- Not The Only One!
- Post# 55
- ” Speak Life”
- Howdy!
- I want to again share my appreciation with you faithful sometimes glutton for punishment people ☺️☺️, just kidding, I get that some of you are like family, while others are scratching your heads and still trying to figure it out, and if that is you, you are in good company☺️☺️. I am once again being reminded that our words are powerful and at times can represent the difference between life and death. I can get that may sound a little over dramatic but it doesn’t lessen the truth of that fact. There are just countless people out there who are carrying around wounds and scars from parents or someone else in a position of authority who spoke death into their lives. Whether it took the form of ” you will never amount to anything “, or ” you are dumb, or stupid “, and as hard as it may be for some of you to believe, there are children who have heard their parents utter the words, ” I wish that I never had you”….ouch! Speaking death is Speaking words of discouragement, that cuts to the soul and very essence of who someone is and can often alter their perspectives on life, their value and worth, and to their motivations as to what they will or will not pursue in life. The one place in the world, where everyone should feel valued and safe is in their home and with family, you know, the ones who are supposed to be your biggest supporters and always have your backs. We also know this is not how life always operates or offers us. The word dysfunctional has been so closely connected with family that you can track it back some seven thousand years or so all the way back to Cain and Abel. I get and have encountered those pristine individuals, who call themselves living according to the ten commandments, yet they can’t usually name more than two or three of them, if that many, and they very self righteously profess that they have never committed murder, well if you have ever assassinated some one’s character , in your gossip of them around the break room or wherever you share your best behind their back , back biting, then you are guilty of murder. I talk about us all being damaged and broken in some way, and it is truly regretful when it can be traced back to the place where we should experience the most love and acceptance. I often talk about some of the construction projects that God has going on in my life at any given time. I have also made it clear that I’m not always fond of the timing or the impending doom of learning something new or more honestly something that I thought that I had already mastered. The increased sensitivity thing is something that I battle through on a regular basis, because I honestly sometimes view it as more of a weakness than a strength, but that is also something that God is chipping away at, and giving me a new perspective of . The other one that I have been having push back about is the gift of encouragement. I have seen it displayed and it fascinates me that , first is that ,it came out of me ( my mouth) and second, the sometimes huge effects that it can have on others. It’s like it flows out of me and I have no idea, where the words came from. This can be plainly seen in people’s love languages and since I register a big fat zero, when it comes to words of affirmation, I want to discount it for others and the cynical side of me , has trouble connecting with people feeling loved and valued by someone pumping verbal sunshine up their backsides ☺️☺️. I guess its about whatever works for you. So, once again our words carry weight and can be devastating or hugely impactful to inspire others to great things. I’m a long way away from being a teenage football player, getting a pep talk from the coach, convincing me that I could run through a brick wall, but once upon a time ☺️☺️. I’ve never heard a speech that would encourage me to take part in a revolution to over throw the government, but others have. I have shared from time to time that I was raised with tough love, nothing like a good kick in the pants. I also confessed that I was a slow learner as to how everyone doesn’t respond to , or reacts positively to that action plan. Some rise to, but others crumble under, for me it was the whole swim or sink thing and drowning was not an option for me, well I guess it was, but I wouldn’t be here to entertain you with my busy brain.☺️☺️. If there is such a thing as the crust of the matter, then let me get to it. This is a personal observation on my part and perhaps my little adventure may encourage someone else to step out of their comfort zone and come along side and try to encourage or mentor someone else. My encounter took place with a married, thirty -something couple with three kids, so could be my daughter or son, but it is not. They are the Stereotypical two income family with both of them being exhausted between work and trying to parent their three daughters. The offer was for lunch after church on a Sunday afternoon. The wife had already said no thank you to the offer on behalf of her husband, because he had expressed interest in a project at the house that he deemed necessary or important, but I pushed past her objection , and asked her husband, and wanted him to answer the invitation for lunch or not ,because they both looked as if they were in need of a little refreshing or down time, and surprisingly he said yes! We hit a Cracker Barrel, that was experiencing staffing issues, which has some how become the norm across America….still !, So that being said we had a significant amount of time together waiting on a table as well for our meal . In our conversations together I detected a little dysfunction in there connection with one another, and as well with their kids. Ok, here is my sidebar ,and this is another one of those two edged sword things. In my mind, I read people really well, and I’m extremely perceptive, call it a gift or a curse, am I always right, ? absolutely not, but more times than not my people sniffer is usually pretty dead on. As we chatted, I discovered that he was a husband and father struggling to get it together. Now, when I say get it together, I’m not talking about finances or time management. He is struggling in his role , for the biggest job of his life and that is being a good father and husband. I will say this and you can take it anyway that you wish, but this is not a skill set that comes natural to a lot of men. If you have never had sacrificial servanthood model for you in the home, it is not an always natural next step for us guys. I will confess that I had my fair share of struggles in this arena as well, it may sound jaded or slanted, but the majority of the time I was married, my wife was a stay at home mom. I get that we are men, but if we are both working outside of the home and putting in similar type hours, why does the majority and yes, sometimes all of the rearing of the kids and house work falls on the women? I don’t have a simple answer for you to that question, it could be selfishness, or just a lack of self awareness, but I doubt the latter because most of the wives I know can be pretty vocal when it comes to an unequal or unhealthy division of labor in the home. That being said, it’s a matter of manning up, or completely disregarding the happy wife/ happy life dynamics.☺️☺️ I don’t take him to be a bad husband and father, yet he isn’t completely getting the big picture. If we go back to the love language thing, then mine is and always has been about touch and time, so yes, in the past, I’ve been a selfish prick, and much of me diving in to do more, was to free her up to have more time for me. I know that there are a certain percentage of women who see that as a viable exchange, so the selfish part comes in as, when does she find time for herself? As I listened to them talk and communicate, I could tell that they both deeply love their kids, but could also determine that they were just a little bit loosing what had once drawn them together. I could tell she was overwhelmed as he and I talked about his passion for hunting. I will give him credit, that he has done less of that to be more involved around the house. There was this movie and I’m not going to look it up, I don’t remember the name, so research if you wish ,but it was Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston and I don’t remember if they had kids or not, but there was this scene, where they were fighting about who does the dishes, and for the life of him, he didn’t and couldn’t understand why it would mean so much to her if he just wanted to do the dishes opposed to having to do the dishes. See, this is perspective, if we see it as service as in I get to, opposed to have to, then it becomes about love, and it builds equity and value to the relationship. The young dad at lunch, clearly has not grasped this concept. Again it doesn’t make him bad as much as it does just ill-equipped and uninformed. As much as we may not like to admit it, but there is training that goes on and has to take place in order for you to be successful in your home, marriage and your life. If you think not, just leave the toilet seat up and let a half asleep wife take a plunge in the middle of the night and, you will be immediately retrained and perhaps at the cost of a restful nights sleep ☺️☺️. I’m amazed at the things that we miss. I wrote a post a little ways back about “Shinny Things “. We are so easily distracted by things that seem important, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much!. People love to talk about themselves, so as I asked questions over lunch, any time that I could pair up a life lesson that I had learned along the way, I would share and hope that it would get him thinking and hopefully gain a little insight from some of my past blunders. See, I wasn’t raised with a caring father figure in the home, I didn’t say that I didn’t have one, but the emphasis was on the caring part☺️. All things were pointing towards the fact that he had a similar upbringing, so the modeling part was out the window . We are all for the most part slanted towards some kind of selfishness and if you don’t even get that your partner is being overwhelmed, then that is a double whammy. As men, we can sometimes be a little thick and slow, that in itself is not a crime, but it does mean we need to often redouble our efforts, because to be honest, a lot of the time it’s just not our best offering. I’ve mentioned it before, but by the time the man smells the hint of smoke, as in something is wrong in the relationship, for the woman it is a three alarm fire, fully engulfed blaze, and you going out with the boys last night coming home smelling like warm beer and cheap strippers was just throwing more gas on the blaze☺️☺️. Women are just more social than men, and they can talk about anything, and I do mean anything. They can meet another woman in the check out line at the grocers and the next thing you know they are swapping child birth experiences, with placenta being thrown around like they were talking about a pair of shoes or something ☺️☺️ . Men aren’t built like that and I want to say, thank God! Women share and they are more willing to help one another out. When it comes to us guys we have two major problems here. The first is we often see other men as competitors and we are not the ones who usually go back to help the guy who lost his footing, after all we see that as weakness that you can’t get your crap together…..train harder!! The second is more deadly for us as men and that is pride. We don’t like to admit when we make a mistake or when we are wrong, and we sure as hell don’t want to broadcast our failures and short comings, because that just makes us an even bigger failure. We need to get past worrying about so much what others think of us and focus on personal growth. Earlier I spoke about lessons that I didn’t want to learn, that God deems necessary to get me to more of the conformity of His one and only Son. The truth that I don’t always like to acknowledge is that , without pushing through the painful things and times, there is no growth, you know, the old, no pain , no gain thing, much truth wrapped up in those four little words. As men, we need to step up and be more willing to give other and younger men the wisdom of our life lessons regardless of how bad it cast a disparaging light on us. We need to as humbly as possible hold our heads up and say, that is who I use to be and that is what I learned as I took my lumps in life. I’m not one who walks around with my emotions on my sleeve, I will even come right out and say that I’m a very private person, with a close knit circle that is not easy to penetrate. However, if at any time I can be vulnerable and help someone else out along the way, then I’m all about that, and that is partially why this blog exists. In case you missed it, this is not a happy go lucky place all the time. My failures and successes are all used by God and He makes sense of things that in other terms would just be FUBAR.☺️☺️☺️. Thanks to the grace of God, I am now a grandparent and a little bit on the other side of things , and sometimes I think we forget how hard it is and can be to raise a family in this crazy world of ours. People need help, if not financially, often it’s about encouragement as in just hang in there, God’s not done yet, He got me through and He can do the same for you. Much of what I shared is from a male perspective, and I’m sure that there are young women out there as well, who may feel ill-equipped for all of life’s challenges. Again, I’m not super crazy about the increased sensitivity , but God has placed it there for a purpose, so I guess we should use it to benefit others.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
- Reply
- ,
- Reply All
- or
- Forward
Send
- Reply
- ,
- Reply All
- or
- Forward
Send
