Bigger Picture Moments: Why We Need to Know Who We Are

He came roaring out of my body and into my arms, a mighty lion-baby that knew what he wanted and how to make sure his first-time mama didn't just jump but jumped high enough and long enough and wide enough, too, to quite his loud roars..

That hasn't faded from him during his almost seven years of life.

He just roars now in a way that makes my head ache and my heart wonder why we can't just all get along.

He wants answers at any cost, and I want peace at almost the same intensity.

He demands reasonable explanations, and I scurry to find them, which doesn't come easy for a feeling  and sensing soul and doesn't come fast enough for a thinker.

I've spent many of our long days together since he's become increasingly logical and capable of understanding more information than I could possibly keep straight in my head feeling absolutely deflated by this strong-willed, justice-oriented, reason-seeking thinker.

I've cried in my husband's arms over this boy of mine more times than I can count, trying to understand why why why he bristols at my direction and seemingly obliviously stomps all over my heart some days.

I've wondered aloud, asking God if we'd done something in parenting wrong. Why did we have such discord in our relationship?

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At 31, I'm still learning about who I am without the thick skin I wore for so long, a source of protection for a heart that had been deeply wounded.

As I've allowed Him to peel layer by layer off of me, I've increasingly become aware that while I enjoy thinking about things that deeply matter, more I walk through life feeling everything.

While a friend and I were traveling together two weeks ago, she pointed out that my oldest son and I come at life very differently -- so differently that it's almost like we're speaking entirely different languages, often missing what each other are saying.

She encouraged me to take the Myers Briggs Personality Test, and we found that I am very much the epitome of a The Caregiver --people-loving and sympathetic, down-to-earth and practical, enthusiastic and energetic, stability-craving and thorough.

I knew some of this about myself, but after reading the profile for my type, I'd fully recognized how I come at life -- caring very much about harmony and other's feelings and often valuing both more than valuing having all the answers to everything.

Knowing this about myself helped me have a light bulb moment while talking with my friend about parenting my oldest son -- because essentially it helped me realize that my oldest is the exact opposite  in how he comes at the world -- he values answers, the logical and sensical, before feelings or hearts.

And it all clicked at how we've both been speaking English but not the same language.

The simple recognition of understanding how he takes in the world and makes sense of it and goes after life helped me to alter my communication efforts with him to provide more structure, more reason and less feelings and more black and white facts than vague gray ones -- like feelings.

Our difference, when unknown, have been a source of frustration, when actually they could be a source of strength.

I need people like my oldest son -- desperately in fact! While I like structure and I am typically semi-organized, I need people like him who ask the really hard, thought-out questions to keep me from following every idea that floats across my highly-idea-trafficked brain {One of my strengths in the StrengthsFinders is Maximizing -- meaning nothing is good until it's AWESOME. You can see how I could get really bogged down if I followed every idea and tried to make it awesome.} I need people like him to remind me that not every feeling needs to rule and that not everyone feels as deeply as I do.

And he needs people like me to teach him and then remind him that feelings are God-given and need to have room in his life to express and be expressed.

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This whole thing about knowing who we are and taking the time to recognize who others are extends beyond motherhood, though. I believe it has deep ramifications for the Church, too, if we are to be the Body of Christ.

Awesomely, my oldest son is a lot like my good friend who pointed out these differences in the first place, the same friend who has often said she needs me in her life to remind her that mercy is as important as truth-telling and justice.

Not because she needs to transform who she is to be more like me but, rather, so we can recognize the value of working together.

Can we each grow in our areas that aren't as developed? Yes! But, more, recognizing each other's strengths and who they were made to be and then working together better helps us function as a real, living Body.

During our conversation, we both recalled how other people have tried to "fix" us, down playing our strengths and defining them as weaknesses when instead the more beneficial thing would be to come along side each other and help refine our strengths so that the really are strengths not only to us individually but also as a Body, a community.

I mused aloud about how frustrating it must be for my oldest son to often feel like he's trying to be shaped into a leg {unintentionally by me at times} when he really needs to be celebrated for being an arm.

Of course, I'm not advocating that we leave the leg alone to do just what the leg wants. It's part of the Body, after all, and it needs to learn to function as part of the Body. Does the leg need to be exercised and made stronger? Yes! Of course! It needs training to be able to go the distance, to be what it was made to be for itself and for the Body. But it doesn't need plastic surgery to become a different part altogether. There's a line, and that line is broadening in my mind.

We need to recognize who we are so we can be who we were made to be

and not just for our own benefit but for that of each other, too.

**I highly recommend taking both the Myers Briggs Test and the StregnthsFinders test to help you discern where you strengths lie and how they can be honed.

BTSBTW - Confession: The Spin-Cycle I Accidentally Perpetuated with My Life

During the past several years, other women often asked how on Earth I did everything I did:

Care for two kids./Nurture a marriage/Cook from scratch,/Garden and preserve./Write for blogs and websites./Own a business./Work part-time for a church./Volunteer./Keep a clean house./Engage in friendships./And take care of myself.

I've stood there uncomfortably as others have remarked such things, hearing not only disbelief in their voice but also a sort of self-depreciation at the admission of not being able to do it all. My response used to be something along the lines of not really doing as much as they thought I did.

But I wish I would have answered differently because this issue goes way deeper than my reply; that little sentence speaks worlds about the intersection of perfectionism and busyness and comparing and success and embracing ourselves. And it has much to do with perpetuating cycles of shame and feelings of failure and not loving ourselves and others.

I wish, instead, I would have said:

1. "We can have it all -- but we can't have it all at the same time without something suffering.  I may do a lot of things, but I don't do anything well. "

Don't miss it: anything and well are the key words in that sentence. But being a perfectionist {recovering now, thank you}, I had given it my best shot for too many years.

Now that I've cleared many responsibilities from my plate that just made me entirely too busy, I can tell you that doing all of that, even while not doing any all of it well, didn't come without a price.

Often times my family suffered -- namely my marriage because while you can't just leave two small children unattended, you can, indeed, leave a grown man alone after a long day so you can crash face first into bed.

Also, my health has suffered. I spent way too many years burning the candle at both ends and creating stress responses in my body and mind that have had lasting effects  I hadn't totally started identifying until two summers ago when my body started crying out for some serious TLC. Thankfully, my husband and I recognized its cries before serious disease states set in and began diligently working to lighten each of our stress loads.

And also, our small business, some of my friendships and even at times my kids have suffered from having an owner/friend/mom who simply had too much to juggle to invest a good chunk of time into any one thing.

So while it looked like I was doing it all, and maybe it even looked like I was doing it all well, I really wasn't.

I didn't understand that busyness was actually eating away at the parts of life I want to do really, really well -- build a strong marriage, nurture the two small souls with who we've been entrusted and be in community with others.

2. And then there's the bigger issue -- the comparisons we make when measuring ourselves against others help us form terribly imperfect definitions of success and also degrade the beauty of being created as individuals.

What I wish I would have said more often during these conversations was that while I can write an article or blog post or poem in 15 minutes or so, I simply could not balance my check book in that amount of time. Or fix a broken anything in our home with ease. Or sew anything relatively straight.

Because none of those things come naturally to me and none of those things naturally interest me enough to want to invest time into learning about them.

And that's ok. Because that's not me. And just because I can't do those things or you can't write a blog post with ease doesn't mean we are failing at anything other than trying to be someone else. I wish I would have realized long ago how demeaning it is when I compare myself to others. By doing what we were created to do and what we love, we are actually far more successful at being ourselves. And I think who we are and how that influences us to live is far more important than what we accomplish purely out of skill or muscle power.

I guess that would have been awkward to have said all of that during those exchanges, but I often wish for redos on those conversations -- a chance to stop the spin cycle I was accidentally perpetuating by living that kind of life coupled with relative silence.

A chance to honestly dialogue about these issues that keep us stuck on the spin cycles of guilt and shame and self-deprication and instead hang all of the truth out to dry ...  hooked up to the clothesline, dancing in the wind for everyone to see.

Hope: A Story You Should Hear

It's not my story to tell, so I'll let my words be few.

Last year, our good friends -- John's best friend from college, Jamey, and his wife, Kaila, -- excitedly stood in our kitchen as we cooked dinner and shared that they were expecting a baby.

Life, however, didn't go as planned.

We prayed for miracles.

And, though we didn't get the one for which we had hoped, for which we had pleaded, He continues to allow our fingers to unwrap unexpected ones.

This isn't just a story of grief, a story of loss, though both are interwoven into its threads.

But, rather, overarchingly, it's one of hope

and it's one of what God can do with willing hearts and resolves to trust that even when life doesn't make sense to our minds, God can redeem the seemingly senseless.

Mugford Story - Stereo Final Web from cedarcreek.tv production on Vimeo.

I hope baby Sam's life and story blesses your life in the way it's blessed ours.