Why I am a Complementarian (And Other Thinly Veiled Attempts to Start Fights in the Comments Section)

Photo credit Stacy Brumley

(I do hope you read that tongue in my cheek).

Deep into the Woods

This post should be at least two different posts, and most of it is really a rabbit trail, but for some reason I cannot pull it apart in my mind. Maybe because my brain is like spaghetti (I’ve actually never read this book, but it looks kind of connected, and do I ever relate to the title!) This post started its life in my head as a tribute to my husband and the way he pulled me through the worst of my illness. Then I realized I’d have to explain my beliefs in more depth, and then, with a pang, that I had not yet been specific about those beliefs. What a sad omission. I intend to remedy that now: to explain my faith and a bit about how it has been vital to my recovery. I hope to do it in a way that leaves you in no doubt whatever that no matter your beliefs, I sincerely welcome and desire your readership, your input and your discussion.

I am a Christian--a Christ-follower, Jesus-lover, baptized believer. Christie and I grew up with parents in full-time Christian ministry. We both chose early, and re-committed later more fully, to follow Jesus. I’m sure I can say for both of us that we could not have recovered without integrating our faith into the process. Because my faith in God is such an essential part of who I am and how I make sense of my illness and recovery, it will feature often in this blog. For me, wellness and faith had to coalesce, but not in the same way some of my Christian friends insisted they should.

I do plan to explicitly address some blog posts to the Christian community because I believe that we are lagging sadly behind the secular western world in understanding mental health. As I see it, the Church has had uniquely terrible responses to mental illness. While secular society is working hard to conquer the stigma surrounding mental illness, correcting popular vocabulary that mocks the mentally ill, and beginning to accept that mental illness is in most respects no different from physical illness, the Church is still condemning the mentally ill. Still telling people with depression to “buck up and rejoice in the Lord.” Still demanding that they repent of their worry and fear. Still frightening young girls struggling from eating disorders with talk of demon oppression, and in general over-spiritualizing mental illness. I’m dismayed to admit that the church is decades behind the rest of society in terms of accepting and reaching out to the mentally ill.

I’ve been hurt by the Church, but I still love it. I love it because my Savior loves it, and sees so much potential in it, as He sees potential in me (now there’s the real difficulty!). Mental illness is not a sin. I do not believe anxiety is necessarily a sin, nor is depression. Many disagree with me, and so throughout my writing on this blog I will attempt to explain my position and convince my Christian brothers and sisters. My hope is that some will reconsider their views on mental illness and the way they talk to their fellow Christians who struggle (or may be struggling--you never know!) with mental illness. For many of us, our healing needs to come within the Church. God wants to be our source of healing, but if His character and message are misrepresented or undermined by the Church, an individual’s faith can actually become a barrier to healing.

With that basic explanation of where I am coming from, let me now explain the complementarian bit, and why I am not actually trying to start a fight with this post.

Back onto the Bunny Trail...

There is a lot of discussion in the Christian community over the roles of women in the church. Traditionally, women have accepted a deferential role of service and giving, while men took on the leadership roles. This practical interpretation comes from an understanding of the Bible which states that since woman was created after man, woman is subservient to man.

Modern feminism has of course called into question this interpretation of Scripture, leading to much heated debate over which roles women can hold in church and family life.

Egalitarianism counters the traditional understanding by pointing out passages which show that there is no favoritism in God’s view of men and women--the best example being Galatians 3:28 which says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28; compare also Romans 3:22 and 1 Cor 12:13)--and that Christ’s own attitude towards women was revolutionary in the extreme patriarchal culture of his time. Egalitarians insist that women should have all the same privileges and responsibilities as men. Both men and women should be preachers and teachers, and in the marital relationship both must submit to each other and lead their family together.

Complementarians by contrast, insist on the clarity of verses of Scripture which state that man is the head over woman (1 Cor 11:3), and that men are therefore to take the leadership roles. It is not that women are of lesser importance or position than men, complementarians argue, but that they are different and therefore necessarily fill different roles. Men and women have complementary roles to play in both church and family: men as leaders, women as helpers.

Most of you will see this as a rather extreme oversimplification of the situation, but that is as far as I am able or willing to go in this blog post.

To be honest, I do not consider the role of women to be a central issue of dogma. I don’t think God cares all that much which side we land on in the debate--He cares much more that we recognize Him as the ultimate Head, and that we all equally submit to Him.

In this blog post, I present the weakest argument I know to support my complementarian stance, because I consider a weak argument sufficient.

So with that caveat, I will now present my argument. It is, as I said, one of the weakest forms of argument according to philosophy--an argument from personal experience. As such, it need not sway your thinking much. The experience was nonetheless significant to my healing.

Once Upon a Time

It began with an oath I took before God. I had just been scratched by a strange cat in Africa. I knew nothing about the cat, and next to nothing about diseases from cats that might be harmful in pregnancy, but I had heard of such a disease, and I was terrified. I believed I could have prevented the scratch, so I made a promise to God to be more vigilant about protecting my unborn child.

I later received a comforting email from my midwife assuring me that I could not get the dreaded illness from a cat scratch. However, the promise I had made still stood. A few days later, when I was offered a drink of the famed roadside-stand-fresh-pressed orange juice of the area, I took it even though I was unsure how sanitary the stand could be. Later I lay in a fevered fit, full of guilt and shame for having taken that drink. My still-fresh oath compounded my shame. I vowed then that I would never again do anything if I was uncertain it would be good for my child.

This oath hung like a giant’s gavel over my head. In the following weeks, I discovered I was unsure about most things. On second thought, I was unsure about everything. How could I be sure that the water the airplane stewardesses handed out was clean? How could I know I had not brought back a deadly germ in my suitcase? That I would not pass a harmful toxin to my unborn child if I used that shampoo, touched that doorknob, ate at that restaurant, got out of bed in the morning?

In response to a question from my mom one day, I told her and Jem about the vow I’d taken. Jem’s immediate response was, “That was a really stupid vow to make.”

My mom kindly tried to temper his remark. No, it wasn’t stupid. No Judy you aren’t stupid. But in spite of an initial sting, his gruff words were actually what I needed to hear. There was an ancient solidity, an authority, about his response.

I don’t remember if it occurred to me right away or if it took a few days, but I recalled an obscure passage in Numbers chapter 30:

If a woman vows a vow to the Lord and binds herself by a pledge, and her husband hears of it and says nothing to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand, and her pledges by which she has bound herself shall stand. 8 But if, on the day that her husband comes to hear of it, he opposes her, then he makes void her vow that was on her, and the thoughtless utterance of her lips by which she bound herself. And the Lord will forgive her.

I needed my husband to repudiate the oath from the beginning. I leaned into his authority. I asked him later if he had been thinking of that passage. No, he said, his reaction had been entirely out of his gut. I knew then that I’d been set free.

I didn’t live free right away. The fears had already carved deep striations through my brain that would take many months and much practice to heal. But there was never again a question in my mind that my vow held no power over me.

There were other similar moments throughout those months, when Jem stepped up in a rather knightly way to slay my dragons. One day he told me that God never expected mothers to protect--that was a father’s job. He declared himself responsible for my health. On another occasion, he came home early from work to carry me bodily into bed when I could do nothing but stand shaking and crying. His presence and wisdom through that dark time is unparalleled in any of the fairy tales. It wasn’t exciting or beautiful or romantic in the fairy tale sense, but it was a real-life, albeit earthy, rather dreary, fairy tale.

Worry Olympics

You’ve probably heard that the water the athletes in Rio will be rowing and swimming in is pretty gross. I have a morbid curiosity about such things, so I went looking online for more information. (Typically online research is a really bad idea for someone with OCD. I’m not supposed to be Googling health risks, and I don’t recommend you do either. In this case, it worked out in my favor, but...). Luckily, I came across this article.

The article states that people who ingest 3 teaspoons of the water at Rio’s Olympic venues could get violently ill. The title includes the word “just” (just 3 teaspoons), but it might as well read “as much as” for the effect it has on me. 3 teaspoons sounds like a ton! Granted, it may not be much when you consider how much water a swimmer is likely to ingest. But it is about ten thousand times more than the amounts I worry about, and in much less extreme situations--situations like water splashing out of my sink while I’m doing dishes, or my girl throwing stones in our city’s beautiful river. The article goes on to say that even though it would take 3 teaspoons to make illness a high probability, “whether they actually fall ill depends on a series of factors including the strength of the individual’s immune system.” My mind is blown. A whole three teaspoons and they might not even get sick?

Don’t get me wrong. I feel tremendous concern for the Rio athletes. But I don’t think I’ll worry about my girl splashing river water anymore. In fact, I just took her to throw stones in the river. Check out the size of the one she threw in. You can bet she made a splash.

"Aha!"

"Should I? Or not?"

Mud puddles are also a perennial favorite

TTC (Curious?)

Figgered you might be, whether you know what the abbreviation means or not. At least I was. Out of curiosity recently, I clicked on a “TTC Vlog” that came up in my YouTube feed. I soon learned, as some of you are about to learn (unless I was the last ignorant one), that “TTC” stands for “Trying to Conceive.”

Anyone out there feel a bit surprised? embarrased? uncomfortable about the notion of the TTC vlog? I did. My initial thought was: wow people, we are dying for community! Why else would anyone be willing to put out there for the entire world to see, analyze, maybe even laugh about, every detail of their personal uncertain attempt at conception?

Aside from my embarrassed surprise, this is a subject that brings up a heavy load of emotions. So I decided, perhaps against general caution, to address the topic on this blog.

No, this is not my TTC blog. I’m not telling, one way or another, so don’t get any ideas or start any speculative rumors! But I know that for many who are trying, TTC can be a source of almost unbearable heartache--because I’ve experienced it.

I must qualify that we did not try very long for lily-girl. I know many have tried much longer without the blessing we received, comparatively quickly. For those of you who cry out for a child that never comes, for those who have experienced a miscarriage, maybe multiple miscarriages, I cannot hope to say anything here that will ease your burden. But I believe the very least I can do is acknowledge it. Detailing my experience, brief and easy as it was compared to yours, may shed some light on the depth of your pain.

My story involves less waiting and less grief than many, but waiting and grief nonetheless. It involves a suspected--never confirmed--miscarriage, and years of mourning before the comfort of a pregnancy. Once we decided to try for a pregnancy, I cannot describe my waiting each month as impatient; it was rather more like desperate. Several months in a row I experienced pregnancy symptoms like breast tenderness, fatigue and nausea, and missing my normally clockwork period by a week and a half or more. Once when my period started nearly two weeks late, I was so convinced that I was pregnant that I went to the emergency room thinking I was having a miscarriage. I was beyond embarrassed when the doctor walked in and said, “So, you aren’t actually pregnant…”. I later learned these could have been symptoms of phantom pregnancy, or pseudocyesis. Yup, it’s a thing. Sometimes it lasts a few weeks. Rarely, the symptoms of pregnancy continue and progress a full 9 months, occasionally years, without a baby being present. Christie knew a woman who grew a belly, went into labor, and came back from the hospital without a baby, because there never had been one.

I felt like my body had turned traitor. It was teasing me, raising my hopes to dash them the harder. I felt like I went through the wringer every month. I felt like I grieved the loss of a baby every month.

Some of you may think my reaction melodramatic. I rather agree! I felt humiliated that I was so naive as to let my own body keep fooling me, embarrassed by my sheer desperation to have a child. But no matter how much I tried to teach my heart to feel differently, it remained unteachable, at least for the time. And all of the ache and desperation I’ve just described explains a lot about how I later experienced pregnancy, how on edge I was, how febrile, how anxious to get it just right.

I think we need to recognize that pregnancy and childbearing are fraught with emotion from before the very beginning. Waiting, more waiting, expectation, disappointment. Hoping and trying not to hope. It’s no wonder perinatal mental illnesses are so common. We’re raw and tender from the wringer.

When I was a teenager and young adult, my mom used to tell me, “Your reactions are valid. Your feelings are just as right as anyone else’s”. I never believed her. Generally, my own gut reflexes caused me either embarrassment or anger. Here was more evidence of my reflex-incompetence: this preposterous desperation and grief over trying to conceive. There was no good reason to feel so miserable, just as there was no reason for my body to feel and act pregnant.

When I later discovered that someone had given the experience a name (pseudocyesis/ phantom pregnancy), that someone else’s brain and body had joined forces to humiliate her, the realization that I was not alone loosened the grip at my gut.

The mental illnesses common in pregnancy range beyond postpartum depression, but we don’t hear about them. For example, you may be surprised to hear that anxiety disorders are actually more common than depression in the perinatal period, and mood disorders of all kinds are about as common during pregnancy as during the postpartum period. In particular, PTSD affects about 3 percent of pregnant women, and about 20 percent of women with OCD say their symptoms began in pregnancy (I got these stats from a wonderful resource called The Pregnancy and Postpartum Anxiety Workbook, by Wiegartz and Gyoerkoe, pp. 114 and 150). Because no one talks about them, pseudocyesis, OCD, PTSD and panic disorders ambush us, and at a time in our lives when we are most vulnerable. This is one of the main reasons for this blog. If we start talking more about perinatal mood disorders, if mental illness in general is no longer shrouded in secrecy and confusion, then we can hope to take out some of the shock and sting of shame. More women will have the courage to seek treatment. Fewer will believe they are alone. Above all dear readers, I want you to know that should you find your gut going through a wringer-washer of pain and guilt and shame, YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Understanding my vulnerability helped disprove my original mortified assumption that no other brain had ever reacted as melodramatically as mine.  And then at least I was fighting a better-known giant. At least I knew the giant had been fought and beaten before. And now hopefully, so do you.

the new sock game

Well, I am back to writing after a long hiatus. This has been a terrible spring for illness! Our family has had a continuous string of colds and flus for the past couple of months. Taking care of a sick toddler and husband, and feeling under the weather myself has left me little time or energy to write. So that’s my excuse. I’m back now, and really hoping you’ll stick with me!

A ton of ideas for this blog have come up for me, so I’m not sure where to start. I’ve decided to start small and tell you about one of the tougher struggles I had recently. I’ve been doing well for the most part, but there are still plenty of battles in my brain. OK to be completely honest, even at this stage of recovery some days are just a matter of getting through a moment at a time, weathering a storm of worries that hurl themselves at my consciousness from various sides. It isn’t possible to explain to someone who has not dealt with OCD what it is like to live with an obsessive-compulsive brain--even a recovering one. It’s a lot of work. What looks to others like the simplest decision could be a major conundrum, an agonizing wrestling match in the brain of someone suffering from OCD. So, in an attempt to help you see through the eyes of another….

Lily-girl and I--as a team (haha)--started a new job recently. A friend of mine went back to work after her second maternity leave, and needed someone flexible to babysit on a casual schedule. So, a few times a month I take my "co-worker" over to their place, and get to watch three babies instead of one. I love it! My friends’ kids are perfect little angels (pretty well), and so full of zest for life. They are great companions for my lonely only, and the extra cash doesn’t hurt. Still, it is my first job post-partum and post-OCD-recovery, and I am encountering some unique challenges. Like when someone else’s child sticks her hand in my mouth. Or when navigating someone else’s kitchen, I think I’m reaching for a jar of peanut butter for a quick snack and find it is full of vegetable peelings for the compost (Aaargh! One of my absolute worst fears, by the way).

The particular day I am remembering was the warmest day of the spring thus far, so the babies played outside for most of the morning and got filthy in the sandbox. I didn’t think it would bother me so much, but it did. Don’t ask me why: I’m trying not to get into details in case someone with OCD reads this blog! Suffice it to say that I was experiencing unreasonably high levels of anxiety for the rest of the day. I was particularly worried about lily-girl’s sandy socks, which I intended to change when we got home, but forgot. She and her Daddy decided this was the day to invent a new game with those socks, and they were playing it on our unmade bed, right on the surfaces I would later lay my face on. Of course I wanted to change the sheets, and wondered if that would really be unreasonable. But I didn’t have time for such a major endeavor (our only other set of sheets is rather too small for our bed) and besides, I knew Jem would be annoyed and say that I was giving in to the OCD. I decided instead to flip the pillow over and sleep between the top sheet and blanket.

Some of you may think this story is funny. Some may recognize the pain of the dilemma. Some may have no idea what I am talking about! Whatever your reaction, I just hope you recognize that it is hard. I can't know if I made the “right” decision--should I have pushed myself more to face the fear? Or was I actually too nonchalant about a real danger? There is so much self-doubt involved in navigating life with OCD.

But you know what I am discovering? There is grace. There is grace when I make mistakes (whether real or imagined)--like forgetting to change my daughter’s socks, or not washing my hands “perfectly” every time. And there is grace for where I am in dealing with OCD. There is grace for not making the “right” decision all of the time. There is grace for not being completely "recovered" (whatever that would mean!) There is enough grace, even for me.

Watch Your Mouth!

Recently I was telling my hubby about a new friend who’d confided in me that her mother is bipolar. Well, I said it that way, “her mother is bipolar,” but then suddenly remembered that this is not at all what she said. She said: “My mom has bipolar disorder.” Now I’ve always been big on choosing words carefully, especially as it relates to the issue of mental illness, but it never occurred to me until that day that my grammar could be contributing to the stigma surrounding mental illness.

For example, I often catch myself saying “O, I’m so OCD.” I confess, “I used to be anorexic.” I’ve heard others say, “My son is ADD” or “My daughter is bipolar.”

Could you imagine if we talked about other illnesses in this way? Imagine saying, “He is hepatitis,” or “I have a friend who is epilepsy” or even “My daughter is a cough”! I’m sure most people would say I’ve descended to the level of the ridiculous here.

We do use descriptors like “diabetic” or “myopic” with this structure; i.e. “She is diabetic”. Even then however we wouldn’t dream of saying that someone is diabetes. There is no such constraint against using “OCD” as a noun in an equative sentence like “She is OCD.” “Bipolar” is a little bit ambiguous from a linguistic perspective (sorry for getting linguistic-y on you. Well, not too sorry): in a sentence like “She is bipolar,” the word “bipolar” could be either an adjective (descriptor) or a noun, but I’m guessing from the way I’ve heard other mental disorders named in equative sentences, that most people are using it as a noun, like “diabetes” or “influenza”.

Even as an adjective though, using disease words to describe people is only done in very specific circumstances, and very rarely. The idea of saying about a person that “she is cancerous” makes my stomach turn! How do we get away with it with mental illnesses that are just as horrific and terminal?

No matter how we may try to justify ourselves, the way we talk does influence the way we think. No, language does not control or define our worldview. But it has its effect. Let’s not equate persons with diseases.

I’m just sayin’. Watch your mouth. I’ll be watching mine.

(If you want to read more about identity and fighting the person and disease equation, read my first post, here.)

Why oh why

Writing last week’s post on resolutions got me thinking, “Why would anyone need/ want to read my resolutions?”

Well, for the same reason you would want to read any of my blog posts: because they're brilliant, of course! No actually, this blog is about fostering mental health, and one of the skills that contributes to mental health is being able to set and work towards goals (resolutions), and celebrate achievements. If you read my last post, you know I’m not talking stereotypical New Year’s resolutions that begin with great intentions, no way of measuring success, and a sense of failure before you’ve turned the January page on your calendar. I’m talking SMART goals, with a huge measure of grace for yourself when (not if) you fall off the bandwagon periodically. Those kinds of goals will give you purpose and a sense of accomplishment as you take each measurable step. Several of the resolutions I chose for myself also had to do with practices that will strengthen my mental health--and could do the same for yours too.

But setting and working towards goals is just one of a set of skills that I’ve learned are critical to recovery and maintaining mental health. In some of my posts this year, I’ll be talking about those skills, and the “workouts” I’ve used to strengthen myself in these areas. The process of recovery is so complex, and different for everyone, but I do think it can be helpful to hear what it was like for someone else--I know I so appreciated hearing from a friend of mine who struggled with OCD in her first pregnancy, and survived--fully recovered!

I thought this would be a good time to review the purpose of this blog and my plans for this year's entries. I know I have not been a regular blogger, but one of my resolutions is to write more, and I intend for this blog to be a large part of that writing.

First I'll just review the purpose of this blog. Please note that while I have consulted Christie on this post, I do not claim to speak for her. You can read about Christie's original intent for the blog in this post, and you'll find we are on a very similar page. I'm sure both of our intents have changed a little over time though, which is why I thought I'd post about the whys again. Since Christie now has TWO lovely girls--see her post here!--you will likely be hearing from me a little more often than from her.

Here are my reasons for writing this blog:

-Finding my voice. I love writing, and I want to learn to write better.

-Helping myself. Writing helps me process and retain what I learn. I’ve learned so much through the process of recovery, and I sure don’t want to forget it--it came at quite a cost!

-Helping you. I want you to know that if you or a loved one are going through a struggle with mental illness, you are not alone. I hope you can learn the easy way a little of what I’ve learned the hard way. And I want you to know that if you have any questions, or just want to talk, I'm here.

By the way, a little note about the comment section. It is available, but we have chosen to screen comments before they get published. This gives us a chance to go over them and delete ones that we deem unhelpful. We decided to do this while we were both still in very fragile emotional states, so that Christie could read the comments on my posts before I did and vice-versa, in case there was anything that could be really upsetting. We'll keep it that way now because it gives you the chance to ask questions or comment privately. Just let us know in the comment that you want to keep it private, and we can respond without publishing your comment. You may need to give us an e-mail address or some way to respond to you if you don't want us to answer in a public comment or blog post!

Now on to what I plan to write about this year. As I said, I’ll be talking about my recovery process, and skills I’ve learned that should be useful for anyone. But I’m also planning to touch on a wide variety of subjects pertaining to mental health. I’ve read a few books on the subject along the way, so I’ll do some book reviews for you. I have a post started on the language we use to talk about mental illnesses, and what that says about our attitude towards them. And I have a germ of an idea (whoops, no pun intended that time) for a series on what OCD has taught me--not what I’ve learned by recovering, but what OCD itself has taught me.

One of the issues surrounding mental illness that fascinates me most is a bit theological, but I hope some of you might appreciate reading about my musings on the relation between sin and sickness. A lot of mental illnesses lead to actions and attitudes that many Christians would label as “sinful.” But is it sin if you have a mental illness? Does a person need to repent for having a mental illness? (Sneak peak and reassurance: I think the answer is no, but...) Stay tuned!

Although not directly related to perinatal mental health, I’ll probably find a way to slip in some posts about passions I’ve recently discovered that are putting purpose back into my life post-depression: fair trade, minimalism, fostering community, and cloth diapering! Who would have thought someone with OCD would end up cloth diapering her toddler? ;-) Let me say right away however, I will not be arguing for these passions to be everyone’s passions--or way of life. I know they aren’t for everyone. But I do want to remove false barriers to them, like ones that used to be up in my own life.

Through it all, there will be stories and pictures from my daily life, quotations from other authors I’ve been reading, songs, and maybe a few poems. I’ve found grace to be a major theme in my life, and I expect it will be a dominant theme in these posts.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please stop by again soon; I’ll be posting. And if you have any questions at all, or topics you would like me to address, please leave a comment here on the blog or on my Facebook page. Thanks so much for reading, friends!

"Let me tell you a secret..."

"I hereby resolve"--J

It’s a new year, it’s a new day!

I’ve been thinking a lot about New Year’s resolutions lately--please don’t groan. I know everyone else and their dog and their dog’s nephew’s cousin (do dogs have cousins and nephews? I guess they must) are writing about New Year’s resolutions. I realize New Year's resolutions are extremely cliché. I know that if you’ve made any of your own in some previous, more idealistic life, you’ve inevitably been frustrated and depressed by the whole thing. And then of course there’s the stereotypical New Year’s resolution like “I’m gonna get fit,” which turns out to be un-measurable and unachievable (let’s go back to grade 10 CALM class, or whatever they called that ‘life skills’ class at your school: a goal must be specific and measurable, etc. etc.--remember SMART?) Even if your goals are “SMART,” you’ll often go through periods of failure and frustration because, guess what, you’re human!

No resolution should be sold without batteries of grace: if at first you don’t succeed, forgive, forgive, forgive yourself. It’s a simple concept, but very hard to actually practice for those of us with a tendency to perfectionism and negative thinking. You know that grace you give your best friend, when she is late again, or does that really annoying thing with her napkin? You turn a blind eye or you gently tease, but mainly you forgive. Kindness. Patience. Give that to yourself. I’m learning that failure isn’t a reason to punish myself, rather, it’s a chance to re-evaluate what I am doing and my priorities. Sometimes, I need to change something about my time management or efficiency in order to get it done. Sometimes, it’s the priority I’ve placed that might need to be down-shifted a little, if only for a time.

Resolutions help me focus on the big picture. I am a detail-oriented person; I tend to get  sidetracked by details and forget the whole point  for the details in the first place. “Can’t see the forest for the trees” type thing. Doing research projects in school, I would spend weeks “researching,” aka. chasing bunny trails through mountainous stacks of books. I’d find myself with just a day--or night--left to actually write the paper, and with nothing but bunny trails that didn’t fit with the path I’d initially chosen for my paper. So I developed a strategy to keep myself from getting “lost in the forest,” so to speak. I would set my alarm for thirty minutes or so while I was researching, and when the alarm went off, I’d take a few minutes to stand up, stretch, get some air into my head, and remind myself of my goals for the paper. If I didn’t set my alarm, I’d come up with all sorts of excuses for why I couldn’t stop at the half hour, or I would ignore the clock, or just lose track of time. I had to force myself to get out of detail-mode for a minute and review the big picture.

One important note, however. Resolutions themselves are not the big picture. After reviewing the big picture, I think about all the itty-bitty steps I need to take to get there, and then go after that first itty, bitty step. That’s a resolution--resolving to take the first step. And I’m talking itty-bitty baby steps here, people. You can always make a bigger goal later, once you’ve managed the first step.

I realize some people think resolutions shouldn’t be relegated to one day of the year only, and I agree. I’m not saying to make goals only on New Year’s day. But New Year’s is just a great, logical, albeit arbitrary time to “set your alarm,” take a break, take some time to think about the big picture, and make some real, SMART goals!

Here are a few of mine:

I hereby resolve:

that when I wake up in the morning dreading the day and wishing I didn’t have to get out of my lovely warm, safe bed (OK, so I’m NOT a morning person), I will set my mind instead on the possibilities the day offers for God to provide abundant life;

that I will mindfully enjoy what I am given in life, just for the sake of enjoyment, knowing that it is for enjoyment that God has given it. Once a day I will taste, smell, look at, listen to or just snuggle something or someone I love, just for the pure enjoyment of it, mindfully paying attention to the gratitude that wells up in my heart (or doesn’t--I know it won’t always, and that’s OK too.)

When my mind leaps to assume blame (whether my own or others’), I will slow down and tell myself: “Don’t assume bad intentions.” It’s pretty rare that the intentions are really bad, and easier to forgive when I assume the best.

I will use my "alarm" principle monthly, weekly, daily, even hourly on bad days(!), either by setting an actual alarm or a calendar appointment, e-mail reminder, weekly routine, etc. I will take 5, 10, 15 minutes to review goals and priorities, and keep the Main Thing the Main Thing.

to simplify my life by getting rid of useless and un-beautiful objects, activities and thoughts. I will start by taking--or just setting aside--one bag of stuff to a thrift store once every week.

to just write, every day if possible, and not care if it comes out wrong sometimes. That’s what editing is for!

that when--not if--I fail in the above, I will serve myself a heaping helping of grace. Help yourself, too.