them a list of places to call, there aren't enough emotional reserves to make the connections needed. The rejection becomes isolation, and the isolation becomes more painful than the rejection, because then the skills needed to re-connect with others are lost in the grief and loss already being experienced, and it will take far more emotional confidence than perhaps was available in the first place. 

I also realize that there is an ultimate plan to deal with all of the rejection that for the most part, I am able to manage my response to rejection now. Long term though, I know I need help, and there is Someone who has experienced all of the rejection,  all of the loneliness and all of the separation from the Father for me (and you),  and if I choose to believe in Him, will never have to experience.

This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has become the head of the corner. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Acts 4:11-12 RSV