So many things, where to begin. I guess first off I wanted to say a thank you to everyone who writes, emails, messages or calls me and tells me how much they enjoy my blog. I'm glad that what I am going though or whatever I share impacts people in a positive way.
There is a couple of things pressing on my heart, one is communication, disagreements and fights, and the other is giving up. So I guess we will see what topic takes over as we progress down my ramblings.
I suppose I will start with the communication one. I mean everyone says communication is important, but that's so vague and general, and it really doesn't give any illustration as to what communication looks like. I feel like today, in Western society, people don't know how to adequately communicate. We don't know how to really effectively say what we need and we can't handle other people telling us the truth or telling us what they need. It is a learned skill and I feel like perhaps, with the breakdown of family and marriages, healthy communication has and is breaking down too.
We teach our children "normal", I know, it's huge, teaching a child what normal is! It's also one of the catalysts for conflicts in marriage and relationships, your parents taught you a normal, and your spouse's parents taught them a normal, then you get into a marriage and your doing "normal" life together, and you realize - wait a minute, our normals aren't the same. I know this was HUGE for Ryan and I, our families and the dynamics in them are almost polar opposites. Which means we both have different expectations of what a happy family is, how we do meals, how we spend our free time, how we spend our money, how we raise our children, holidays, everything. I think that in certain relationships, there may be couples who were both raised in similar family dynamics, but where would the fun be in that?
So the first hindrance in our communication is finding a common ground, and finding "our normal", as a family. This past weekend Ryan and I were fighting about money, we often do, and it's the same argument over and over again. How we handle the finances for my makeup business. So we were having a disagreement over how much I "take home" and how much I should reinvest back into my business, and our opinions were very different. Things were getting quite heated, and then I just realized, somebody isn't wrong here and somebody isn't right, what is really going on here is; different perspectives. We are experiencing my business, it's finances and our financial situation VERY differently. So until there is an understanding of what the reality and experience is of the other person, we will argue all day, every day, about the same thing,every time - because we are not really communicating what we need, or what we need is not being heard. Does that makes sense? haha. My husband can give me lengthy, in depth explanations for why we need to do things his way, but unless I understand his experience of the situation and I feel he has understood my experience. I am never going to be completely satisfied doing things his way, cause my needs have not been met and all I see for him is an agenda, not a human.
And I think that as children, growing up in dysfunctional homes, not even necessarily where there has been divorce, but when parents had needs that weren't being met and couldn't communicate that healthily, we observe that, we internalize that, and when our needs aren't met as children, we communicate or don't communicate accordingly. As we progress in life, we often use the experiences and encounters that we have to validate what we already believe, rather then the observe the objective reality. I love what I recently heard Kris Vallotton say: "We don't see the world the way it is, we see the world the way we are." Which brings about the need to have a common value or moral systems, a standard to which we can compare our "worldview" to, to see where we differ from reality.
If someone is "winning" in the argument, you are both losing. We are human beings, not computers, you cannot just delete a feeling, or reboot a mistake, both individuals need to be validated in order for the confrontation to be successful and progressive. Not only do fights and mismanaged disagreements not help anything, they often create distance, coldness and confusion, which just encourages stipulations and "what ifs" and you end up getting worked up about something that is in your head, rather then working through the reality of the disagreement.
This isn't easy, when I share these principles my husband and I are walking out in our marriage, I don't mean to say we have it all together, every time we approach a disagreement we don't calmly sit down and try to identify "what do you need?" But that is what we are working towards. Every painful step. I know sometimes I just get so angry and frustrated, I feel overwhelmed, like I can't identify what I need,all I can see is what you are doing wrong and it's driving me crazy and I don't know how we are going to survive this. But somehow, by God's grace, we always do. But it's not easy, I told Ryan tonight, I miss when there was peace in our relationship, my brain is such mush, I can't remember a time of peace, but I know there was peace in our relationship at sometime and I can't wait until we get there again.
I'm going to end this on another note, don't know if it's lighter or not, life is so short. I remember as a little girl, having a fear I was going to die young, like in my 20's, somehow, I don't have that fear anymore, but I do have this almost a haunting right now, that life is suppose to be love and laughter filled and that it's short, and I am getting way too sidetracked by unimportant, inconsequential things. There is so much poison in my heart, which I see playing out in my relationships, mostly my closest ones, and it's just not worth it, to hold unto the anger, bitterness, hurt, pain, unforgiveness, resentment, all that icky stuff, We really just need to take a deep breath in and then just let it out, and let all that Crap go with it, give it to God. Every day should be treated precious and rare, and you should feel alive and aware. I see so many "sleepy" people , going about in there miserable lives, so sad, so so sad. Tell the person you love, you love them, tell your heart, the person that hurt you, you forgive them, and walk into some precious freedom and experience life your short life without the chains.
There is a couple of things pressing on my heart, one is communication, disagreements and fights, and the other is giving up. So I guess we will see what topic takes over as we progress down my ramblings.
I suppose I will start with the communication one. I mean everyone says communication is important, but that's so vague and general, and it really doesn't give any illustration as to what communication looks like. I feel like today, in Western society, people don't know how to adequately communicate. We don't know how to really effectively say what we need and we can't handle other people telling us the truth or telling us what they need. It is a learned skill and I feel like perhaps, with the breakdown of family and marriages, healthy communication has and is breaking down too.
We teach our children "normal", I know, it's huge, teaching a child what normal is! It's also one of the catalysts for conflicts in marriage and relationships, your parents taught you a normal, and your spouse's parents taught them a normal, then you get into a marriage and your doing "normal" life together, and you realize - wait a minute, our normals aren't the same. I know this was HUGE for Ryan and I, our families and the dynamics in them are almost polar opposites. Which means we both have different expectations of what a happy family is, how we do meals, how we spend our free time, how we spend our money, how we raise our children, holidays, everything. I think that in certain relationships, there may be couples who were both raised in similar family dynamics, but where would the fun be in that?
So the first hindrance in our communication is finding a common ground, and finding "our normal", as a family. This past weekend Ryan and I were fighting about money, we often do, and it's the same argument over and over again. How we handle the finances for my makeup business. So we were having a disagreement over how much I "take home" and how much I should reinvest back into my business, and our opinions were very different. Things were getting quite heated, and then I just realized, somebody isn't wrong here and somebody isn't right, what is really going on here is; different perspectives. We are experiencing my business, it's finances and our financial situation VERY differently. So until there is an understanding of what the reality and experience is of the other person, we will argue all day, every day, about the same thing,every time - because we are not really communicating what we need, or what we need is not being heard. Does that makes sense? haha. My husband can give me lengthy, in depth explanations for why we need to do things his way, but unless I understand his experience of the situation and I feel he has understood my experience. I am never going to be completely satisfied doing things his way, cause my needs have not been met and all I see for him is an agenda, not a human.
And I think that as children, growing up in dysfunctional homes, not even necessarily where there has been divorce, but when parents had needs that weren't being met and couldn't communicate that healthily, we observe that, we internalize that, and when our needs aren't met as children, we communicate or don't communicate accordingly. As we progress in life, we often use the experiences and encounters that we have to validate what we already believe, rather then the observe the objective reality. I love what I recently heard Kris Vallotton say: "We don't see the world the way it is, we see the world the way we are." Which brings about the need to have a common value or moral systems, a standard to which we can compare our "worldview" to, to see where we differ from reality.
If someone is "winning" in the argument, you are both losing. We are human beings, not computers, you cannot just delete a feeling, or reboot a mistake, both individuals need to be validated in order for the confrontation to be successful and progressive. Not only do fights and mismanaged disagreements not help anything, they often create distance, coldness and confusion, which just encourages stipulations and "what ifs" and you end up getting worked up about something that is in your head, rather then working through the reality of the disagreement.
This isn't easy, when I share these principles my husband and I are walking out in our marriage, I don't mean to say we have it all together, every time we approach a disagreement we don't calmly sit down and try to identify "what do you need?" But that is what we are working towards. Every painful step. I know sometimes I just get so angry and frustrated, I feel overwhelmed, like I can't identify what I need,all I can see is what you are doing wrong and it's driving me crazy and I don't know how we are going to survive this. But somehow, by God's grace, we always do. But it's not easy, I told Ryan tonight, I miss when there was peace in our relationship, my brain is such mush, I can't remember a time of peace, but I know there was peace in our relationship at sometime and I can't wait until we get there again.
I'm going to end this on another note, don't know if it's lighter or not, life is so short. I remember as a little girl, having a fear I was going to die young, like in my 20's, somehow, I don't have that fear anymore, but I do have this almost a haunting right now, that life is suppose to be love and laughter filled and that it's short, and I am getting way too sidetracked by unimportant, inconsequential things. There is so much poison in my heart, which I see playing out in my relationships, mostly my closest ones, and it's just not worth it, to hold unto the anger, bitterness, hurt, pain, unforgiveness, resentment, all that icky stuff, We really just need to take a deep breath in and then just let it out, and let all that Crap go with it, give it to God. Every day should be treated precious and rare, and you should feel alive and aware. I see so many "sleepy" people , going about in there miserable lives, so sad, so so sad. Tell the person you love, you love them, tell your heart, the person that hurt you, you forgive them, and walk into some precious freedom and experience life your short life without the chains.
2 comments:
When I was in University, the school felt worldviews were sufficiently significant to have a required fourth year course on them. Of course, they were talking about different philosophical views of life. How each individual views the world is unique to them. Siblings - even twins - have different views of life, as you know. :)
As to letting things go, Liberty was heard to say to another little girl a couple of weeks ago "If you don't forgive, your heart gets dark." I guess kids do take in what you tell them sometimes. We tell her that keeping things bottled up and not forgiving hurts her heart and it hurts God's heart to see us that way.
I'm sure we'll get the hang of all of this some day.
Jennifer
kids are awesome! I love their simple understanding of simple, but great, principals. Thank you for sharing. <3
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