Happiness project continued...boundaries...permeability and nit picking night and day...

Well, last Sunday, we had what I have come to call more "adventures."

How I see my life, affects how I react to the situations in my life and thus affects my "happiness quotient."

The day started in the wee hours of the morning, around say 4 a.m., the phone rang. Perhaps by now if you are regular reader of this blog you will know or perhaps guess who that phone call was from??? Yes, it was my sonny boy. He was distressed, he and his girlfriend had broken up. She had apparently broken up with him and he was dislodged in the literal sense of the word. Could I pick him up later in the morning he wondered? I agreed.

I crawled back into bed and began a litany...Oh, God, oh God, oh God...what am I going to do??? What are we going to do??? Do I have to put my son on the streets? Can I realistically offer him sanctuary??? What will hubby think when he wakes up in the morning???? I repeated my litany, a prayer in every sense of the word, oh God, oh God, oh God...help me...help us.

Funnily enough, I eventually fell back to sleep. The phone rang again about 7:30 a.m. I answered and then off I went to pick him up. He was exhausted and very unhappy.

He was greeted enthusiastically by our little girl. Oh how his sister loves him... Hubby was still in bed, perhaps he was digesting this turn of events while he lay there.

In a while the three of us ended up on the deck talking about his situation, his feelings, his circumstances, his conundrum. We gave him our ear...hubby asked some pointed questions which were received with some hostility. Thankfully, hubby realized the state sonny boy was in and backed off with the questions and offered a sounding board and affection. This made me so very glad. We are learning all of us, the delicate art of reading one another, and of responding in a way that builds bridges and not walls.

Step-parenting has been I think for my husband, a bit like walking on jagged glass and only time and developing wisdom has made the path paved with gravel at least and maybe even smooth paving some days and moments. I am immensely proud of my husband and his consistent efforts to be a better person, husband, step-father and dad.

After some more time, it is now only my hubby and myself who sit on the deck. Now the really big question comes. Can we give sonny boy some time to get on his feet I ask hubby, breath held, my motherly heart aching with all the complications of navigating loyalty to my husband and loyalty to my son.

Open-hearted, to my great relief and to my delight he agrees. Carefully, we construct boundaries. This is dangerous ground for both of us, we know the powder-keg that exists within my son's present make-up, his volatility, his changes of mood, the potential chaos that lurks under the surface of my dear son's hurts and how they have played out in the past. We love him desperately, deeply, yet we must not allow our home to become what we have fought long and hard for it to be...a place where there is peace and cooperation.

I saw a picture on one of my niece's blog's recently. It was absolutely adorable. It showed her son peeking out from behind a baby gate and the caption read, "keeping the little man safe." In that moment as I looked at the picture and the notation, it crystallized and formed an incredibly poignant word picture. The baby gate is a boundary for my niece's son and it's purpose is to keep him safe. The baby gate also protects my niece and her husband. With the baby safely within that boundary, they are safe from the dangers that may accost their son and from consequences for both their baby and for themselves. The boundary protects both the child and the parents.

So it is with the boundaries I place in my life and in the lives of my children. They keep us safe. If we feel the need, we can tighten the boundaries, make them more solid. If however, we feel safe and know that or hope/believe there is the possibility for change/growth, we can choose to make the boundaries more permeable.

One day my niece and her husband will not have to have baby gates, they will trust their boy with boundaries that increase as he grows and matures.

So, we presented our son with our list...offered him temporary sanctuary that could possibly, we said, become more permanent if there was compliance and we could all get along. He agreed. They were not easy things we asked, but he is an adult now and they were reasonable.

As the day wound on, he later called his girlfriend and they "made up."

We had suspected this would happen and supported him, still giving him the option to be here if he needed to be.

During the day, there was some bouncing back forth in the decision making process for him but eventually he settled that he would be her and we left it at that.

I was so very, very glad that we were able to offer him an open door, that he could hold that in his heart and remember that always, always, he is loved, he is wanted. Boundaries would have to exist- but we were here, he belongs and it is his choice that he is where he is now.

In the midst of this we get a phone call from our daughter's friend's mother. Her daughter has lice and since my child and hers just had a sleepover at their place a few days earlier we had better do a head check.

Much to our distress, sure enough sweet cheeks, has it. The dreaded lice.

The battle begins, loads and loads and loads and loads of laundry. Vacuuming of beds, and furniture is done. Bags and bags of stuffed animals and extraneous bedding is bagged and sealed to suffocate the little buggers. And the hunt for lice - the nit-picking begins. A tedious, unpleasant, long task takes place, again, again and again.

We buy a special magnifying light. We are not as young as we used to be and our eyesight even with our glasses doesn't provide enough illumination for the task. We purchase a special shampoo. We research the internet and try not only the pesticide route but the natural cures as well. Olive oil, tea tree oil, Avon's skin so soft. Our daughter's head is doused with these solutions and then faithfully, combed out and picked, picked, picked. Nervously, we check each other's head, fingers, eyes and toes crossed hoping that we will not also be afflicted with these pernicious little beasts as well.

It is an exhausting process. We are not pleased by this turn of events, but we determine to look at the whole thing as an adventure. I tease our daughter that she is having her hair done at a spa, we make deliberate efforts to lighten up, to encourage one another when the task gets irksome and believe me, it does. We watch old movies and I Love Lucy so that our attention is diverted during the long nit-picking sessions and so that we can laugh, laugh, laugh.

Don't get me wrong, there has been some weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. But, we have decided that we will look for and on the bright side.

We have discovered that happiness is contagious. If one of us is cheerful, sooner or later everyone else in our home becomes happier.

I discovered another word picture as hubby and I were out on the deck drinking our after dinner tea. It had been raining on and off all day and as I looked over to my left, I saw some blue sky and some delicately wispy clouds. "Look at the beautiful sky," I said to my hubby. He was sitting in the other direction and said, "yes, but look at the sky over there." It was darker and more foreboding, the rain was gathering in the clouds. So, what would we do, focus on the beauty of the blue sky pushing the rains away, or focus on the darkness?

That has been our choice all this week.

I am happier when I focus on the good, and more dragged down when I see only the darkness.

So, I am working and at times, it really is work, on shifting my focus, changing my attitude.

I am choosing happiness.

My Happiness Project - Keys I've found to being happy even when you have difficult people in your life...

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything.

We've had vacation and that has been wonderful!

Now we're in the summer swing of things...lazy days, getting up, doing the work-out, heading out to play or to run errands or visit with friends and family...good days for the most part.

During my vacation and the over last few weeks I've been thinking about the difficult people in my life. People that I cannot divorce myself from because they are people whom I care about deeply, intensely and personally. You should probably know that in this discussion I am not referring to my husband as a "difficult" person. We have certainly had our agonizingly rough times and I'm sure we've considered each other difficult at one time or another. We have, however, recognized the value of our love and commitment to each other and with hard work, counseling from time to time, lots of prayer and tips from respected people in our lives, persevered, and are at the present enjoying a relatively smooth relationship.

There are then, certain people whom I find difficult in my life. They are a continuous challenge to me and ceasing to see them at is not an option. So what do I do about them?

In my pondering I've come up with four steps that I have found helpful to me. These steps are really a result of years of trial and error and or counseling, but I think I've finally put together things that are a real and practical help to me. In my search for happiness, I've come to learn that people cannot be relied upon solely for my moment to moment happiness. Certainly, being with friends and family can bring immense satisfaction and pleasure, but then there are other times that well...what I think and what I do directly affects my happiness in relation to how I feel about a particular person or situation.

So here goes...

#1 - Accept the person as they are. It's a big job, but vital. I cannot change that person; nothing I say or do can alter someone else. Any change must ultimately come from the other person's inner motivation to change or some supernatural working of God on that person's life. I need to stop talking, crying, coaxing, wheedling, whining or attempting to manipulate. Period. In acceptance lies peace, an inner letting go. As the saying goes "Let go and let God." And by the way, I'm also trying to give up trying coax, plead, whine and attempt to direct God. The "let God" part is recognizing as C.S. Lewis puts it that God is "not tame." He is Incomprehensible, Sovereign and wholly Mysterious.

#2 - Forgive that person. If you have a difficult person in your life you know what I mean. If they're difficult, it means you've in all likelihood sustained considerable hurt at their hands. I need to release that person from any grudge I hold against them. I've heard it said that bitterness is the poison pill that kills you not the person who hurt you. If I don't forgive, I become bitter...trust me, I know. Bitterness destroys happiness! It destroys me. It sours my outlook on life. It brings depression and gloom. When I forgive someone who has hurt me, I open my heart to the possibility that they may someday change, it leaves me free to love them in a way that liberates me. Forgiveness gives me the power to look ahead and not to fixate on the past. It is important for me to remember that forgiveness does not mean giving the other person the right to continue to inflict pain upon me. I'll address that in my fourth point.

#3 - Change my attitude toward that person. I will determine to cease to let that other person control my days, my happiness, or my ultimate satisfaction with my everyday circumstances. Yes, they may say or do hurtful things, but I can and will choose my reaction to them. I will not give that other person the power to make me feel miserable for longer than it takes me to process their actions. I will be grateful for all the good things and people in my life. I will not let one person kill my joy. I will find things to be "glad" about. I will determine to adjust my thoughts to focus on the positive things in my life and not on the pain. Of course I will grieve, cry, vent when I need to, but I will not "live" there.

#4 - I will set up the appropriate boundaries so that I can maintain physical, emotional, and spiritual safety. This is an extremely important step. A counselor once said to me that we teach other people how to treat us. This was shocking to me but it was sadly true. For example, if get up early to drive my son to work, make him a good breakfast and he throws it out the car window because it wasn't just right and then get up the next morning and make him breakfast again what am I teaching him? I'm teaching him it's O.K. to be rude, ungrateful etc. etc. So, I need to say the next day I'm not making your breakfast today because...then walk away, not engage in any other conversation about it. It's never O.K. for someone to be physically, emotionally, verbally or spiritually abusive to me. I should not tolerate that or accept it as normal. I need to set up boundaries to protect myself from these kinds of interactions. Often we need help doing that. I've gotten help, please if anyone reading this suffers in this way, call a counselor, get some help. In learning to do so my self-respect has grown. I do not need to be any-body's victim. I can set boundaries in place so that I can relate to people who are difficult yet with whom I intend to be in relationship so that I can be safe!

These four steps have helped me recently more than once and I'm sure they will be of help to me again. They are steps that have in fact increased my overall happiness and for that I am grateful.

I have made some incredibly agonizing decisions in my life to ensure my physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. I divorced my first husband. I have had to ask my beloved son to live somewhere else (for reasons so very complicated and complex). I have left a church that was not healthy. I have had to hang up the phone when someone was cursing at me, leave a restaurant just before the dinner arrived, call the police, on and on it goes.

Yet, each time I do these things I become stronger, more sure of who I am called to be. I am woman, loved and valued by God. I have many people in my life who make happiness easy and those who do not. I am, however, determined to be a person who is happy. A person who meets life's challenges head-on. A lover of life and people, someone who inspires others to be the best that they can be. Someone who inspires others to be...happy....even when there are difficult people to deal with.