Day 18 ~ 10/18/10
I am the biggest liar I know. I continue to catch myself in a myriad of lies, everyday! Today I was talking with someone about closing my business. Again was the question of “What will you do?” I said “As little as possible. You know, I have a lot going on – WAIT! No I don’t, I don’t really have anything going on!” I caught myself in this lie, this excuse like I should have something going on in order to make it seem like my life has some value to it. Why on earth would I say that? Habits, excuses, ego – LIES!
I reminded myself that this doesn’t make me a bad person, just makes me aware of what I’ve been doing for years in the past, and what I don’t want to do in the future. I do find though as I catch myself earlier and earlier in the lie, it is easier to acknowledge it for what it is and tell the truth from that moment, especially if that means I have to stop talking to someone and re-gather myself in order to show up in the next moment in my truth. I feel it’s giving my communication partner permission to do the same thing, or at least they have the opportunity to witness it, and vice versa.
I’ve been giving the kids a bit more responsibility at home and I find that they are thrilled to be doing their chores…when I’m with them helping them out. So tonight I washed the dishes with my son before dinner. He was completely engaged and surprised how quickly they could get done when there is a different dynamic to the teamwork.
At the dinner table, we have a tradition of saying “gratefuls” and “forgiveness’s”. Each night we say what we are grateful for for the day, and it can never be the same thing twice. We’re always finding something new to be grateful for, even if it is a particular grain of pepper in the pepper shaker. Then we say what we forgive ourselves for, picking one particular thing that happened during the day that we want to acknowledge and truly be in forgiveness about. These can be repeated over and over, as it seems that we usually make the same mistakes time and again, until we finally learn our lessons!
At dinner this evening, our son looked at me and said “I forgive myself for not listening to you mom.” Usually his forgiveness’s are shallow in nature, but I am finding the more time I spend with them working on chore’s and responsibilities, the deeper they go within themselves, and uncontrived respect just flows from their amazing beings! So far, more responsibility has equaled more respect, for self and for others.
This was completely mirrored back to me as I realized that ever since Dakar has backed off from expecting me to complete certain chores around the house, I end up doing them because I want to! When he treats me like a queen (or what I thought was a queen, but now realize it was a princess, because I was behaving and being treated like a little girl) – spoiling me, making dinner, doing dishes, pretty much doing everything so that I won’t have to, he lost respect for me, and I lost respect for him and myself. There was no shared accountability. Of course, when he wasn’t home, it was easy for me to step into the role of the provider, but when he was here, I found myself acting like a little girl. Can you say ‘daddy issues’ some more?
Now we are both realizing what a true queen gets treated like. There are no expectations, he doesn’t feel like he has to do everything around the house as well as “bring home the bacon”. Because of this, I have a new perspective of wanting to contribute more, because I don’t feel the expectations or guilt from myself or the judgments from Dakar. Sometimes this work is really, really hard, but I am amazed at how much it is worth it!
It’s so much easier to be in gratitude and harmony when there are no expectations. I have my children to thank for showing me so much of life!
No comments:
Post a Comment