Connection That Gives Life!

This past week was certainly filled with appointments where relationships were filled with pain, frustration, and loss. There was a variety of difficulties that create the negativity resulting in a “going away or a going against” style of relationship.

What gives life in our relationships? What types of connection offer more than our shallow placating efforts to “make someone happy?” I find that the real trap is when we feel responsible for someone elses happiness. This automatically is a set up for someone else to control whether you are happy.

Central to our challenge to experience relationship connections that give life is our boundary layer confusion about “what is yours, what is mine, and what is ours.” I find that there are three distinct entities in a dyadic relationship: me, you, and us. The difficulty is that we are confused about the relational, emotional lines between the three. Consequently, we are either overperforming, underperforming, or not performing.

Relationships were created to offer an authentic source of generative life. Our confusion due to emotional, developmental, historical, and spiritual forces misconstrue the perception and therefore the delivery of relationship giving. The end result: confusion, hurt, frustration, differences that do not reconcile, emotional tissue that does not get restored, spiritual birthing that does not get a chance to develop.

Certainly, a 250 word blog is not enough to address this difficulty in full. However, mentioning the challenge and attempting to distill out of the confusion a central understanding of part of the challenge can begin the conversation that creates an interest to delve deeper into discovering for yourself Connections That Give Life! How do you relate to this conversation?

Photos courtesy of  Microsoft Clip Organizer

Conversations about Meaning

A while ago, I wrote a post that described the necessity to Keep the Conversation Going. Similarly, the post that you are reading  points towards the need for keeping the inner conversation with yourself  fresh and alive.

Yesterday, I was discussing with an individual particular circumstances that were engulfing her ability to maintain buoyancy and personal perspective in her life. She described her situation as a dark shadow that was overcoming her ability to see any light in her situation. Our conversation together continued to hover around the particulars of her situation but more so her “ability to see” herself in her situation and to see more than what she now was experiencing. What resulted was a Conversation about Meaning.

We are forced, sometimes , as we face difficulties, to ask questions that we do not have immediate answers. Events happen, our lives rearranged, and peril begins to enter our emotions and thoughts. Dread begins to set in similar to water that solidifies concrete when it sets up. A clear direction is not in sight and stagnation or resignation seems like the only alternative. Where do we search for and answer?

A dear friend of mine recently wrote a blog that addresses decision-making in the context of the confusing swirl of the journey of  life at a crossroad. In addition to asking, “What is the right thing to do?”, is there a place to understand and address the question, “Where does my meaning come from in this given situation?” 

Each circumstance in life that we experience compels us to check whether we will end with despair and emptiness or meaning, purpose, and value. As I began to process with this women her “sense of purpose” in the midst of her circumstance, what resulted was a lengthy conversation about her needs, longings, desires, hopes, and dreams.

Despite the tragedy at hand, her soul possessed the deep well of life as represented in needs, longings. desires, hopes, and dreams. One author put it this way, “When we pay attention to our longing and allow questions about our longing to strip away the outer layers of self-definition, we are tapping into the deepest dynamic of the spiritual life. The stirring of spiritual desire indicates that God is already at work within us, drawing us to himself.”  It is difficult at times to see God in the midst of our difficulties and ‘yet it is in our difficulties that we often most clearly see God and therefore ourselves.’ I am grateful for the well within that contains the  life and residency of God. This grants permission for new perspectives and new beginnings despite hardship. What do you think?

Photos courtesy of Microsoft Clip Organizer & BrandonRhodes Photo Stream

Conversations that Create

Once again, I was blessed to have another engaging conversation of depth and discovery. I was traveling with a friend to meet with a consultant who shared some mutual interests. Of course, as we drove to our destination, we conversed. What I realized was the incredible enjoyment of our interaction and the manner in which it helps each of us create something new.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, What is Your Conversation With Life, we were not simply talking. We were actually creating as the conversation was happening. I found that our conversation included these qualities:

• conversation is creative
• conversation is life-giving
• conversation grants permission for uniqueness and expression
• conversation promotes authenticity
• conversation helps us to understand and move towards wholeness
• conversations teach us how to listen
• conversation lends itself to discovering “the other as a true other”
• conversation deepens intimacy (knowing of self and another)
• conversation invites God to be involved

In future blogs, I am sure that I will be elaborating on these qualities that lifted from my conversation with a special friend. This was my conversation with life and I was sensitized to the beauty of giving consent to the conversation. What are your conversations creating today? Have you reflected much on the qualities that seem to emerge from your conversations? I encourage you to continue to deepen your Conversation with Life!

Keep the Conversation Going!

How ironic. It has been weeks since I have contributed an entry and I entitle this post, “Keep the Conversation Going.” What happens when we stop the conversation with life?

I was speaking with a client who was experiencing numerous unsolicited events in her life that were causing pain, confusion, and disorientation. She mentioned how all she wanted to do was to simply check out until it all had passed. Her statements were what many of us say to ourselves when we feel overwhelmed, buried, and burdened with events in life that seem to affect our lives in a personal way.

Before I share how I responded to her I would like to mention an observation of four key “attitudes” or “postures” that seem to indicate that she was indeed “checking out.” They are:

1. disillusionment
2. disengagement
3. apathy
4. lostness

These four qualities are indicators that there was no longer a conversation with the life. In turn, what had replaced her motivation to live life and stay engaged was a detached experience from life that was eroding her ability to actullay live life. Her conversation had ended! She was falling into the abyss of the absence of conversation.

What is the message? I responded with, of course, sensitivity to all of the variables that were certainly affecting her, but more importantly, I responded with this, “What type of conversation are you needing from me?” Interestingly enough, she became engaged, thoughtful, and began describing what she was needing from my participation with her. At that moment, I knew she re-entered “the conversation.” She began to become more animated, engaged, and ended up bring doses of resolution to her circumstances. Life lesson: Stay engaged with the Conversation that is affecting your life whether painful or pleasureable, rainy or sunshine, that is in part how you find your way back to life!