Celebrating Valentine's Day can be a mixed bag for those whose relationship is rocky. Sometimes, we hope this special day will magically mend the strains in our relationships. However, the reality of high expectations can lead to disappointment.
Redefining Valentine's Day as a time for fun rather than a fix-it-all for relationship woes can be liberating. This year, for us, it's a movie and watching a movie and dinner at the food court. Simple but fun. What are your plans for this Valentine's Day?
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Last month, I hired a coach to help me lose some recently gained weight. She didn't tell me what plan to go on. (I've been on keto for over five years, and I know it works) but she helped me see where I wasn't following my own plan and be more honest with myself. For example, I absolutely love cream in my tea and usually overdo it. I have set limits on the amount of tea I am supposed to drink but would lose track of how much I was actually consuming.
To help solve this issue, my coach made a brilliant suggestion: measure my allotment of cream into a container for the day, and when I'm done, no more cream. I love this! Doing this has stopped me from drinking so much (which makes me a bit sad, let's be honest!), but it has also had another effect. It has helped me see how much I was overdoing it before. It has helped me be more honest. I could no longer claim that I had no idea why I wasn't losing weight. Measuring had a mirror-like effect: letting me see my own behaviour more clearly.
I recently had an experience in my marriage that had a similar result. My husband and I had had an argument in the morning that was completely baffling to me. From my perspective, it seemed he had blown up for no reason, which frustrated me. Why had he gotten so angry? It made no sense to me. He didn't know either. We forgave each other and went on, but I couldn't let it go.
Later that night, though, I remembered that right before the disagreement, I had been feeling very stressed from work and felt inwardly irritated. Just prior to his blowing up, I had been inwardly impatient and outwardly short with him. I had then asked him for a favour that was hard for him to carry out. He felt my stress and got defensive about not wanting to do the favour I had asked of him. The reality was that I had contributed to the conflict before it got to a loud point, but I hadn't noticed my part in our dynamic because I was too close to it.
To me, being stressed from work was normal and not a big deal. But he confirmed after talking with him that he had felt my stress, and it had a triggering effect. When I saw my part, I apologized, just like he had apologized earlier. This little argument was similar to the ones we had had before, but the difference was that we were able to see our own dynamic more clearly as if a mirror had been held up to our relationship.
James 1:23-24 compares the Word of God to a mirror:
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
A mirror is useful if we use it for its intended purpose: to be honest with ourselves and to make needed changes. Every morning, we look at the mirror and make ourselves not look scary, haha! Mirrors come in other forms besides the glass ones in our bathrooms. The Bible is a mirror that helps us see ourselves. A coach or counsellor can act as a mirror to help us see ourselves. So can close friends and family. (My sister is definitely my mirror!) Sometimes our own insight acts as a mirror (the very act of looking at ourselves is called reflection.)
Without a mirror, I can easily fool myself into putting too much cream in my tea or into thinking my husband is solely to blame in an argument. Have you been avoiding any mirrors in your life lately? Or have you learned anything from a mirror lately? Please share in the comments below!
Do you ever get embarrassed about so-called "failures" in your past? About those supposed bad decisions that sidetracked you from the straight-line trajectory of your peers? Do you ever think it's too late to start a new endeavour because you're over 35? Or 55 or 75? I think there's something in many of us that feels pressure to do the same thing for twenty years, and when we don't, we feel strange and weird. My own journey has been circuitous. My first job was as a chambermaid at a hotel. I was terrible at it and quit after a week. I've worked as a telephone salesperson, market research recruiter, and front desk clerk. At age 25, I went back to school to become a teacher. I taught for several years but kept leaving the classroom to go back into business. Presently, I work part-time as a teacher and very part-time as a coach. I don't know anyone in my immediate circles whose path has been as crooked as mine.
This week, my employer asked for a resume for the human resources file, and the old embarrassment crept in. How do I explain my various different jobs when most of my colleagues have worked at this one place for ten, twenty, or thirty years? Where on my resume do I put "getting a business going?" I started to question my choices and wished for a moment that my life history was less complicated and more straightforward. Like everyone else's.
But is everyone else's path really as perfect as I imagine? A wise friend named Vera once told me that everyone has their time of struggle, but we don't know about them because we may meet them during their sunny days. The beautiful, popular cheerleader in high school ends up in an abusive marriage and starts drinking. The poor boy with a dirty shirt ends up excelling in his business and becoming a boss to hundreds. We don't know anyone's entire story. Only God does.
So, I have to remember that the only perfect life that I need to live up to is the life of Jesus. All the rest of us have a flawed history. My story is messy: I've done a lot of pivots and taken many strange turns. I've tried things, changed my mind and then tried them again. I've gone from business to teaching to business and teaching again. Now, I do both. My resume is very different than most but I am not living my life to impress a human resources manager. I am living to impress Him.
Unspoken social pressure to conform can stop us in our tracks if we let it. No one is directly dictating that we have to follow the path of our peers, but we notice the puzzled looks when we try to explain our "abnormalness." So we hide because you don't want the messiness to be seen.
So, I wanted to share this little life lesson to introduce the fact that I am making another pivot with this blog and this business. I am going to start talking about other things besides marriage, and I am putting my name, Sharilee Swaity, on the top of the blog. A rebrand, if you will, to include more of who I am. If this resonates with you, I'd love for you to follow me. If not, find someone you do resonate with. I need to be more authentic in sharing my unique voice so those who have similar views will see it and benefit.
I will still talk about marriage but will also share other things that I am learning: my weight loss journey, faith, and lessons from nature. My business will expand, too. I still want to help couples in remarriage, but I can also coach women looking for clarity in their lives and help them find their voice. I would love to assist writers who need help getting their book started. As I help those whose journey is somewhat parallel to mine, I will continue to share my learnings around different topics here on this blog and in other places. I would love it if you joined me because you think you might learn something.
I hope you can learn from me today that it's never too late to make a change in your life to pursue new interests. There is no "life-path police officer" who can look down and make a judgment that we've had too many turns and must now stick to the same thing for the rest of our lives. There is no deadline for new endeavours, like, hey, I just turned 45, and that's it for adventures. Finito!
Let's start accepting that growth requires change that others may not understand. Let's stop being embarrassed and letting the enemy of our souls steal our joy with envy and insecurity. Let's embrace our messy journey for what it is: uniquely ours. Let's allow ourselves to change our minds without impunity, and make mistakes without a feeling a need to explain it to our critics.
For now, for me, it starts with re-branding again. I have been stuck for years, thinking I had to match my decisions today with the ones I made five years ago. But I forgot to factor in that I have changed, and therefore, so must my writing and my business. I'm excited!
Can you relate? Share below if this message encouraged you.
Can you relate? Share below if this message encouraged you.
Are you and your spouse completely different? Do you sometimes wonder how you’re going to make it? Well, I understand, because I’m married to my opposite, too! We are different in so many ways: personality, interests and background. When we first got married, I would google “married to your opposite” into the search engine, desperate for someone that would help me in some way.
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