Discipline in Love

I have a constant inner struggle when I look at my children.  I'm conflicted about so many things as a mother who still hasn't grown up in her heart.  But discipline especially confuses me.  I don't have a strong inner voice, and as Charlotte Mason has said, reason should not solely be relied upon because humans have the uncanny ability to make anything sound reasonable.

I can see in the evolution of my views on discipline and sleep-training a thread that runs through them both - really above and below and around them all. 

I've come to realize that the god I have believed in, and am trying to rid myself of, is more of a Zeus-like god than the God of my Fathers.  I'm terrified of him, because he is far-off, easily offended, and quick to put me in my place.  He is concerned only with my good behavior and honor of him, but not very much at all with my well-being or feelings.  I've learned through life to keep in step, try to stay under the radar, and hope and pray to him to please give me a bit of happiness.

The expectations I had of my children reflected this.  It was a kind friend who finally pointed out the hopelessness of that set-up.  "It seems like you're treating Joseph the way you think God treats you", she said.  And that changed a lot for me.

I've watched as the way I treat my children reflects like a mirror image what I am believing about God.  Is He on my side?  Does He love me if I cannot stop sinning?  Will He help me?  Is He demanding something from me I feel helpless to overcome?  Will He lash out at me or show me mercy?  I ask these questions when I pray to God; and my children ask these questions when they look at me.

Over time, all other parenting goals have faded, and what's left is the singular goal of treating my children the way I hope that Jesus treats me.  I try to believe each day that He does.  Some days I can only believe for the sake of my kids.  They are scared and alone when I am sitting on my throne, waiting to nag them or punish them for spiting me.  They are free and honest and ready to love me when I am safe, constant and forgiving.  I want God to be that for me, and I believe Jesus shows me that He is; and I want to be that for my children.

So these two conflicting instincts well up inside me when Joseph hits Emma, or Emma screams at Joseph, or no one comes to the table when I call.  Do I dole out quick justice or show merciful kindness?  I feel angry and bitter when they are not obedient, but yet feel so scared for them to feel unloved, because of my own history.

I'm hoping to find that tertium quid: boundaries enforced lovingly.  I stumble upon it sometimes and it's beautiful.  I find peace in my home and they get unconditional love.  Sometimes it's not so wonderful and I end up letting them get away with treating me or each other the wrong way because I don't want them to feel "unloved" (not good); or I'm harsh and demanding, with no kindness in my heart or voice (worse, perhaps).

So many thoughts flit through my mind in the middle of a conflict, and I think I've come up with this criteria: all discipline should be carried out in a way that still convinces my children that I love them and am on their side.

I think that is mostly reflected in how I discipline and not in what I do, exactly.  Joseph gets very angry when I tell him he can't play with his Legos anymore.  But he knows that I'm not doing it out of anger because: 1) he knew it was coming (I told him my expectations and future consequences), 2) I spoke kindly and 3) I expressed sadness that he didn't get to play longer with his Legos and hoped he would make a better choice next time. 

Usually, if I'm able to be sincere, he can tell.  If I'm actually sort of celebrating at getting to make him suffer a little, at getting to revenge him for making my life harder that day, well, he sniffs that out quickly and my "kindness" becomes patronizing condescension.  And we all hate that.

Someone told me before that disciplining our children is much less about method than about the posture of our heart, and I've come to think that is more true than I ever thought.  And I'm on my way to believing the same thing about prayer.

Safe People

I was going to write this status on Facebook: "I know it's not fair, but sometimes if someone is too honest or rude or testy with you it means you are the safest person they know and they're being vulnerable."

But really, I know better.  So I didn't.

There's so much to unpack in that.

For starters, that's only sometimes.  Other times it means they're a predator and will take all the life out of your soul and will disregard every boundary you feebly try to enforce.  Still other times they're jerks or immature or just having a bad day. 

How do you know the difference?  I would say that it's in the context of a history with that person.  At the very least, it would require conversation.  My counselor says that there are two things happening in a conversation: what someone says, and what they mean.  We have to work with what they say, but strive to figure out what they mean.  And it's awfully difficult to do that without having known them.

But I was mostly thinking of those people we already know and are in relationship with.

I'm remodeling a house, and I'm angry at my contractors right now.  Of course it's frustrating when anyone doesn't do what they say they will do, but my anger runs deeper.  Anger is a secondary emotion, so what is the primary one I'm feeling?  I'm pretty sure it's fear. 

I'm feeling something that most nearly could be called PTSD; being around working-class men with low notions of females and little respect or regard for femininity.  I feel afraid, abused, humiliated and disregarded, and therefore furious at them.  My reaction is almost certainly more extreme than their actual behavior, but that's how a trigger works with PTSD.

So going back to vulnerability.  I'm feeling all these scary, overwhelming feelings this week and who do I get testy with?  You guessed it.  NOT the contractors.  I get testy with my husband, and irritable with my children.  They're all safe, or as safe as I've got. 

I see this with my children too.  Most of the time, their anger is about wanting their needs met and can't be reduced to their naughtiness or "sinfulness".  They want to to be loved, known, seen, heard - all basic needs the human heart longs for.  When those needs feel threatened (which is really all the time for any human, only children are more demanding and less mature - maybe because of their weak position), they react strongly to get those needs met. 

My husband and I have wondered at the fact that our children behave so well for others and less so for ourselves.  We see now that they are really more afraid of others than they are of us. They're not sure that they will still be loved if they misbehave.  So they behave better for them.  (I'm generalizing here, but I think the principle is there.)

Most of the time, when someone comes to us, demanding we meet their needs or indulge their requests, we naturally balk.  I do.  I really hate that my children need me so much.  Why is that?  I tend to think that it's for the very same reason the other party is being demanding or testy: we want our needs met.  We're afraid they won't be met.  What about ME?

It's come to be a real act of faith for me to give up my resources for someone else.  I have to somehow trust that the Life I give up will come back to me.  That it won't run out, and I won't be utterly forgotten.  I'm afraid much of the time, so I hoard what I have (my time, money, attention, pleasures) so that I know I won't go without. 

I want to learn that just like so many things in this universe, what makes sense doesn't really work, and what sounds paradoxical is the truth.  I'm not happy when I'm hoarding: when I'm clingy and needy and angry about my children wanting something.  I'm never happy when I refuse to meet their needs.

But if somehow I'm able to give up those things, if I listen to my husband when he's angry instead of defending myself, or if I walk away from the computer when my child wants my attention, or give my money when I'd rather not - I find myself full of love and life, which is exactly what I was wanting all along. 

I really wish I could remember that feeling every moment of every day.  It should be easier than this, to learn to trust that God will love me and take care of me, considering that He has promised and we have Jesus as proof of that promise.  But it's very hard for me.

Surrender

In yoga class today I almost had another panic attack.  It may not have been as close as I think, but I felt my throat close, my thoughts become disoriented, and a flush of heat rush over my body.  Tears streaked down the side of my face as I lay on my mat, trying to "receive the stretch". 

I cannot stop thinking of surrender, and how it seems to be the only tool I have found that will give me peace, but only in the context of trust.  I think of yoga, homebirthing, parenting, friendships, the person of Christ, the Church, my future, my childhood and my relationship with my husband. 

The voice at the front of the studio says that even though our muscles shake, or our hamstrings burn, we shouldn't pull or contract; we release, we give in, we breathe into our pain and discomfort, leaning fully into it. 

My hypnobirthing instructor told me the same thing.  She refuses to call it a contraction - it is a surge or wave, and you receive it, not brace for it.  She goes over and over the fear-tension-pain cycle that happens with our muscles - and apparently our souls.  Fear is the root source of all pain, she says.  Trust that your body is made to birth this child, relax every one of your muscles and pain disappears. 

She's actually closer to right that anyone would think, as I experienced it.  Visualizing a rose opening slowly and beautifully, and whispering a calm prayer for God's grace to give me a "safe, smooth and manageable" birth, I somehow breathed slowly through each and every contraction until safely delivering my babies.

My counselor tells me to "lean into" my sufferings.  He actually tells me to drown in them.  Pain or fear or hunger or longing or sadness (oh God, sadness can be so overwhelming) all instinctively and almost immediately bring about in me the emotional position of a taut, tense body bracing and pushing against a force.  "I will not let it overcome me", I want to say. 

Being overcome is terrifying, and I wish I could explain why.  Am I afraid I'll cease to exist?  Am I afraid I'll pass out from the trembling pain of my abs holding a pose too long?  Do I think the pain will kill me if I give into the contractions instead of fighting them?  Do I imagine I will never be happy again if I don't insist upon being loved, rather than sitting with loneliness?

Well, I suppose I do, but the very opposite of my fears happen when I give in, or lean into, or receive the pain and discomfort that scares me.  A stretch becomes deeper and even pleasant; a contraction becomes productive and empowering; loneliness and pain become companions instead of enemies. 

The mystery of the cross seems to me more about the mystery of death swallowing death.  We imagine that life and light will fight darkness and death, and I see how that's true in the end.  But Christ came in such an unexpected way, without offering us anything but Himself and His death.  His quiet, solemn, sad surrender to death is what brought life to us.  Love is hidden in death? 

The small bits of love I manage to give to my family do come from death, and the more death to myself that is involved, the sweeter the love.  I grew up hearing the verses (over and over and over) in church that we should "die to ourselves".  Yet now I wonder if that act is much less a killing of self, than a brave, trusting surrender to the unknown, sometimes hidden person of Christ who offered - is offering - Himself to me.

How We Sold Our House in a Week - Part 2 (Pricing)

As we made our plans to sell the house, we ended up with two priorities: price the house right and make it look as stunning as possible.  I'll break that down and talk about pricing first.

I didn't depend on my realtor alone to price my home correctly.  I wanted to make sure the price was consistent with our strategy, so I did it myself.  I considered the money we were going to pay him as a marketing fee, since he would make sure the listing was put on the MLS and posted elsewhere, and would also do all the showings for us.

When deciding on the list price, we based it on the prices of sold properties close to our home that were very similar to our own, in size and condition.

I Used Sold Prices to Decrease Our Days On Market (DOM)

I knew I couldn't just look at homes that were for sale in my neighborhood and pick a similar price.  That doesn't tell me what the houses are worth - it tells me what homeowners are asking for.  The difference between what a seller is asking and what a buyer will pay usually correlates to how many days it will sit on the market. 


Looking at homes that have sold will tell you exactly what the market says the house is worth, and will cut down your days on market significantly.  You usually won't need to drop your price to compete with the market - you'll come out of the gates priced that way already.

Zillow.com is a great  free tool, and you could use that almost exclusively.  You can enter your home address and on the side bar can choose to look at similar homes for sale, or similar homes sold.  Look at homes SOLD.  We also used our county assessor's website, which happens to be one of the best in the country.

Finding Comparable Homes in Size & Condition

So I used Zillow, and found several properties in my neighborhood (within about a square mile) that had sold in the last year (more recent is more accurate).  I only looked at houses that were similar to mine in size: number of bedrooms, bathrooms, garage and square footage.

Next, I looked at the condition of the homes on my list.  This is the trickiest to do, but also the most important.  Whether a house is old and ugly or modern and new makes a huge impact on the price, and therefore on the price of your house.  You want to price your house based on houses that were basically in the same condition as yours.

To find our comparables ("comps"), we picked the houses with conditions most like our own home.  Our home was remodeled, almost completely redone.  There were more than a few updates, but most of our updates were average and not high-end.  So I looked for houses that looked/sounded about like that. I looked at pictures and read descriptions that are part of each house's profile on Zillow.

Breaking it Down to Price Per Square Foot

Now we had our comps: houses recently sold, in our neighborhood, about the same size and in about the same condition as ours.  Next I figured out the price per square foot that each one sold for.  I took the sales price (e.g. $100,000), divided by the square footage (e.g. 1900 sqft), and got the answer (e.g. $52/sqft).  I did this for each house that we were using in our comps, and then came up with one average price per sq foot.  In our case, most homes that were about 3/2/2 and 1900 sqft and nearly completely remodeled with some new larger items (like roof and A/C) sold for about $76/sqft.

But we were conservative: we priced at $74/sqft.  We made sure that our price was about $5000 lower than any other home similar to ours that recently sold. I think this was the key to our pricing: make it just a little bit lower than other homes.

That's as accurate as we could manage, and it worked out well (when we discussed it with our realtor, he thought it was a good number, too).  Pricing it $5000 less than similar homes were selling for meant that it was a real deal, and we had a full price offer after one showing.  Even though we could have waited 3-6 months and gotten more, it would have been about even, since every month we had to pay our mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities, etc.  Not to mention all the time lost, waiting and having to keep the house immaculate.  We were so grateful that everything came together, and that our part in it all seemed to have worked.

I'll talk about what we did to get the house ready (and "look as stunning as possible" - our second priority), in the next post.

Cabinet Makeover - What Color?

Yesterday I bought this cabinet for $20 off of Craigslist.  I was looking for a cabinet that could double as a bench, but also allow for storage.  I wanted to put it against a wall in our new kitchen.

It looked pretty good in the picture, but it was kind of dirty and the finish turned out to be white (that was yellowing) laminate.

I got it home and took off all the laminate.  It took a couple of hours, the use of a hairdryer and the help of my husband.  But I was so grateful to find that it was made (in someone's shop, most likely) with good quality hardwood plywood.  There's a grain in the wood that shows through.

So what color should I paint it?  I was imagining putting on some short feet on the bottom, painting the whole thing, and adding new handles.  My default is always safe, so I was thinking white.  But I would like something a bit more fun, but also a bold color that won't show if it gets a bit dirty.

Here's a picture of the kitchen I'll be putting it in.  It'll go against that long wall there, but will have to share it with a small, child-sized pine armoire.  I also think I'll run two, white 4 ft floating shelves above the armoire and bench.

A dark vintage blue cabinet

 

A brighter blue, somewhere between baby blue and turquoise

A very bright Kelly Green cabinet

Ah, and here is the 47" tall pine armoire going in the kitchen, on the same wall.













Do you have a vote?  Or a different idea?

How We Sold Our House in a Week - Part 1

When you're a stay-at-home mom, your life might sometimes be lacking that feeling of a job well done.  By that I mean the job never ends (cleaning up toys, washing clothes, wiping spills, making food); but also that you usually won't see the real fruit of your labor for decades - not weeks, months or even years. 

This can be difficult, especially if you happen to be the type of creature, like me, who is doing all these things without much enjoyment of the tasks, but mostly out of a committed love for your children and husband.  That being the case, it's a wonderful thing when a stay-at-home mom like myself finds something else - an activity, skill, hobby, business - she happens to be good at, enjoys, and can actually stamp FINISHED! 

This is what I discovered when my husband and I decided to sell our house last year.  I found that I was good at doing that sort of thing, and loved (mostly) every minute of it.  We ended up selling our house in a week, even in a tough market, with a full-price offer.  I thought I'd share how we did that.

The very first thing I did was research like the dickens.

I've always liked the shows about anything real estate-related: flipping, renovating, finding, selling, landscaping, redecorating - doesn't matter, I love them.  So I already had some general knowledge (or at least familiarity) with some of what we needed to know.  I've also been involved in real estate investing since 2009, so that helped too.

But all that really wasn't enough to be informed.  I'm a big fan of the phrase "informed consent", and pretty much take it to heart in everything I do.  I want to know all about what I am doing and why, and take responsibility for the outcome.  This is a not-so-great philosophy in some areas, but works out really well when selling your house.  After getting my bearings with a humble "what to know when selling your house" Google search, here's what I eventually did to prepare:


Watched lots of episodes of Get It Sold, featuring Sabrina Soto. I liked the show, and appreciated the emphasis on real current market value for pricing, and the practical tips on staging it gave you.  Their formula seemed to work to get the homes sold (and jived with what I knew from investing), so we basically used this approach to selling our home: price it right, and make it look as close to perfect as we can.

Looked at tons of home staging principles, tips and pictures.  They're everywhere on the internet, and I gobbled them up, especially noting features and problems that were also in my house.  Take note of the tips you see most common (like de-cluttering, cleaning, etc.) and know that those are your priority.

Only used a realtor we found by way of referral from someone we personally know.  The realtor we used when we bought our house was also a friend, and the previous property manager of a house we rented.  He referred us to our selling realtor - they were acquaintances and both former Marines. 

Made sure the realtor posts high-quality pictures in their listings.  Something like 80% of home buyers look on the internet first.  They won't want to look at your home in person if the pictures they see are fuzzy, dark, have awkward angles, don't show full rooms, etc.  Your realtor should have a high-quality camera or hire a photographer - a regular ol' digital camera won't cut it.  We looked at our realtor's current listings and saw beautiful, inviting pictures with great lighting that highlighted all the best aspects of the house.  Here's a great blog of ugly house photos: how NOT to do it!

Next, I'll post about how we priced our house, and what we had to do to get it ready to sell.

Reality Checks

Then everything started coming up.  In that state of silence, there was room now for everything hateful, everything fearful, to run across my empty mind.  I felt like a junkie in detox, convulsing with the poison of what emerged.  I cried a lot.  I prayed a lot.  It was difficult and it was terrifying, but this much I knew - I never didn't want to be there, and I never wished that anyone were there with me.  I knew that I needed to do this and that I needed to do it alone.

This is like Advanced Counseling for Patients.  It's what happens after you start to unravel yourself a bit and understand that stillness and solitude must come and reveal the rest.  It's the entering into pain, after finally having someone introduce you to it, and tell you its name.

I don't talk much about what it's been like for me to go to counseling the last two years.  For many people, it's simply too embarrassing (or possibly shameful) to hear.  I'm also not entirely convinced it's useful to explain the complexities, depth and sheer intensity of emotions, memories, connections and insights; they're mine, after all. 

But I do wonder at what it is exactly that draws some of us into this particular stage of growth: why do we willingly enter into this suffering and pain and hellish torment of the soul, despite having descriptions like the ones above, to warn us?  What prompted me?

Well, it helps that I didn't understand exactly what I'd be getting into until it was too late to back out.  I came to Bruce, our counselor, because our marriage had finally come to an impasse: I wasn't moving and neither was he.  Thankfully (by God's merciful grace), this was simply too painful for either of us to bear. 

But what actually drew me into the Mystery that she describes above - that strange, voluntary hell as we go through the process of looking at ourselves, at Reality - was a promise I read in a book, given to a woman who was just like me, standing at her own crossroads and faced with a choice to walk down the path or not: "you will have a better life than you could ever imagine".

Well, it sounded like another promise that Jesus gave, about life and, really, abundant life.  Obviously: yes, please.  So down I went into the rabbit hole.  And this woman (who I will reluctantly admit is Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love) describes it well in the quote above.

I'm becoming a Reformed Mystic, I suppose, and marveling at all the mysteries in this world, and also at the funny joke God plays on us by giving us hints of the divine but also giving us bread, and wine and pudding and roller coasters and beaches.  The Incarnate and the Transcendent, together.