Getting Here from There - Episode 38

What would happen if you believed things will work out? What if that's true, even if you can't see how right now?

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It's going to be okay, and even better!

Transcript

Welcome to No Empty Chairs! I’m taking a little trip down memory lane today. When I was in high school, I used to drive my friends around in my family’s old Datsun 510. It was medium green with plastic “wood” paneling down the side like a station wagon, but it was smaller than a station wagon, a basic 4-door hatchback with dark green vinyl seats. One night a large group of teenagers was relocating from one house to another, why? I don’t remember now. We piled into a bunch of vehicles and headed out, but not in a caravan. Somehow along the way the group in my car ended up facing the end of a cul-de-sac. My best friend’s boyfriend piped up–not very helpfully and in some frustration–“You can’t get there from here!”

Fortunately for him and for everyone else in my car, I wasn’t buying it. “If we can’t get there from here, we may as well just give up and go home.” I was driving, and I decided not to give up and go home. I thought we could get there from here.

We did, in fact, eventually get there. We were the last group to arrive and there was some puzzlement about what took us so long. It was probably curiosity as much as anything else, but we were feeling it as criticism. In our defense, my best friend confidently asserted, “We took the secret slow way!” implying that we knew something they didn’t. I was probably 17 years old when I had this experience, but I have had a soft spot in my heart for “the secret slow way” ever since.

I have talked before on the podcast about the time some of my children stepped well back from interacting with me. It was excruciatingly painful for me, until it wasn’t. Coaching was a big part of that shift. Coaching helped me identify more clearly, more consciously, the things I have control over and the things I don’t. It helped me see the impact I was having on my experience of my life and put me back in the driver seat. And being in the driver seat of my life rather than a passenger of it has made all the difference for me in getting from there to here.

“There” was suffering under the belief that something had gone terribly wrong with my life and my children’s lives. “Here” is greater peace and openness to relationships with my children on their terms. 

And just this week, “here” has brought an unanticipated bonus that I want to remember and celebrate. I want to respect my child’s privacy, so I will be somewhat vague in the particulars, including using gender neutral pronouns, but I think you’ll be able to see the principles at work. Something happened in my adult child’s life and they were feeling anxious about it. They texted me and asked if we could have a phone call. 

That was the first wonder. In recent months this child has become somewhat more responsive to my text messages, but they rarely initiate an interaction. This time they were seeking me out–and they wanted to have a conversation. Instead of thinking that this was a rare, high-stakes opportunity to make an impact that may never come again, I simply wondered what was on their mind and felt curious about what they wanted to discuss. I also felt hopeful that I would be able to help them in some way because I thought they were thinking I could help them, too. I didn’t feel any anxiety or pressure to show them anything, about myself or anything else. I was ready just to be with them on the phone because I love them.

Before long they called and told me what had happened and how they were feeling about it. It wasn’t all perfectly smooth. I asked them to take a deep breath. When I didn’t hear anything, I asked again and said, “so I can hear it,” and was met with a blunt, “No.” I let that go. I didn’t insist they breathe and I didn’t beat myself up about whether I should have asked them to breathe in the first place. I just moved on.

I was able to assure them that their anxious feelings were understandable, but not necessary. They had done and were doing nothing wrong. Another person involved was out of line in saying what they had said that sparked my child’s anxiety. We talked through the situation and its implications together. I shared some things I have learned about the way the world works, which helped them reset their expectations of themselves and what was reasonable for others to expect of them.

One of the things my child was concerned about was the impact their decision might have on me. Another wonder! In this case, there was no real cause for concern, but I very much appreciated that it was on their mind.

As our conversation was winding down and my child was feeling calmer, they volunteered another, unrelated piece of personal information, saying, “Just wanted to update you.” It wasn’t something I would have known anything about to even ask, and here they were telling me about it out of the blue, just so I would know. They wanted me to know.

I can’t even describe how beautiful that felt, to be trusted to receive what they offered. That whole conversation ended up being 21 minutes long, which is marathon-length in adult-child years, at least in my family.

As I was describing this experience to my therapist the next day, she asked me, “What do you think changed for them?”

The answer is going to sound easier than it is, but it’s simple. I changed. I stopped chasing after their attention, grasping for something I thought I was entitled to and without which their life would be lacking. I started giving them space to be who they are, to discover more about who they are, and to decide how they want to be in the world, and how they want to be with me.

And then my therapist pointed out that my child also now has more data about me than when they were younger. When they were younger, they had a story in their mind about who I was and what that meant for them. There were a lot of inputs to that story and they weren’t all factual and firsthand, especially during the time they estranged themselves somewhat from me. But as we’ve had occasion to be together more, mostly on my child’s terms without expectations from me, they have begun to see me as a loving, safe person. I haven’t tried to convince them, but it seems like they’re beginning to convince themselves.

Of course, all of that is made up. It’s the story I’m choosing to tell myself about what happened because the truth is that my child has not told me what has gone on in their experience of me. I only know what has happened in my experience of them. And in recent years, my experience of them has mostly been inviting, watching, and waiting.

There is a fascinating verse in the Latter-day Saint book of scripture The Pearl of Great Price that I keep coming back to. It’s an account of the Creation purported to be from Abraham of the Old Testament. Half-way through the Creation story, after setting lights in “the expanse of the heavens” to “divide the light from the darkness,” and before creating “the moving creatures that have life,” in Abraham 4:18, it says, “And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed.” The Gods watched. Fascinating!

I am not God, but I do believe that it is godly to watch and to wait with hope and without expectation.

You can get here from there. Just remember that “here” for you has nothing to do with your kids. “Here” is more peace and more openness to people being who they are. It doesn’t depend on them. It only depends on you. What I know, though, is that when I show up from the peace of “here” instead of the tension of “there,”  I make more space for my children to find their own way, even if we all take the “secret slow way.”

Remember, there are no empty chairs.