Tag Archives: Parenting

Our Loving Father

Treasure

by Lydia Floren

Birthdays were (and still are) a big deal in the Floren home. When my kids were younger, I would plan special celebrations for them, and sometimes (ok, more than sometimes) I would go a little over the top. When each of our sons turned six, we had a treasure hunt. A dozen or so first graders each made a pirate’s hat, and were given a treasure map and a paper bag. Then, they hunted all over the yard for clues, filling up their bag with prizes as they went. Finally, they were led to the back yard, where a big X marked the spot in the dirt. (Not too original, but effective, especially for a 6 year old.) It was wonderful to watch them attack that dirt, and then after unearthing their very own treasure box, to carefully lift it out of the earth. It was fun to see their eyes light up when they pryed open the lid and discovered the gold coins inside. (Gold coins filled with chocolate, but hey, they were gold.)

Every person on earth—every soul—is a treasure to God. We are His beloved, worth sacrificing His son for. God loves us each with a tenderness, a gentleness, that can take our breath away. He eagerly attacks the mountain of guilt and shame Satan heaps on us, and replaces these lies with His truth: we are free from condemnation. We are whole. We are beloved. And after He gently brushes away the dirt, He delights in showing us—and the world– the bright beauty he has placed within us. The fruitful and fruit-filled life that comes from being loved.

God’s love is life changing. And soul-sustaining.

NOMB Part II: Curbing The Impulse To Fix Others

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by Lydia Floren

NOMB (None Of My Business) Part II: Curbing The Impulse To Fix Others

When I see someone else’s struggle and “feel their pain”, I want so much to make it better. WHAT’s a person to DO? Here are a few tips:

#1 Face yourself:

Check your motives. Be honest with yourself about why you want to make it right. Your urge to fix is probably not as altruistic as it seems. Our motives are often mixed: sure we want to help, but we may also want to avoid the discomfort of watching others suffer or the annoyance of their “imperfection.”
Accept your limits in understanding and skill, and the specific ways God has asked you to serve in this world.

#2 Remind yourself of truth:

Pain is important. We are programmed to avoid pain at any cost, but experiencing pain is necessary; the stove’s heat or the wind’s cold prompt us to practical action. Leprosy is a malady where the nerves that detect pain are destroyed. Much of the disfigurement of leprosy comes because of the lack of feeling, not from the disease itself: a burn goes undetected, or an infection untreated, which leads to irrevocable tissue damage. Pain notifies us of danger or a need to change, even if that is just taking better care of ourselves.
Suffering is a part of life on earth. “In the world,” Jesus said, “you will have tribulation. But take courage: I have overcome the world.” He understands that we will have suffering—He experienced it himself many times. But he also knows that accepting hardship is not admitting defeat: far from it. God works all things out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.
God uses all the pain in our lives, and sometimes He allows us to suffer for a reason. If He does so, He can be trusted: He has a good purpose in it, either for us or for someone else.
Your fixing can actually do more harm than good. What you think is helpful for someone else can often be downright harmful; how could you possibly know?

#3 Pray:

Thank God that
He is at work in this situation, and good will come of it.
His love for you and your loved ones is much greater than your own.
His ideas, His strategy, His perspective, His understanding are far beyond you’re own.
He will let you know if He wants you to do something in this situation.
He will give you the self-control to resist the urge to step in where you don’t belong, and the courage to step forward when He leads you to act.
Talk to God about the specifics. He already knows what is going on, but also knows that you need the listening ear of a loved one to hear your concerns. (It really helps. Trust me.)
Ask God what He wants you to do or not do.
Listen for His answers.

#4 Act: There are many ways God MAY ask you to help. You might be led to do one or a combination of the following:

Intercede. Often when I see difficulties in another’s life, I feel like God’s primary request is for me is to pray for that person. This is not a last resort. It is actually the most powerful action I can take because prayers invite the power of God’s spirit into the situation. Perfect power and perfect love, working on the problem! Who doesn’t want that?
Encourage. The most important thing a person can do–outside of praying–for someone in difficulty is to encourage them. Encouragement can be as simple as a smile, a hug, a note, or a shared laugh. It is easy to encourage via phone, text, Facebook, or email. A moment of thoughtfulness can make a world of difference in someone’s day, especially when they are going through a hard time.
Listen. God gave us two ears and one mouth, right? Listening is a powerful encouragement. Giving someone a safe place to articulate a problem or vent emotion is actually therapeutic. I have seen this over and over in the practice of medicine.
Serve. Practical acts of service, such as a gift, a visit, a meal, an offer to babysit are “cups of cold water” given in Jesus’ name. They help lighten another’s load in the most literal sense.

“It’s God’s problem. He should worry”
To be honest, it is a relief to acknowledge my limits, and accept my inability to fix others. When I do, I find I worry less. I pray more. My focus centers on God’s sufficiency rather than specific problems. And I am more likely to pay attention when God leads me to how and when I should act, or if it is best for me just to concentrate on prayer.

At most I might be a small part of a solution to someone’s problem. I am certainly not meant to be The Solution. Only God can be that; when I try, I just get in the way.

Accepting my limits frees me to do what God has already asked me to do—what we are all called to do in this world: love people. This love may take the form of prayer, encouragement, listening, and/or serving.

It’s our job to love folks. It’s God’s job to fix them.

Recent Series: NOMB Part I: Letting God Be The Fixer; Patience

NOMB Part I: Letting God Be The Fixer

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by Lydia Floren

NOMB (None Of My Business) Part I: Letting God Be The Fixer

Fixing Things

I am a fixer by nature and nurture. By nature, according to the Myers-Briggs personality test I am an Extroverted-Intuiter-Feeler-Perceiver, and ENFP’s like me enjoy solving problems. You could say that my tendency to want to fix things is hardwired in my DNA. By nurture, I grew up the middle child. As such, I was the de facto ambassador in parental negotiations and the swing vote in sibling disputes. My fix-it-ness was reinforced in medical school, where I learned to analyze and diagnose and advise and treat all sorts of ailments. You could say I had a “license to fix.”

But nothing has fine-tuned my fixing skills more than motherhood. As every parent knows, moms are required to fix all kinds of stuff like scrapes, scuffles, bad manners, and hurt feelings. Oh yeah, and spilled milk, throw-up, and crises in the carpool. And—lest we forget–moms are more often than not responsible for fixing dinner.

No wonder it is hard for me to turn off that fixing nature. (And why would I want to? I’m so good at it! But I must—MUST– resist the urge. Fixing other people’s lives is waaaaay out of my job description. It is one thing to help someone solve a problem when asked (such as in my role as physician), or when someone depends on you (as in mothering a small child). But most of the time people don’t need—or want–me to diagnose what is wrong with them and try to correct it. That is almost always the worst thing a person can do. Ask any teenager.

Folks, including teenagers, just want to be loved and accepted. They want to be enjoyed for who they are. They want someone to believe in them and pray for them. People want someone to listen while they talk out their dilemmas so they can come up with their own solutions.

SIGH.

OK, so how does one curb this fixing habit? Here’s a great start: Remind yourself every day that YOU ARE NOT GOD.

Note to self: I am not God.

I am not God. I know this shocks those of you who know me, but I just wanted to get it out there so you could get used to the idea.

Here are a few additional reminders that are helping me curb my fixing habit:

I don’t know the big picture. I do not have enough information to even judge what another person’s problems are, much less to solve them. I might see glimpses, but they are just that—flashes of insight. It takes much more information than this to make an accurate diagnosis and recommend a remedy. As we in medicine like to say, “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
I don’t have the skills. Another axiom in the practice of medicine is, “Know your limits.” Not only do I lack adequate information, I also lack the ability to “fix” someone else.
It is not my job. As much as I might act like it sometimes, God has not asked me to fix anyone. I don’t think He ever would, and it would be beyond me if He did.
My “fixing” might hurt more than it helps.

What about you? Do you ever have the inclination to try to FIX THINGS? If so, then repeat after me:

“I am not God. I am not God. I am not God.”

Oh, gracious! There I go again. Now I’m trying to fix YOU! Ugh!

Recent Series: Learning to Fish, Our Problems Are Not The Problem, Four Practical Steps

Beginning With The End In Mind: Goal Series- Part 2

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by Lydia Floren

We have three sons, who all played sports at various stages while growing up, and we quickly learned that youth sports were not only competitive for children, but even more so for parents. When our son made a great play, we would get more high fives from other parents in the stands than our kids would from their teammates. When there was a victory, there was as much or more cheering on the sidelines as there was on the field. (Of course at the early stages, the main reason the players were cheering at the end of the game is because it was time for treats! Aaaah! Those were the days!)

So how does a parent cope with the temptation to be drawn into this ultra-competitive environment? And how does one then teach their child to keep things in perspective? Well, I could write a whole book on this (I made many mistakes) but a couple questions really helped me keep my feet on the ground through the whole kids-in-sports thing:

“Is my child likely to be in a professional athlete?”
“Does he have that drive, that desire, and that amount of natural talent?
“Is that the way I see God leading him?”

I asked myself these question repeatedly over the years, and my answer was invariably “no.” (Sorry, guys.) If most kids aren’t destined for ESPN highlights, the next question is obvious:

“Why should kids even participate in organized sports?”

What was the goal, the aim of that activity?
If it wasn’t to get him a scholarship to a Division I school on the way to a pro contract deal with commercials, what was and is the point?

Unfortunately for many of us parents, the answer might be more about us than about them. Be honest, sideliners. At some point or some level we have all enjoyed basking in the glow of our kids’ successes, not because of what it says about them, but what it says about us: “you must be a good parent because your kid is a great sportsman.” (How warped is that?)

There are many good reasons for enrolling your kids in organized sports that have nothing to do with grooming them for a professional career. (Years later I continue to see, long after their playing days were over, the great things my sons still carry with them from their playing days.) Here are a few great reasons to have a child in organized sports: physical fitness, learning how to be a team member, being a part of a group, learning discipline, hard work, excellence, selflessness, honesty, restraint, self-esteem, working with good and bad coaches [translate bosses].

Organized sports teach kids how to lose, to win, to encourage, to stay positive, to be consistent, to do the job you have been assigned, to lead, to follow. I could go on. None of these things in any way requires that your child be a standout performer on the fast-track to the pros. In fact, having that star distinction can hamper him/her from gleaning many of these benefits.

What is success?
I am getting to a point here. What is success? Making a bunch of money and having a body that doesn’t work well for the last half of your life? Risking life-altering injury for a few moments of glory? Spending all your college days on the field or in the pool instead of exploring your many other interests and abilities?

How does God view success? What would he consider a worthy aim in life? Jesus was quite clear on this point:

“Love the Lord your god with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.”

Or as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 14:1:

“Make love your aim.”

Now that is a goal worth aiming for.

Share with us: How do you decide and review goals? We would love to hear from you.

Recent posts: Taking Aim: Goal Series – Part I, A Note In Your Lunchbox, To Be, To-Do To Be

Peace in Chaos

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Andrew and I were the first of our friends to have a baby, and as all new parents know, that first little one goes with you everywhere. When Michael was first born we were going to a lot of weddings, and so Michael attended his first nuptials when he was just 2 months old. Afterwards at the reception we stuck him in his carrier and put him up on a table next to the dance floor so we could keep a close eye on him. Michael sucked on his pacy and slept while we twisted to “Pink Cadillac,” shagged to “Sweet Home Alabama” and slow danced to “Endless Love. ” He was conked out for hours.

Noise is Just Noise

How did he do that? Why didn’t all that noise wake him up? Why wasn’t he afraid?

He was fed. Warm. Safe. He already knew from past experience that if he cried–or even so much as stirred–there would be many hands to soothe and care for him.

The noise was just noise. He tuned it out.

God’s Peace

God gives us that kind of peace, a peace that comes from knowing that he is right there, protecting us and taking care of us. It is a peace that has nothing to do with the noise of life. It is an inner calm, a knowing, that He is with us—within us—and He loves us.

We don’t understand this. We can’t. We must just accept it. And know that when we become aware of the din, or of our need, he is right there. We are safe. We are loved. That is all we need to know.

God’s peace has nothing to do with our circumstances, and everything to do with His presence.

The Fruit of the Month for April is peace. Share with us your links, thoughts, experiences of God’s peace!