On Judgement, Forgiveness, and Icebergs

Things happen in my life, some good, some bad. Some in between. The truth of it is I have very little control over what happens to me. And yet, what I do have control over, I give that up too by choosing to believe that I am defined by what happens to me.

If I kill it at work, or with a new client, or on a run or turning laps in the pool, then I feel outstanding and I see myself in that light. And then the other shoe drops, when I have a crappy day and get my ass kicked by a disagreement with my wife, or the stock market dumps, or I am betrayed by someone close to me, then I define myself by those events as well. And so it goes, swinging from one definition to the other, judging myself by these events and all the while, giving up the essence of who I am.

How do I get off this roller coaster? In truth the emotion, whichever direction it is heading, is often more seducing than the antidote. And further, the forensics of unpacking my pathology can be even more beguiling.

“Why? Why? Why do I do this?” I lament, while quietly fawning over my self-absorption.

Forgiveness. It is the knife that cleaves the busyness of the mind, from the essence of who we are.

Forgiveness

I forgive.

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I forgive who, and what happens to me.

I forgive myself for wanting to believe that I am that which happens to me.

I forgive myself for wanting, for it means that I do not see who I am.

I forgive.

This is not to say that I do not feel outstanding when I have a great day, or feel like shit every time something, or someone, conspires against me. But, that I do so with forgiveness. And the ship heading for the iceberg is not me, but me that is the iceberg.

An Inordinate Faith – Part 3

“The truth will indeed set you free…but first, you will suffer for it.” – Dr. Cornell West

I learned about archetypes several years back from a Wayne Dyer tape a friend lent to me. He described the various phases we transition through as we age, or at least hope to transition through–child, cowboy, warrior, statesman, sage.

The 90’s was my warrior phase and my wife was dragged along for ride. We built a house, started a family, became a business owner, killed it in the stock market…all the things that every other overzealous middle-adult-child-of-an-alcoholic did. Bigger, faster, better. And I projected this energy into every aspect of my life. Including my faith life.

We were attending a small Episcopal church in our town and I was asked to join the Vestry which is the lay leadership council. Soon I was Senior Warden, the big shit, weighing in on decisions, feeling self-important and learning all the right things to do and say in the Anglican liturgy. Well, almost all the right things that is. The Suffragan Bishop paid a visit one Easter to preside over the vigil service. I volunteered for cantor duties as I was full of confidence from diving into just about everything else with the attitude that I would grow wings on the way down.

I should have practiced.

Three bars into the Vigil I realized I was over my head. I badly faked my way through the rest of it. Bishop Hampton, a tall and lanky silver haired Dr. Welby mid-westerner type was kind and didn’t protest. I think he prayed for me.

Undeterred, I reveled in the hierarchy of the church, even attending a couple of the annual Diocesan conventions as a delegate. Rubbing elbows with the movers and shakers from Seattle made me feel important and I was immersed in what I thought was important work. In all of this however, there was this undercurrent–an inkling of sorts that there had to be more to a faith life than this. As if I were play acting. I talked out loud to God about this, mainly in the car when I was driving by myself, but they were nothing more than one-sided conversations. Absent of anything else to do, I continued on, questioning.

Then September 11, 2001 came and initiated what I have since coined the grand trifecta: First the the terrorist attacks, which left me feeling numb and angry. Six months later my dad died from Alzheimer’s. Though we had expected his death would come sooner than later with his failing health, it still came as a surprise and made the surreal even more so. Six months after his death, my mom died from metastatic breast cancer. As with Dad, we knew her time was limited when her cancer returned, however this was different.

With Mom’s death came a sense of urgency and clarity about my life, about who I was and what I was put here to do. More to share later, but suffice to say her death brought on a reconciling of sorts about my faith. In particular, with Jesus. He had always been a part of my tradition, but in a history book, mythic figure sort of way that I would awkwardly pray to because that was what I was taught to do. Pray that is…when I was in church at the right moment in the service, or before I went to bed just in case I died in my sleep. Because that is what I was taught.

But I was also being pulled in different directions of spiritual contemplation, much of it influenced by Mom because she was a seeker of spiritual truth from many different faiths and that impacted me. I rather fancied the diverse approach as well, picking and choosing bits and peices of faith truth, like grazing at the salad bar. The problem was, that approach wasn’t transforming either. Mind you, I was not caught up (nor still am) in the theological cluster-F-of-an-argument around John 14:6 that many of my staunch Christian brothers and sisters aggressively defend. But still, I was yearning for a critical mass to my faith.

And I kept coming back to the history book. The mythic figure Jesus to pray to, and especially in the days and weeks following the trifecta, I was asking Him some hard WTF questions like, “who am I supposed to I follow?”

And He finally responded. Like a hoot owl calling in the quiet foggy morning.

He said,

“You have to choose, Rick.”

I paused, for a minute, or maybe it was a month, or a year, and then in a bread-in-the-toaster, morning-coffee-moment sort of way, I responded.

“I choose you.”

And then I said,

“I don’t get the cross.”

And the Owl hooted back,

“In time, you will know.”

An Inordinate Faith – Part 2

My one and only interaction with religion at WWU happened while crossing paths with a CCF keg mission. I was stumbling out of a dorm party late on a Saturday night when I noticed three guys standing on the sidewalk watching me. As I waited for my roommate to finish hitting on a girl near the exit, one of the guys approached.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied.

A long, uncomfortable pause followed and then he introduced himself. I don’t recall much of the conversation after that, but it must’ve been convincing because he was ringing our doorbell at 8:45 the next morning to take us to church. I say us, because I roped my roommate into coming along. The service went almost two hours, with raising of hands, altar calls and threats of damnation. It was the full evangelical enchilada. Boy, was my roommate pissed.

Being a lifelong Catholic, the revival service was definitely not his thing. It wasn’t mine either, but I was entertained with the people-watching, and especially with the guy talking in tongues. I had seen a lot in my life to that point, but that was a first. Afterward, we were dropped in front of our apartment and that was the last I saw of our host until I heard him giving an impromptu sermon in the middle of Red Square between classes later that fall. As before, I was caught up in people-watching–some stopped to listen, some gazed in disbelief, but mostly people kept on walking, and so did I. While I would on occasion, attend a service during Christmas while home on break, church was a non-factor. I wasn’t without, however.

My church was the outdoors and through my immersion in it, through skiing, sailing and an occasional hike, I felt most at peace when I was in Nature. It would take awhile, but my awareness would eventually shift from me, to something bigger than me. And I would feel very small, yet connected to something really BIG. It was this experience that kept me returning to the outdoors and I felt a certain reverence for it. It was, however, disconnected from any doctrine that I understood, and existed separate from the God I had learned about in the church of my youth.

I met my wife to be in the waning years of college, and when we decided to marry we searched for a fitting place for the ceremony. Given my wife was a cradle Episcopalian, we ventured into a few of the churches in North Seattle, however after finding three parishes with not much more than aging, silver-haired rectors and fifty blue haired ladies in the pews, we returned to the Congregational church of my high school years. The same pastor was presiding, though his son had left several years before to seminary. The pastor was kind and helpful, guiding us through a Myers-Briggs exercise as part of his pastoral duties, and in an ode to the 60’s anti-establishment movement, wrote our own vows. Our voices were high and child-like and after much practice, we still got it wrong. She said I do. I said I will.

Within a year, I moved us to Los Angeles for a career opportunity. I was consumed with making the switch from engineering to sales, and my wife was working retail at the Glendale Mall. We lived in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, less than a mile from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories. I would ride my mountain bike up the Brown Mountain road to the El Prieto trail, a challenging descent full of hairpin switchbacks, thorny cacti and river rocks the size of wheelbarrows. Here again, away from the noise and humanity, I connected with something that I fail to accurately describe–from an engineering sense that is.

Photo courtesy of Crumbdirt

Gazing over the LA basin at the top of the trailhead, I would be reminded of how small I was, and yet I never felt diminished by it. I was energized rather, increased. Perhaps it was the reminder that I was not in control, and I found that to be such an amazing relief. On Sunday’s, I would take my aging, hermit of an uncle to a local restaurant for prime rib, deviled eggs and Becks beer. On the return to his house up Lake Avenue, we would turn east on Mendocino and then north on Maiden Lane, following it as it twisted left, then right, while the panorama of the San Gabriel’s shifted in the window frame of his ’68 Beetle. Here too, in the foothills, we were reminded of our place in the world. A toothless ninety year old, and me. My wife and I visited an Anglican church in Pasadena at some point, but felt out of place in the Sunday fashion show, and my company supplied Ford Taurus was no match for the BMWs and Mercedes in the parking lot.

Eighteen months later, we moved back north, landing in Washougal. As unlikely a place as I would have picked, it was the inexpensive property and proximity to the airport that was the rationale. I would learn later of a more profound reason for landing here. The children soon started showing up, every two years by my wife’s plan. We felt compelled to provide some framework for learning about faith so we ended up at the local Episcopal church. As we had found before, it had an aging rector and fifty blue haired ladies in the pews, but they were sweet and there was one other family who had children of similar ages. We decided to make it our home.

Thus it was here, in the last place I would have guessed, that I began to learn about Jesus. Not the Jesus I had been told about, however. But the intimate Jesus I began to experience–the Jesus that appears during the weakest and most painful of moments that emerge with a coming of age.

An Inordinate Faith – Part 1

My journey of faith has been the proverbial road less traveled. It began with being baptized in the Catholic church, a decision I believe was more out of, “this is what all good Catholics do,” than anything else. My parents were not religious per se, other than showing up for services twice a year at Christmas and Easter. Not that it would have made them religious if they would have gone more frequently. Maybe just observant Catholics.

By the late 60’s we had moved north to Washington and landed in the pews of a United Methodist congregation. Not observant Catholics anymore, we traded Eucharist with wine drunk from a chalice and bread torn from a loaf, for grape juice in small thimble cups and thin wafers that tasted like cardboard. The Methodist church we attended in Bellevue was a country club and the congregation did all the right things that enlightened churches were supposed to do: Preach from the lectionary, celebrate weddings and funerals, teach sunday school, host holiday bazaars and ice cream socials and produce a Christmas pageant that would be worthy of a front page article in the Bellevue American newspaper. Or at least the front page of the local section which comes after the sports and business sections.

This was not unique to the Methodists, however. You could have put any one of a handful of denominations in front of “church”–Episcopal, Presbyterian, Baptist, etc., and would have come up with the same formula.

Regardless, the pastor looked like Dr. Marcus Welby, M.D., wore fine gray suits and drove a Cadillac. I attended sunday school like all the other good children. One Sunday morning while ducking out of class to use the bathroom, I noticed small draw string bags hanging from all the closed classroom doors. Curious, I looked inside one bag and it was full of coins. Helping myself to a few, I checked the rest of the doors and was equally rewarded. I liked that church. My bike was stolen in front of it.

Church life took a big detour when my dad signed us up for a Peace Corps family program, and it never quite recovered. We lived in far flung foreign lands such as Venezuela, Liberia and Lexington, Kentucky. Witnessing racism, third world poverty and ancient tribal spirituality, we were permanently liberated from the orthodoxy of the suburban American Christian experience. Thus, on our homecoming to the Methodist church, it was like wearing plaid to a funeral.

Sensing the misfit and desiring an new community a bit less WASP‘y, my mom lead us to a Unitarian church, recommended by some recent friends in her artist group from Cornish College where she had been attending. The Unitarians were an entirely different bunch than we had ever experienced before. The Methodist messages on obedience, “thou shalt not’s,” and grape juice communions were traded for socially relevant sermons on US foreign policy, racial tension in America and poverty. The church was even housing an illegal Guatemalan, a refugee from the civil war crisis in Central America. The biggest departure from our prior experiences with what happened on retreat. Far from the family church retreats past, this crowd knew how to party and wine, weed and women was the rally cry.

On a side note, now that I am a parent of teenagers it strikes me that the result of all this happening concurrent to my coming of age turned out to be the best deterrent a parent could imagine for an impressionable young boy. Best illustrated by a family church retreat we participated in at a nudist camp in BC; nothing, I repeat nothing, to a thirteen year-old is more repulsive than to see their parents strolling through a campsite naked. It is an enduring image that has spawned a compensating modesty that survives even today.

While a move to Seattle ended the Unitarian phase, Mom was clearly in control by now and she began to experiment outside the lines of Christianity, joining a community in a North Seattle ashram. I’m not even sure what to call the community, other than it was some derivation of non-dualism. This culminated in a second trip to BC for a convention of sorts, attracting East Indian families from all over Canada and the US. While this was not much more than a detour, I gained an appreciation for Tandoori chicken, curry and chapatis.

Soon after, we landed in a Congregational church. Somewhere between the Methodist and Unitarian experience, the service was more traditional, returning to the thimble cups and cardboard wafers. The high school youth group, however, was entirely a different story. In spite of the best efforts of the parent-leaders, the person clearly in charge was the son of the preacher. He was into martial arts, Led Zeppelin and always had good weed. Our annual youth group fundraising ventures to Yakima for peaches, and mission trips to Mt. Vernon to help run summer schools for children of migrant workers, were all done in the backdrop of mind-expanding, blue smoke filled conversations and eastern mysticism.

Reflecting on the sum of my childhood experiences with church and faith, what strikes me most is I cannot recall not even one conversation about God, the nature of God, how God relates to me, or I to Him. I’m not saying that it didn’t happen. I just don’t remember if it did. And it’s not as though He was absent. Just that He was kind of a fixture. Like Mt. Rainier in the distance. On a sunny day you can see it, but most days you don’t (this is the Northwest after all). But you always know the mountain is there and don’t question it. That was the sum total of my experience with God in my childhood.

Three years later, I left home for college and did not grace the door of a church, even for Christmas and Easter, for another 12 years.

Life Outside The Lines

When I was a kid, my mom would scold me for staying within the lines on my coloring books.

“Be bold, Mijo. Make your own lines!” she would exhort.

As soon as she would walk away, I would return to the comfort of coloring within the lines and making my grass green and skies blue like my Ritchie Rich comic books. Perhaps this was the safe haven engineering offered early in my career. A vocation experienced, for the most part, within the lines. It was all about solving problems and getting from point A to point B as fast as possible, or at least faster than the next guy. It’s the American way as they say.

Funny how things change

The most meaningful experiences I have had have been the result of having strayed, sometimes by intention, but more times by accident outside the lines, and coloring the sky purple. New careers, public speaking, and Haiti mission trips to name a few.

The challenge has become that as I age, however, venturing outside the lines is more difficult. The complacency of routine undermines the yearn for new experiences. Recently a good friend of mine invited me to an improv acting class. I was surprised at my hesitancy to accept, wondering how much of an ass I would make of myself if I did. The class turned out to be a blast of course, and have since used one of the warm up exercises with a client.

Good stuff.

But I didn’t plan on it and wouldn’t have even thought of attending if I hadn’t been pushed outside the lines. Further, I noticed something important in the process. I am more present outside the lines. I am paying attention to the situation, what the other person is saying, how they are feeling, where we are standing, what the weather is like. On everything but me.

Better stuff.

Nowadays, when I see a coloring book I smile. I think of purple skies and coloring outside the lines. Because that is where life is.

Cattle Call… – God

I believe we receive calls. But not just any calls. Calls that profoundly change the direction of our lives for good. Make no mistake, it’s not a matter of if we receive them, but when. The problem is most of us are either too distracted or too comfortable to see them, or if we do, too scared to do anything about them. The latter is a good indication by the way that it is a call. It is when your response is, “%$#@!” Then you know its a call.

And they come at the most unexpected times. Mine came while grieving over my mom’s death. A friend was coaching me through some grief recovery exercises and asked me to write her a final letter. Writing the letter was hard and at first the words came slowly, but soon flowed like a broken spigot. As I read it aloud to myself, one sentence in particular screamed back at me.

Your legacy will be my work…with myself and those around me.

I could feel the gravity of what was being called out and my heart thumped at the implications. This would not be easy.

Nor has it been. It was three years before I had the courage to step out and start doing something about it. That explains my Crazy Ivan, going from engineering and running a manufacturing company to leadership coach. And that doesn’t tell the half of it.

I am a healer.

How is that for some crazy shit! “It is what it is,” as my mom would frequently say. Healing is the essence of her legacy and I have taken up the charge to fulfill that purpose.

There have been subsequent calls and signs affirming what I am doing, but none so profound as the first. Perhaps because the first experience of letting go was so unforgettable. Once you do let go, or surrender, or submit, or yield to a higher calling, they become more recognizable when the new calls come. If they do, that is. They don’t always. Mother Teresa had only one, yet it was profound enough to change a million lives. Or more.

The sad thing is, most of us don’t do anything with them. We convince ourselves that either we couldn’t ever do what the call is telling us, or we’ll get to it when we have time, later in life when the kids are grown, or when we retire, or when the house is paid off, or when, or when, or when.

That talk is crap.

In reality, the price of responding to a call, though seemingly higher earlier in life when there are obligations involved, like a family, or a job, or a mortgage, is much less than responding to it when we are free of obligations later in life. Later in life when we are comfortable. Transformation doesn’t happen when we are comfortable.

Following a calling at a time of our choosing rarely works. Timing is everything. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward.

For most, we know what the call is. The question is, when are we going to do anything about it?

Comfort Is A Killer

I used to write. A lot.

Starting from the time my parents died in 2002, through to 2010, I wrote three books and journaled a bunch more. Perhaps by Stephen King standards, that was hardly a walk in the park. But for me, is was substantial. Especially given that I had never been a writer previous to that time. Outside of the essays I wrote for my college english classes where the best I could muster was a C+ (I think the + was because I flirted with the pretty Canadian intern), I didn’t write.

From college until my parents died, I lived an engineer’s life; solving problems that sometimes needed solving, thinking logically and folding my underwear. Then came 2002; my dad died in April (April 1 actually; an irony that still pays dividends amongst the family) from alzheimer’s, and then my mom died in August. All this coming off the emotional events of 911. So I started writing. To start, more as something to do with my time because I kept waking up at 3 a.m. with my head full of thoughts and I had to get them down somehow, certain that I would go crazy if I didn’t. All this was helped by the fifteen year old mattress we had, causing me to wake early in the morning with backaches. Much like my dad, once I wake, it is very hard for me to fall back to sleep. Thus began my writing and it started out as long streams of conscious thought. Over time it evolved into story-telling and as I began to share it with others, I was encouraged to write more and I did because it was flowing and I woke up almost every morning between 3-4 a.m. to write.

Parallel to this was the start of my consulting business in 2005. I left engineering to start a leadership development consultancy. Yeah, I know. I hear the question all the time…”How did you go from engineering to leadership coach?” The easy answer is I just did. The expanded answer is, in the process of writing I discovered there was a larger purpose in my life than being an engineer, and it had to do with making an impact on people. There is much more to that story, but for now we’ll leave it at that.

All to say the first three years of starting the business about did us in until mid-2008. Hanging by a thread both financially and in my marriage, the phone finally began to ring and I began the long march out of the hole I had dug, until which around 2010 the business took off. All of a sudden we didn’t have to play smoke and mirrors with the bills anymore and my wife and I could look at each other and smile again. Simple pleasures.

By 2011, the business had reached a fever pitch and I hit the wall by the end of the year, having worked straight through the holidays and feeling every bit resentful for it. 2012 and 2013 settled into a more consistent rhythm, though contracts would come and go and we would have the inevitable cycles of flush months, then lean ones, but none were like the early years when I didn’t know how I was going to pay for the mortgage.

And yet, in all of this I began to realize there was a larger price I was paying for the success that I failed to recognize until the middle of this year. I was attempting to jump start the editing on my last book and feeling all too apathetic about the work when it dawned on me that the price I had paid for the comfort the business had provided, was the motivation and creative inspiration to write. Further, I no longer had the old mattress anymore. In an instant, I was sleeping through the night and waking refreshed, sans back pain. Both events had conspired to the same result–no writing.

And then, as quietly as it had disappeared, the writing emerged again. September 26th of this year to be precise. Not to the level I was ten years ago, but I am writing, and I am more proficient at it these days, thankfully having learned a few things along the way. Why did the writing appear again? I ask myself. Discomfort. No, my mattress is still providing great sleep, however my mind is working over time these days for a couple of reasons: 1) I merged my business with another earlier this year and I am experiencing the growing pains of being in a partnership again. I hadn’t realized how much I took for granted being working solely for myself until I was in a partnership again. As much as I enjoy the new venture and appreciate what they bring to the table, it has knocked me out of my comfort zone. It takes energy to focus on how I am responding and contributing to the business. I also put a pressure on myself to contribute more than I am taking, which at times is a tall order. It is a challenge for me to rely on someone else and I am learning how to do that all over again. 2) My frustration over not writing has peaked to the point of writing again. As the saying goes, when the pain of doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, exceeds the pain of change, then change will come.

All of this speaks of discomfort. Even so, beginning again was challenging. I had to set my judgment aside about why I have not written, how bad my writing is, how I cannot seem to follow a thought for more than a sentence or two, and write again.

I still struggle to start. But once I am rolling, it feels good to be here again. Like hearing an old Marvin Gaye song when driving in traffic and I don’t give a shit who is watching me sing along.

Discomfort has been my companion to write. This I have learned, and is my new challenge. As life goes, there will be times of discomfort, and times of comfort. How I will continue to write between the periods of discomfort is the next mountain to climb.

Wish me well.

Why Worry?

I worry. Though I wouldn’t call myself a worrier by nature, that is, I’m not consumed by it, I still worry. About all kinds of things like, will my youngest who is a senior in high school find the right college, or more to the point, will he ever finish his college applications? Will my shoulder that keeps popping every time I rollover in bed need surgery next year and how will I pay for the deductible? Or, when will the bunion on my right foot make it too painful to run? Will the roof need replacing before I get all the kids through college? How long will my Volvo with 224,000 miles on it last before it blows something major, or, or, or… And the list goes on.

For most of my adult life, I kept thinking that the older I got, I would somehow reach a point where stuff just didn’t worry me anymore. I have achieved that in some respects…for example, I started a business in 2005. I had never worked for myself before, always having had a full time job with benefits, twice monthly paychecks, and evenings in front of the TV trying to forget the drama of the day at the office. I was now experiencing a new level of worry, like where the next contract was going to come from so I could pay our mortgage and put food on the table and clothes on my kids. It took a few years and some tough lessons, but I learned that the market does respond and I didn’t need to worry when business would soften. Rather, I learned to enjoy the times when it did and would take time off to spend it with the family or get caught up on projects around the house because I knew at some point business would get busy again and I would be back hard at it. The result of this was I no longer had the regret of wishing I had spent the down time enjoying it rather than being consumed with worry how I was going to get more business.

The confounding thing about all this is while there are many examples like the above where experience has taught me that I do not need to worry, it only works for the entirety of life if it were static–if what I experienced from here on out were just more of the same. THEN I would not worry because it would be, “been there, done that” for everything.

Not in my lifetime.

If self awareness has taught me anything, I am too much a seeker to be content doing the same thing. I seek new experiences, new challenges, new adventures, and the ONE big implication of all that is I continue to find myself where I haven’t been before. And I worry about how they will turn out. I do recognize a difference, however, and it has to do with doubt. My worry of yesterday was full of doubt. My worry of today is full of question. The difference in experiencing one versus the other, is the sum total of my experiences have taught me that I have somehow solved, figured out, persevered, survived, been lucky enough, to get to this day. And all that is transferable in informing how I experience today’s worry. I don’t doubt that there will be a solution to whatever worry I am facing today. But I question, and my intellectual curiosity and impatience for getting to the answer are the only things that cause me grief in today’s worry.

All this to say, when my worry is more about doubt than question, then I just need remind of where my talents and experience can help me through it. I reassure myself I am in the right place, and I keep moving.

The Love They Have to Give

I have spent too much time in my marriage seeking the love that I thought I wanted, rather than accepting the love my wife was giving. This has been made especially difficult given that I grew up believing in the wrong message–that marriage is about finding the perfect spouse and being in love would always mean experiencing a blissful union. Wow. Was I not prepared for reality.

Marriage is about enduring

The truth is, my marriage has been more about letting go and enduring, than blissful moments. Not that there hasn’t been bliss. There are moments I recall distinctly when we have experienced it: Witnessing the birth of our three children. A particular dinner we shared at one of our favorite restaurants celebrating the start of my business. Huddling next to each other under cold sheets, amazed at the softness of her skin. These, and many more.

The challenge has been, however, that all of these are overshadowed by the imaginary image I thought marriage would be, and worse, the blame I put on either myself or my wife over the inability for us to achieve it. It wasn’t until I became so tired of trying to achieve something that was unachievable, that the truth of our marriage emerged. I was ready to see that the love my wife has to give has always been there. Waiting.

My wife is not demonstrative like I am. Thank God. She shows her love in the small things. Like the sweater she bought for me this week. The dinner she cooked last night. The thousands of meals she has prepared for our family. The flannel pajamas she sewed when the kids were little; the Halloween costumes she made from scratch; the house she painted all by herself with a 5 inch brush; and on, and on, and on.

The love my wife has to give has always been there. We just had to outlast the imaginary image, suffering the indignities of unmet expectations along the way until we learned to appreciate what we had to offer each other. And the strange thing is (I can’t believe I am saying this…), I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. This is not to say I don’t have regrets. I do…over things I have said and thought that were about me and the image. Even so, I just can’t imagine that I would have the appreciation for her, no, the deep respect for her if we hadn’t gone through what we did.

I shared this with her awhile back. “Honey, even if I didn’t love you, I have so much respect for you for staying with me all these years.” The response the image would have expected would be to have her jump in my arms and gush over the acknowledgment. She just looked at me with a wry grin and said, “You’re welcome.”

Now THAT is love!

All to say, when I am feeling particularly unloved in my marriage, I take the time to observe her in the small things she does for me and others. And when I recognize it, the question becomes, am I willing to accept it?

Know What Is In The Backpack

So, my brother in law is a clinical psychologist and we have had a number of conversations about projection and transference. At the risk of turning this into a debate on the merit of these behaviors, a basic understanding of the concepts are helpful. The bottom line is we carry a lot of stuff around in our backpacks. Stuff that we began collecting from the time we first opened our eyes and began absorbing the world around us. Some of it is good. Some, not so much.

Know what is in your back pack

It is imperative we have self-awareness of what is in the backpack because we unwittingly transfer and project much of what is in there on our spouse. Marriage is difficult enough without the confusion of all the needs, wants and desires that can be subconsciously thrown into the relationship. The simplest example I can share is this: My dad had an undiagnosed bi-polar disorder and a such, he self-medicated with alcohol and prescription drugs (or other) for much of his life. Needless to say, growing up in our household was a wee bit outside the bell curve compared to most of my friends families. He could never settle down, hence we moved a lot and oscillated between the brink of poverty and instant wealth. Neither of it lasted though which became the enduring “burden” that I learned to carry in my backpack, and ultimately project into my marriage. Though on the whole, our financial picture has been much more stable, it hasn’t felt that way emotionally. I have oscillated over the years between confidence and fear, of which my wife has had to bear the brunt of the dramatic swings in emotion.

Notice that I suggest know what is in your backpack, versus fix what is in your backpack. I don’t believe you can fix something if you are not in relationship, bounded by the obligations of marriage (admittedly, I’ve don’t have the experience of a lifelong companionship that did not have the formality of marriage. It’s hard for me to envision, however, though I am sure it happens, if rarely). I also believe in the grand scheme of things, that marriage is about healing through learning to put your needs and issues behind those of your spouse. For someone like me, that has been a lifelong work and if anything, has allowed me to become really good at apologizing…

How you do this? Well, that is a life-long work. For me, it’s been through therapy, painful mistakes, prayer, meditation, metacognition, and an over inquisitive mind that is fascinated with the cause and effect algorithms of the human psyche.

Regardless of how you travel this road, travel it. Get to know yourself. Know what is in your backpack and begin the work of healing with your spouse.

Succeeding in Life

Changing one life at a time