Breathe. Rest. Relax.

“You’ll never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

Unknown

There is inherent danger in believing our own press releases. We all have a way of crafting our stories, don’t we? We have ways of seeing the world and the circumstances that have come to define our sense of self.

If your story is one of feeling “less than”, I have a suggestion. Consider choosing a new adventure. I see the fly in the anointment that may have you questioning this logic. You, me and by the way - everyone else on this planet - has lived in unworthy, “less than” ways. This is a fact. We do not always live in accordance with our own values and core beliefs.

But this does not invalidate our inherent worth. So what to do about our past mistakes? Own them. Own them fully but not exclusively. Account fully for shortcomings without ignoring the rest of the story - we were doing the best we could even if our best was not great.

How can we do that? Well, we could try noticing our defensive posturing - however that looks. Some of us are pretty defensive, others of us are straight up aggressive, others take on too much responsibility and blame themselves for everything! All of it is ignoring God’s value of inherent worth.

Inherent worth allows us to forgive and ask for forgiveness. It enables us to own our mistakes. It qualifies us to recognize the mistakes of others without having to judge them for their humanity.

When we are anxious about something, when we fear that God is not paying attention to us and if he is, he doesn’t like what he sees...we run to idols. This is the history of humanity. There is no need to expect that we will be the exception. But what we can do is recognize and pay attention to our tendency to fail to see the big picture.

God has us and he has got this - this whole wide world in his hands. Breathe. Rest. Relax.

When Competition Hurts…

Our youngest son played lacrosse for many years. It’s one of those games that breaks ALL the rules. They run with sticks in their hands; they hit and poke their opponents with them leaving permanent bruises on the forearms of players for the entire season. They push each other out-of-bounds. They do all of this and more - and none of it is against the rules. I remember one heated game in particular. One of our players had been knocked unconscious; our coaches got ejected from the game. Our team was in disarray. A fight broke out. More ejections. Now we barely had enough people to play. Our son started barking orders. He ran down the field on offense and then one of his teammates would throw him a “long stick” from the sidelines and Michael would run back and play defense - a position he never played. Michael was hit so many times it was all I could do to not take the field myself. After that game he had three loose teeth and a profound sense of accomplishment as victory was achieved. I heard one of the parents say of my son, “Man, that kid is competitive!” I was so proud. I did not give this a second thought - we won! Our team was tough! My kid was COMPETITIVE!

Competition is a negative interaction that occurs among organisms whenever two or more organisms require the same limited resource… Therefore, competitors reduce each other’s growth, reproduction, or survival. (Source: www.biologyreference.com/Ce-Co/Competition.html#ixzz3xK2cfjuj)

A few years later my son walked off the lacrosse field for the last time; it was his senior year in high school. As he walked up to me roughly tossed his stick on his game and said, “No kid of mine is ever going to play this game.” Oh, the things I wished I had asked more questions about over the years! After eight years of playing the sport, Michael concluded that it was not one that fostered the character traits he would want his kid to possess. This would have been great information for me to have. I could have reduced mileage on my car as I traveled all of the state of Virginia and hours huddled on cold bleachers in all manner of bad weather, endless purchases of team snacks and a car that forever smelled like teenage boys and their stinky gear. Not to mention 8 years of my son being exposed to a game that did not enhance his character! I am sure that a different coaching staff and team ethos might have turned these years around and resulted in glorious memories but that was not his experience. I never, not once, asked the right questions.

Folks, we might be missing something if we embrace competition as a core value.

Discovering Your True Values

A family came to me to talk about their competing values - which I just love to wrestle with - especially if they are not mine! We zoomed a bit and talked about which values were competing and why they were wrecking the family. Dad was upset because his daughter had quit college and he was under the impression that education was a core value of his. She wouldn’t comply with his wishes for her to get a college degree, he fired her from her part time job in the family business (in the hopes this would incentivize her to return to college). Every time they argued about her decision to quit college he questioned her values in a bad, judgy way. She questioned his values too. Nonverbally. She thought that he was controlling and unreasonable. She stopped calling or hanging out with the family. Her strategy was avoidance (hoping that he would miss her and see the error of his ways).

I asked him, “How do you express your value for education?” His response, “I want my kids to go to college!” Ok. Let’s try again because that is NOT dad valuing education; that is dad telling his kid to value what he values. “How do YOU value education?” I ask and ask. “I quit college when my dad had a heart attack and eventually took over his business. I didn’t graduate. But I vowed to myself that I would make sure my kids went to college. They OUGHT TO GO to college.”

He pursued education through the experiential route - working the family business. After a few really hard conversations, the dad finally said: “Oh God. This is not a values discussion. This is me thinking that I missed out on college and not wanting my kids to miss out.”

Yes, there it is. You know what his daughter wanted to do? Go into the family business without attending college. Like father, like daughter. When released from the tyranny of shoulds and oughts - dad was able to see that he and his daughter were perfectly aligned in terms of the core value of creating a thriving family business. But he almost lost the joy and opportunity of bringing her on board because he was so stubborn and controlling and judgmental of her choices. He was driving her away - which was the last thing either of them wanted. And she was walking away in response to his manipulation. Neither was living by their values at all!

All of us could benefit from taking some time to think about what we really, really value rather than what we say we value. For instance, maybe we learn that we value relationships more than we value our opinions. Maybe when push comes to shove we care more about loving others than we care about convincing them that they should like blue cheese or pineapple, wear or not wear a mask, vote Republican, Democrat or Third Party. Maybe.