Tag Archives: systems thinking

Lighting Matches Part 3: Start Here

The big picture of America today is intense. One look at the price of gas and my anxiety shoots up right along with those numbers! War, government shutdown, and voting redistricting ramp up emotions. Every day uncovers a new crisis!

Here’s the thing. You cannot control what happens in the world, but you are in charge of how you respond when your own anxiety rises.

We began this series by zooming out. In an effort to look beyond the reactive, emotional intensity in our nation, I described America as a gas-filled room where people keep lighting matches. This way of thinking is called systems thinking.

Systems thinking challenges you to be thoughtful instead of reactive – to look beyond the immediate, flammable frustration (war, shutdown, redistricting) and investigate the cause of the gas leak, or the anxiety. It is easy to get upset when a match is lit. It is more difficult to slow down, notice what else is going on, and decide how to respond.

Last week, I wrote that in emotionally intense times, hate binds people together. When anxiety rises and emotions are ramped up, we join a group – maybe adhere ourselves to a political party, or become a Swiftie. The options are endless! Instead of slowing down to think through what “I” believe and value, “we” remain stuck together by our intense feelings.1

One more summary of the first two posts in this series:

  1. We zoomed out to confirm that we live in an anxious society. The individual, flammable frustrations (war, shutdown, redistricting) are not the problem, the problem is the gas filling the room.
  2. We confirmed that in anxious times, we react quickly rather than respond thoughtfully, and find our “tribe.” When emotions ramp up, we tend to rely more on intense feelings of togetherness than on our best, individual thinking, leaving society stuck in the gas-filled room.

What now? Knowing that you can only control how you respond and nothing else, what path might you take out of the gas-filled room?

The path out of the gas-filled room begins at your doorstep.

Let’s zoom back in, all the way into your neighborhood.

Ben Sasse is a former Republican senator of Nebraska. In an interview with 60 Minutes, he spoke of mending the brokenness of politics by starting where you live. Rather than getting caught up in the impossible, big political arguments, think neighbor-to-neighbor. “I think your fundamental political community is your neighborhood, and your city hall and maybe even your state legislature.”

Neighbor-to-neighbor is actually something you and I can work on; it is one path you and I can take to thoughtfully slow down and respond, instead of quickly react in this anxious moment in America’s life. Start in your own neighborhood.

A few years ago, I told the story of a failed attempt at a neighborhood get-together one summer. A couple of years later, the results were different. Marcus and I hosted 25 or so neighbors in our backyard.

It was a casual pizza party.2 Kids played. Neighbors young and old chatted. The group included a cyber security expert, doctor, teachers, retired folks, an oil field employee and a rowdy group of kids, among others.

I believe neighborhoods are safer when we take time to get to know one another, neighbor-to-neighbor. What do you believe about neighborhoods?

A casual pizza party will not fix war, shutdowns or redistricting. It will not immediately fix the gas leak in anxious America. Yet, it is one small step toward mending the brokenness.

I believe that professing I am a Christian requires me to be invested in my neighborhood – to look up and down the street for neighbors to get to know, even to rely on at times.

The big picture of America may be intense. Remember, your sole responsibility is not to fix it, but to decide how you might thoughtfully respond. Instead of lighting a match, or letting another match ramp you up, let the light of Christ guide you into the way of peace – peace for you and for your neighbor.

Photo by Marcus Moore on Unsplash

  1. Of course, there are times in a society when matches need to be lit: slavery must end, women must vote, LGBTQ people must be recognized as human beings. There are matches that need to be lit for the sake of justice, don’t get me wrong. Here, I am focusing on lighting matches that are not thoughtful or productive, but reactive to the anxiety. ↩︎
  2. In this blog post, I shared that Shannan Martin wrote one of my favorite books on this subject. ↩︎

Lighting Matches Part 2: When a President Hates

What happens when a president speaks aggressively against particular groups of people? You have a few options:

  1. Join in and light more matches!
  2. Or, as long as you are not part of that group, you can ignore it.
  3. Or, you can slow down, notice the gas leak, and get curious about this word from systems thinking (Bowen theory): togetherness.

When a crisis strikes a community, people come together – shoveling driveways after a winter storm or hauling away a neighbor’s debris in the aftermath of a tornado. It is natural for human beings to come together for the common good.

It is also natural for human beings to come together when emotions are ramped up and society becomes a gas-filled room. We gravitate toward like-minded people who do not challenge our thinking, but affirm our thinking. In this kind of togetherness, we seek the company of those who agree and make us feel comfortable and correct. This way, we can like and dislike the same sorts of people.

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”1

Hate can be a product of the togetherness force. We experience this…

  • within families (in our family, we hate when people add vegetables to tater tot hotdish),
  • or among friends (we cannot stand the White Sox2),
  • or at work (the competitor is our mortal enemy),
  • or in church (God forbid our grandchildren ever convert to that other dreadful religion),
  • or in society (if you do not belong to my political party, you are so very Wrong).

The togetherness force allows us to hate with others and not alone. It is more comfortable to surround ourselves with people who would not upset the hate vibe, but simply agree in order to keep peace in the group. And, you guessed it, the silent gas leak in American society persists when we rely on this sort of unhealthy togetherness.

When we rely on hate to bind a group together, we join in ramping up emotions when it might be better to slow down and think alone. The group becomes a clump of people instead of individual, thoughtful selves.

Instead of blindly agreeing with the group, you might do some research on your own. Get curious and ask yourself whether the White Socks are really so bad. (Jim Thome, after all.) You can look at the group you are part of (family, friend group, political party, church, etc.) and recognize that a healthy group not only allows for individual thinking, but even individual, respectful disagreement.

When you step back from the group and ask your self some questions, this is called the individuality force.

You are your own person with your own unique beliefs, principles, values and goals. But when you are fused to a group (a political party, family, church, or friend group, etc…) and emotions ramp up, it becomes extremely difficult (like a camel going through the eye of a needle) to manage your own thinking without letting your emotions take the lead.

  • Consider a subject you feel particularly passionate about these days. How much of your thinking has been inherited from your family or borrowed from a group?
  • Consider a group you are formally or informally part of. Does this group bring out your best self and encourage you to stick to your principles? Or is it so emotional to be part of this group that you aren’t quite sure just what you believe when you are with this group?

A group of any sort that encourages hate is suspect. Hate is antithetical to the Christian faith.

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:20)

  1. Beartown by Fredrick Backman, Chapter 35 ↩︎
  2. This is a baseball given, said any Twins fan ever ↩︎

Photo by Morgan Caradec on Unsplash

Lighting Matches: When the President Portrays Himself as Jesus

Consider this image: An enclosed room with a silent gas leak. No one notices the gas until a troublemaker lights one match, and then another. The match matters—but the greater danger is the invisible gas filling the room.

This is called systems thinking. Instead of focusing on the troublemaker lighting matches, it would be more effective to address the gas leak.

Why in the world am I telling you such a strange story?! Let me explain.

I write blogposts to invite you to be thoughtful in your relationships with family, colleagues, friends and neighbors. Relationships, as you well know, can get tense. When there is tension (also called anxiety) in a relationship and emotions ramp up, words or actions that would otherwise be no big deal are suddenly flammable. Examples:

  • Your co-worker left colored paper in the copy machine (a match is lit) and now your agendas are neon pink. Normally, you would recall the 80’s and laugh, but…you lose your cool.
  • Your kiddo spilled a full glass of milk at the dinner table (a match is lit). Most nights, you understand kids are clutzy, but…you cry big tears over spilled milk.

Systems thinking challenges us to be thoughtful instead of reactive – to look beyond the immediate, flammable frustration and investigate what is causing the gas leak, or the anxiety. It is easy to get upset when a match is lit. It is more difficult to slow down, look around the relationship, and wonder what else is going on.

If we investigate those examples, we can see what else is going on.

  • Your co-worker left colored paper in the copy machine and now your meeting agendas are neon pink, but because your dog kept you up last night, your car payment is overdue, and your grandma is sick, (the gas-filled room) you lose your cool.
  • Your kiddo spilled a full glass of milk at the dinner table, but because you are anxiously waiting for the doctor to get back to you with test results (the gas-filled room), you cry big tears over spilled milk.

You can see it is easier to react to the match lighting and harder to investigate what else is adding to the anxiety or tension, resulting in a gas-filled room. Here is another example:

  • The president posts a meme of himself as the Son of God…and people. go. nuts.

I am less interested in the content of this blasphemous post in which my own president portrays himself as the Son of God among exclusively white people. It’s just a match being lit. However, I would like to investigate what is filling the room with gas.

  • The president posts a meme of himself as the Son of God, at the same time trust in institutions has been depleted, social media speeds up our reactions to the news, news is posted in real time and not always accurately, the rich and powerful have left the poor and unemployed in the dust, and people. go. nuts.

America today is a gas-filled room and people (not only the president) keep lighting matches. The people lighting matches may be looking for trouble, but the greater trouble is the flammable gas all around us.

Wouldn’t you like to investigate the gas leak and how we, as a nation, might address the leak? The Christian faith requires each individual to consider how we are faithful citizens outside of church building. Let’s investigate:

  • How is social media ramping up emotions in the United States? (match-lighting)
  • How are smart people get duped by ridiculous claims and memes on the internet? (match-lighting)
  • How do “Christians” seem to overlook the president’s significantly un-Christian motives and actions? (match-lighting)

Putting out small fires is not as effective as addressing the gas leak. With the leak under control, troublemakers could light matches with little to no effect.

But today, as long as there is invisible gas filling the society, America will react and not thoughtfully respond to each match.

Circling back, I write blogposts to get you thinking about your relationships and what happens when there is tension or anxiety.

This three-part series is meant to get you thinking about how you as a person of faith and a citizen want to move through time of tension and anxiety as matches are lit in a gas-filled United States of America.

I also write blogposts to invite you to rely on Jesus’ tender love for you. When you rely on Jesus’ tender love in our own life, you may be more compassionate with others and the gas leak may begin to close.

The president’s blasphemous meme is not the problem, it’s just a match being lit. There is more going on as emotions keep ramping up. I wonder what might happen if each of us were to investigate the leak, that is, to do our best, most faithful-filled, individual thinking and rely on the tender love of Jesus for ourselves and for our neighbors.

Two posts will follow this one:
Part Two: The danger of relying on emotions and sharing a common enemy
Part Three: A thoughtful, Christian, neighborly response to this time in America

P.S. As I offer this invitation to think more clearly as individuals, I welcome your feedback, and your own thinking and wondering as we move through this season of America’s life. Please comment or message me directly if that is most comfortable for you. Your thinking helps my thinking, as we rely on the tender love of Jesus together.

The Night I Didn’t Do the Dishes

When I walked into the kitchen this morning, I saw them – dirty dishes from the day before laid out on the counter like people on a beach looking for a suntan. They were happy there.

The dishes did not care that I had not washed them, and neither did anyone else, even though I typically cannot stand dirty dishes loitering around! Some people say couples should not to go to bed angry. I tend to feel that way about dirty dishes. Even if it means staying up a little later, don’t go to bed with dishes in the sink—that’s what I tell myself.

No one else tells me this.

No one has ever said to me, “Lisa, don’t go to bed with dishes in the sink.”

So where did this come from?

Somewhere along the way, I formed an idea of what a kitchen should look like—and then turned it into an expectation: a good kitchen is a clean kitchen. Even though no one ever told me that.

The truth is, I might miss out on a conversation someone has been waiting to have with me, or hold up something fun someone wants to do, all because I’m busy trying to live up to an expectation I created.

What expectation have you created along the way, one no one is asking of you?

  • Is it a household chore? How your lawn looks? Your appearance? What you will serve at the next family holiday meal?
  • What are you busy doing that no one expects you to do? And what might you miss out on in the meantime?

The writer of Psalm 127 points out, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest [doing the dishes, perhaps], eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.”

There is always more to do!

And often, there is less that actually needs to be done.

Photo by Mariam Antadze: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stack-of-dirty-coffee-cups-on-a-dirty-table-7351917/

The Overfunctioner’s Bread

You are sitting there in worship, minding your own business, and what seems like an innocent psalm leaps off the page and stirs up trouble. I don’t expect trouble from the psalm! The makers of the lectionary pair it with a Gospel. It is more like an opener than the headliner.

During the second service yesterday, the psalm did its leaping, its words landing on my often overfunctioning self. Splat!

Psalm 127-1-2

Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord guards the city,
the guard keeps watch in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil,
for he gives sleep to his beloved.

Overfunctioning is one of four relationship patterns. When a relationship with your family, a friend, workplace, or even the larger society becomes anxious or stressful, your response may be shaped by what you learned growing up:

  • Over/Under-Functioning: You may take over the situation, appoint yourself to think or act on someone else’s behalf. Or step back and disengage, passively let someone else do the thinking or doing for you, even though you are capable.
  • Distance: Keep your opinion to yourself, reduce contact with family, adopt an “ism” like workaholism or alcoholism. Or immerse yourself in a hobby.
  • Conflict: Respond with criticism, blame, and perhaps even abusively put others down.
  • Cut-Off: Avoid dealing with the stress and leave the family/friendship/workplace/society altogether, even though the stress tends to go with you.

Again, these are relationship patterns you rely on with people. And these are your patterns when there is stress at work, or when the nation in which you live is absolutely crazy. Here’s looking at you, America!

We rely on one of these four patterns to keep us steady. The patterns do not make you good or bad, they are simply the way you cope. The good news is that we tend to be consistent, Once you recognize your pattern, you can keep watch for it the next time a relationship with a person, workplace or nation amps up.

Overfunctioning is my go-to. In the psalm, I check all the overfunctioner boxes: laboring, guarding, eating the bread of anxious toil. The psalm leaped out at me because I had been overfunctioning in my work at church, not for the first time. I have eaten a plateful of anxious toil bread.

It happens when there is staff transition, when there are tasks that need to be done but the person who would do them is missing. (Every office seems ripe with transition these days, people coming and going; you may also be eating anxious toil bread.) The risk of overfunctioning increases for me because I’ve been there long enough to know what needs doing and maybe even how to do it.

These days, there is less overfunctioning and more handing off because we are belovedly fully staffed and I feel very excited for this team God has gathered. That might be why God added neon lights to the psalm yesterday. Instead of stirring up trouble, it stirred up curiosity. I notice that my diet of anxious toil bread has decreased.

It is easier to recognize your relationship pattern when you are on the other side of the stress.

I see it now, all that anxious toil bread, all that extra guarding and rising too early to labor. Now that I recognize the pattern, I’ll stir a verse from another psalm into the mix in hopes of recognizing the pattern the next time it emerges…because it will, as will your pattern, beloved human. Your pattern is your pattern, it does not define you. It is simply how you cope with the stress, not who you are. 

In peace, I will lie | down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me | rest secure. (Psalm 4:8)
  • What is your relationship pattern?
  • Would you test your guess by visiting with someone who knows you well?
  • Look back into the early pages of your life story. Did you learn that pattern growing up? Visiting with my cousins has helped me recognize my pattern. Mine is inherited. I am in good company!
  • How might you keep watch for your pattern the next time you feel anxious?

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

I Wrote a Book When Few People Read Books

A year ago I wrote a book even though reading books is a rarity. If you are reading this, perhaps you also read books. Or, maybe not. It is possible you used to read many books and now you pick up a book only once in a while.

I recently read (in an actual book!) that reading fiction broadens our perspectives of other people. A book is like someone else’s shoes we get to slip in and out of. A story parks us briefly in another person’s mind.

Because of books, I have at least a slightly more honest understanding of people who grew up on a Native American reservation, or raised a child within inner-city poverty, or battled addiction or contended with a family member’s addiction. None of these scenarios are my own. Without fiction, I would remain ignorant and probably judgmental – certainly less understanding of people whose lives differ from mine.

The book I wrote is an Advent daily devotional called Wait, An Advent of the
Familiar. Although few people read books, we all live among people whose stories differ from our own. There is a variety of footwear for us to try on. I wrote the book in hopes of making life with so many other people slightly more honest and understanding.

In the book, I often invite you to imagine you are a character in a play. Family members join you on stage, for example at the holiday dinner table. What part do you play? What family member is the antagonist? Is there a hero on stage? Who is helpful – annoyingly helpful? Which character goes mostly unnoticed?

If these questions are uninteresting, this might get you to turn the page.

The way you play your part “on stage” will influence the next generation of your family, the next cast of characters whom you may never meet.

Think about it, how did the decisions your parents and grandparents make shape which family you are now closest with, or distant from? The book is a tool to walk in other family members’ stories, and to take a more neutral look at your own.

The 24 devotions in the Advent devotional book lead to the story you know very well, regardless of your relationship with books. You need not be an avid reader to get swept up in the story of the God who put on sandals to understand your life.

Happy (almost) Advent! May this season offer clarity and healing to your relationships, lighten your heart and broaden your footwear.

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

Who Will You Avoid at Thanksgiving By Scrolling on Your Phone?

(This is an excerpt adapted from a chapter that didn’t make it into my Advent devotional book. The book is meant to offer you a new perspective on your own self, and on your relationships with family.)

I may forever question my parenting decisions in regard to devices. Our second son, born the same year as the iPhone, has never known an app-less world. Before the creation of the iPhone, I explain to these space-age creatures who are my kids, the word apps referred exclusively to appetizers. They still don’t believe me.

I love what my phone and tablet do for me. My Christmas shopping list is safely tucked away from nosy children. The recipe I am excited to try for a holiday meal is bookmarked. And all the Christmas music!  

It is ironic that by definition a phone, meant to be a tool for connection, has a way of blocking connection. Phones and tablets hold hostage our attention like neurotic Christmas lights, jumping ahead in the line of our priorities. Try the spiritual practice of eye contact and then struggle when your watch or phone call out for you like a needy toddler, “look at me!”

A week from Thursday, you may be required to set down your device and face a room full of humans, many of whom are related to you. It is possible you may prefer the company of your device to the company of at least one or two of those humans. It’s okay, you can keep that a secret!

To dial back the dread you may feel, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, Kathleen Smith, offers this uncomplicated tip: person-to-person relationships.

The idea is to sit down with one person at the gathering and strike up a conversation. Your conversation need not be deep. No need to address a sticky point in your relationship. “But short, personal inquiries about each other are an important glue in our society, families, and organization. They bolster mental health and create trust in relationships.”[1]

Can you set aside your phone and ask someone about the dish he brought to the meal? Or sit beside the person who seems left out of the conversation and simply say hello? What might happen if you ask her the highlight of the past year? What was great? What was rough?

Families so often make the mistake of assuming they know each other, or that it might be too vulnerable to get to know one another. What if, dear Lord, the person asks you a question back?! Yes, this is a risk of person-to-person contact.

Each day, there is a temptation to rely on a device to pass the time, entertain, even distract us. What connection might you miss next week if you scrutinize over the Wordle instead of sharing caring words with the person beside you?

As soon as you finish the last turkey sandwich, it will be Advent. Advent is the assurance that nothing can distract God from loving you. In the birth of Christ, God did not communicate such love from far away, but up close up, person-to-person.

If God came all this way, join me in wondering what might happen at Thanksgiving if we ignore our distracting devices and travel across the room to sit beside someone we’d rather not? Moving helps with digestion, so it would be a win-win.

Reflection

When does your phone distract you from your relationships with loved ones? And, think this one through: who is one person you could get to know better over the holiday?

Thank you, Lord, for your deep connection with us. Hold my attention, that I might receive the abundance of your life to share with my family. Amen.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

[1] The Power of Contact – by Kathleen Smith (substack.com)

A Cookie Contradiction

My daughter baked these lovely sprinkle cookies. She is a near-master of the Crumbl knock-off recipes, which was the answer to my husband’s question a few months ago: “Why in the world do we have so much flour?”

The cookies are as good as they look…most of the time.

Always the willing taste-tester, she handed me one after it had cooled. At first, I could not describe what I was tasting. It looked sweet, yet the taste did not match. A weird contradiction clung to the roof of my mouth.

“You should try these,” I told her, or warned her, before she took them over to her grandpa for his birthday.

“What do you mean?”

“Just…try one.”

When she did, her face matched my perplexed tastebuds. What was this odd, perhaps even savory flavor competing with the rainbow specks of sweetness?

After some deliberation, we realized the culprit was the cutting board. She had asked if I thought it was okay to set the cookies to cool on the cutting board instead of dragging out the cooling racks, an act of injustice we will never again commit.

I did not consider the onions and garlic that had been chopped up for something, probably soup, just a few days before. Those savory flavors rose up in delight, invading the warm sweetness of the cookies like a sneak-attack, flavor-massacre.

Luckily, setting them back on the baking sheet for an hour or so seemed to undo the disaster. I did appreciate the lesson.

Human beings, like those cookies, are absorbent. Without realizing it, we soak up the sweet or spicy flavor of the spaces in which we gather. We can easily absorb both loving and unloving attitudes toward the world and our neighbor from those with whom we spend our time in-person and online.

“You are what you eat,” is perhaps a simpler way to say all of this. Hang out with angry people and we absorb that anger. Hang out with joyful people and we absorb that joy. Hang out with people who are curious, or kind, or bitter, or hateful and we will find ourselves like that cookie: one thing on the outside and another on the inside.

The slipperiest part of being human is that you think you can change another person, but you cannot. You can try to make the angry person less angry, or the bitter person less bitter, however, without even noticing, those exact flavors have a way of sneaking in from the cutting board and shaping who you are and how you see the world and your neighbor.

What flavors would you like to absorb as you live your life with people?

For years, I have prayed with this New Zealand Prayer Book, a prayer book my internship supervisor first introduced. The ELCA lacks in prayer books, unlike our friends in Christ who are Roman Catholic or Episcopalian, which is the source of this prayer book. A few months ago, I tried to be more disciplined in reading the morning and evening prayers daily. As these things go for me, most days I remembered and other days I did not. I am no champion of perfection.

I can tell you that on the days I start and end with these prayers, it feels as though the day fully begins and ends with the Lord. Dare I say it is absorbing! The morning and evening prayers of each day are tied together and somehow, each prayer has spoken directly to my life, as the Holy Spirit has a habit of doing.

Here are two wonderings for you to absorb:

  • Consider the people with whom you spend your time at home, work, and wherever you go for fun. What might you be absorbing? What is the same or different in each setting?
  • What are you absorbing in the time you spend online? Does it make life sweeter when you spend time wherever you do online? Or would you like to reconsider what you prefer to absorb when you travel around the internet?

Imaginary Enemies

I hope I wasn’t the only one who grew up with imaginary friends. I also had real live friends, but my two imaginary friends were the most reliable. Always there when I needed them!

Since then, both of them have moved on, or I have moved on. Perhaps both.

There comes a time when the imaginary people must move on, and we must move on. Definitely both.

Just as there are reliable, imaginary friends, there are reliable, imaginary enemies. People we have pitted against us, even though they may not even exist. Imagined enemies we have learned to hate.

I noticed when our president spoke against imaginary enemies in his eulogy for Charlie Kirk. His words reminded me of Fredrick Backman’s definition of hate in his novel, “Beartown.”

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.

At about minute 24 of the eulogy, the president referred to debates he’d had with Charlie Kirk. According to the president, Kirk did not hate his opponents. That, the president explained, was where they disagreed. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want what’s best for them,” the president proclaimed to a cheering funeral crowd.

Like any president ever, ours has a long line of opponents, enemies he has made here and there. And yet, I’m not sure all of his enemies are real. I wonder if his love for having an enemy can threaten to create imaginary enemies, enemies that invite people to hate even further.

Hate is so powerfully stimulating, it can baptize a crowd of Christians in an amnesia bath, foregoing a substantial pillar of the Christian faith: love thine enemies (real or imagined), do good to those who hate you, offer the other cheek, and so on.

When there is tension in the air in our society, in your family, or in your work, you are in charge of only one person: You. You cannot change the people around you, especially your enemies, but you can decide how you will move through the tension.

  • How do I want to show up in this anxious time of our country?
  • What emotion do I need to notice in myself, so that it does not get the best of me?
  • Am I watching too much news? (I appreciated Danielle Webster’s words in this episode of The Prairie Beat podcast.)

Blessed are you as you wrestle with your place in this anxious time, for you will be filled with the real live love of the God who came to live among you in a real live body simply to love. Love. Love.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

The Case of the Missing Lids

It happens to you.

You finish a meal and you are left with the leftovers. You reach into the drawer or cupboard where containers and lids take up residence. You find the perfect container but cannot locate the lid. You know it was just there! How do containers and lids separate? It is madness!

If you live alone, you wonder what you did with the lid and investigate, or give up, depending on the day and how much you want to bother with a missing lid.

If you live with other people, however, you open the case of the missing lid and go looking for someone to blame! At our house, the list of suspects includes the teenager who leaves a trail of containers and lids throughout the house, the old guy Marcus visits each week and delivers a meal in these containers, the dishwasher (you never know), or the dog who has been known to mistake a lid for a frisbee.

Blame is a lovely distraction. In fact, the missing lid will never be found, I know this to be true. The time we spend distractedly looking for someone to blame could be better spent reorganizing the system to make it less likely for lids to go missing in the first place.

If I zoom out a bit, I can see this fact: we toss lids into a drawer and hope for the best. Because multiple people do the dishes at our house, not everyone files lids (or containers) in exactly the same drawer. Also, lids crack and get tossed before a replacement is found, like benching a basketball player without sending in a sub, leaving only four on the floor, an incomplete team.

Blame will not get to the bottom drawer of any of this, it will instead stifle creative wondering and problem-solving. Blame keeps me frustrated instead of curious. Blame also makes a person crabby, which is no fun.

Blame for me extends beyond the lid drawer to relationships, just as it does for you.

Kathleen Smith has me considering blame after reading “Blame is a Giant Penguin.” (This is a subscriber-only article.)

“Moving past blame isn’t about letting people off the hook or excusing bad behavior. It’s about not needing a villain to steady the ship or make sense of one’s current functioning, a feat for the uber-narrative brain.”

This is to say, blame distracts us from the actual facts. It keeps us from thinking through the relationship to be honest with our own part in the problem.

  • Who are you blaming instead of zooming out to see the problem differently? Maybe more honestly?

Zooming out offers you a Christ-like view of your relationships, adding mercy to the question. It keeps you from being distracted by blame and reorients you to the everyday wonder of being alive.

  • What blame are you carrying that needs letting go?
  • How does blame melt away when you prayerfully define how you want to live? How you invite people to treat you?

When I zoom out and see my own part in a relationship problem, I often recognize that I have not been clear with how I want to be treated. I distractedly let someone else shape a relationship that needed more input from me.

Blaming is easy and so often it leaves us stuck. God’s gift of your life deserves a wider, zoomed out view of how you want to define your relationships (even with the lids.)

Case closed.

Photo by Luke Peterson on Unsplash