The ToolBox - Fill the Box Now, Be Their Friend Later

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” 

― Anne Frank

I would love it if I could give my kids everything they wanted...

But I can't. 

Even if I could, I wouldn't. My conscience, my judgement, my heart, and my parental responsibility would not let me. 

I would love to be my children's best friend...

But I can't.

Even if I could, I wouldn't. That is not my role. At least it's not my role while they are minor children, under my care, still maturing and growing to adulthood.  I guess I could have taken the role of friend instead of parent, but my conscience, my judgment, my heart, and my parental responsibility would not let me. 

I would have loved to make every path clear, every job easy, every relationship without trouble, every class fun, every game winnable, every action rewardable.... 

But I can't.

Even if I could, I wouldn't.  That may have been in some way possible, but not at all realistic or representative of what life is.  I could shelter them, fight every battle, and make their existence nothing but easy and fun, but my conscience, my judgment, my heart, and my parental responsibility would not let me. 

In the short term, eliminating any wants or obstacles in your children's lives may seem like an expression of love and caring.  It may seem to you that it is a way of taking care of and protecting them.  To make a path easy for them gets them further along the road.  Giving them what they want fulfills their desires for things.  Being a friend instead of holding then accountable and towing the line might feel like it's creating connection.  

The truth: That is the easy road for you. It also creates a tougher road for them when they are out in the world. 

Your job, my job, our job is to be parents and to ready them for the world.  A parent's job is to fill their child's toolbox with the tools they will need to be in it successfully. 

As a grown-up you know that the world is nothing like living at mom and dad's house with them taking care of the necessities of life.  It can be a great place, but it is not always an easy place.  It takes hard work, tenacity, willingness to stretch yourself, understanding and ability to cope with failures along with the successes, and knowing that things don't always go the way you want them to.  You have to problem solve, get along with people you don't always like, sometimes work in situations that are less than what you would like them to be, and earn your successes.  

As parent, it is your job to balance your care and protection with preparing your children for the world- a world that is not going to coddle them.  To do that, they need a toolbox stocked with the tools that will help them build a life in a world that looks very different from mom and dad's house. 

The world will hold them accountable and responsible for their actions. Give them this tool by holding them accountable and responsible for their actions and words. 

The world will not reward them for simply stepping into it.  They will fail at things in life as adults.  Prepare them with the tools for it by letting them fail at things sometimes. It is hard not to save them from it when you can, but the short term benefit of a better feeling in the moment becomes a long term obstacle when they don't know how to accept, learn from, and recover from it in the world. 

The world will not give the everything they want. Just like the rest of us, there will be some things that they get, some things they will have to work for, and some things that just never may come. Give them the tool of having joy with what's in front of them, and the ability to find happiness even when they don't have their every wish fulfilled. Don't grant every "want".  Give them everything they need, and some of what they want - but not everything. Give them the tool of knowing the difference between a need and a want by understanding the difference yourself. 

They will need to learn empathy, sympathy, the ability to feel joy and sadness, how to live a healthy lifestyle, and understanding of money and responsible use of it, self respect, respect for others, determination, tenacity, will, drive, how to rest, how to love... the list of tools goes on and on.  It is parent responsibility to send them into the world with a full tool box. 

It's not an easy job, but you are the best and most influential person for the job. When you are weary and feeling like the "bad guy", just recite this to yourself: Today I know that Parenting is a tiring job but a worthy one. Our duty is to give them the tools they need to be in the world. It is their job to open the tool box and use them.

Be their parent now.  Your reward of being their friend will come. 

Growing the Good

Is there a reason why bad things in life happen? When the garden of our lives are full of abundance, why do they sometimes get plundered?

We search for meaning in the tough parts of life.  We have a desire to know why a tragedy happened, why we lost a job, a home or a loved one. Our efforts are spend figuring out why as an individual, a community, or a nation has suffered a loss. 

In those moments of trouble, if we know we have not been doing all we could to prevent the trouble in the first place, hopefully we can see where we could have changed course and we can take steps to correct our paths in the future.  But when we are moving along, doing what we should, when we should, and why we should - that is a different story. 

Life is suddenly changes.  The smooth soil of our existence is suddenly overturned, with it taking the things that we have worked so hard to grow in the gardens of our life.  Our happiness is shaken and battered.  Our home life can be uprooted.  Our sense of security and ability to see forward to brighter days can be buried underneath, hidden by the darkness of all that has fallen upon it.  We try and try to till the soil, to bring it back to it's normal state.  We look for remedy and reason, but the garden just does not go back to what it was before the trials hit. 

The garden of life gets overturned  and plundered for so many.  We may know the person or the tool used. We may even know the reason why the person or tool was used. But we struggle to find a reason why it was OUR lives that were a part of the reaping. 

However, what often gets planted after the bad things in life offers hope. Compassion and understanding from ourselves to others and from others to us, become the seeds of new life. With the water of patience and the sunlight of care, seedlings emerge and a new and different abundance fills our soil.  The garden can flourish and thrive again. And in time, the garden returns.

The reason why it was our garden my never be answered. But, goodness and kindness that others and ourselves are willing and compelled to give to those who are suffering offers hope, faith and a sense of security.  It plants the seeds that allow life to continue on, differently than before, but with the ability to once again be abundant. From the destruction and darkness the garden springs back to life, and it is Growing the Good.

That Hill Is Just a Better Vantage Point!

Living here in the beautiful Desert South West, there are a lot of places to do nice day hikes. Some of them are technically pretty easy, and some of them are very challenging. Some are long trails with slow inclines while others are short but steep inclines. Still others fall someplace between the two. All of them take a lot of endurance in stamina or strength. And all have a reward at the pinnacle.




Do you ever have those days that it feels like every step is like climbing up a mountain? You know the kind of day...

The kind of day when it feels like you are hiking a long trail with a heavy pack on your back. Each step you take physically feels like you are battling the hill, trudging your way slowly up it, step by step. Your is pack weighted down by too little sleep, spreading yourself too thin, having to be five different places at once, and juggling all of you day to day responsibilities to make the climb any easier.

Or there is the kind of day when it is not physical exhaustion, but mental exhaustion that is making your traverse difficult. The tasks in life that you are facing - taxes, putting kids through college, meeting the deadlines at work, planning your next career move, feel like boulders in the path that you must make your way over. The thought of taking the next step is overwhelming and over-weighting.

Then there is the kind of day that the uphill trek is slowed and complicated by emotional exhaustion. The dealings of relational life send rocks tumbling down that we must dodge or catch so we can continue on. Rifts in family or marriage, sickness, emotional stressors of raising kids careen at us causing our ascent up the hill to seem near impossible.

Whatever the kind of day it is, we look at the mountains we are hiking up and you get so caught up in the elevation and path that we must climb to get to the top that we just can't seem to wrap our brains around how we are going to get there. To get to the top, we must dig deep from the bottom of our souls, carry on even when we feel like giving up, and climb even when the muscles of our wills are crying out from the pain of being worked to its limit.

But take heart.... There is a reward. 

At the top of each mountain is a pinnacle. That pinnacle holds the gift of a panoramic view of the valley we have ascended from.

Every hill we traverse has the reward of a new vantage point. If we digest and really reflect on our journey to the top of the hill, we see our world from a point of clarity and distance. Yes, we may be tired and need a moment to catch our breath and let our bodies rest. But in that moment our eyes are open to what lies ahead of us as well as the accomplishment of what we have overcome to stand at the top of the climb. Our resolve is strengthened, but our hearts are softened as we see what is possible, and feel for those that are struggling up the trail.

How do you see the hills in your life? Have you let them strengthen you or defeat you?

Fortyness - In the Thickness of Life

Many of you know that I have returned to school and am working on a communication degree. One of the concepts that is prominent in the scholarly world of communication is the idea of thick descriptions. This idea is that life is understood by the self and others through a myriad of factors...not just the straight forward aspects that are visible. It has to do with context, history, relationships, culture.... there is a lot of thickness to swim through to get to understanding.

I think that this time of life -fortyness, is much like that. It is thick.

By this time we all can probably feel the resistance as we wade through life. We have all probably encountered some bad things. We have had to navigate through trials, loss, and change. Sometimes the outcomes were for the better, and sometimes they were not. Each negative experience impacts how we see, act out and understand the lives we have.

But, this time can feel thick even when things are going well. Even in the great events of life, it may seem like more energy is expended through our emotions and actions. We are so grateful for the good things, yet we "feel" the impact of those great events. We ponder them more, reflect on them more and incorporate them into our view of the world.

Be it negative or positive, each experience increases the viscosity of our daily existence. Our understanding and movement through our fortyness is impacted as each experience alters the context, the history, the relationships and the culture that we exist in. Things that in our twenetyness would seem trite and unimportant, now carry more weight and credibility. Conversely, things that seemed huge in our twenties, are now understood to be simply the life exercises that have given us the stamina to trudge through the thickness of life.

So, what are we to do as we drag ourselves through the resistance of this thickness? Do we look at it as an impediment? Or do we see it as a protective and helpful tension that causes us to slow down and understand life a bit more? In our fortyness, I propose that however we view the thickness, we should not let it weigh us down. Instead, we should understand it as a part of our being in this time of life. Everything that has contributed to it is a part of the narrative that makes us who we are.