Eat, Pray, What?

I recently saw the movie Eat, Pray, Love. It's the story of one woman's journey to find love, happiness and peace for herself. So she leaves her world (literally), including her husband, job, friends/family, and spends an entire year traveling the world in search of love, happiness and peace. She has made the choice to leave everything in order to find these things for herself.

There's certainly nothing wrong with wanting love, happiness and peace, understanding who you are, seeking answers to those big questions in your mind. But as you live life, remember that your life involves other people. As John Donne once wrote, "No man is an island." The way we live our life touches others. The choices we make for ourselves affect the people around us, no matter how big or small the choice is.

Think about it. When good things happen to us, we want to share it with others. When our good choices result in good outcomes, we want to share that success with the people we care about, for instance choosing college and then celebrating when we finally graduate. Our good choices affect others because they care about us and want to celebrate with us. And in the same way, our negative choices affect those same people. When we hurt, those who care for us hurt as well. Our choices can even affect people we don't know. don't be fooled into believing your choices don't affect others. They affect someone.

Much of this love, happiness and peace we seek comes when we focus, not on our own love, happiness and peace, but in helping others find the same. The people we interact with on a daily basis like co-workers, peers, friends, boy/girl friends, spouses, etc...those people we eat, pray and love with.

Tabitha

We don't wait well

I visited HopePark Church this past week and listened to Pastor David Perez teach about 'waiting in the wilderness'. How do we handle the 'in between time' of God's promise and fruition? He even showed a clip of The Marshmallow Test, which illustrated young children's ability to either eat one marshmallow immediately or wait 20 minutes for two. They apparently followed these children through college into adulthood and discovered that those who waited were more successful in school and in their careers and felt more fulfilled. It caused me to reflect on my own life and the areas where I patiently waited for the right thing vs. settling quickly for the wrong thing. I then thought about the times I wasn't patient...yeah...pretty humbling. I think about how badly most of us wait in traffic, in line at the store, the line at the DMV, waiting for test results (both school and medical test results), etc. Think about it. We live in a fast paced world where food, data...just about anything is available in seconds. Have you ever forgotten your cell phone at home and noticed how impatient people are waiting for you to return a call or text? We are training ourselves to wait for very little today. We think we are good 'waiters' when a few days, weeks or months go by before a promise is fulfilled. But the Old Testament is filled with those who waited years...decades...before God's promises were realized.

At Hope Clinic we teach young adults about abstinence until marriage; which is immediately followed by the word: wait. Ah waiting. That thing we are no longer training ourselves or modeling to young people how to do. And we wonder why waiting is so hard for them with something as big and difficult as sex. Especially when you consider the average age of marriage is no longer 18 or 22, but well into 20's and 30's. And I wonder...what other area of our lives have we successfully modeled to wait 10 or 15 years before fulfillment?

Do I think we should teach young people to wait on sex? Absolutely. But after this teaching at church, I am asking myself how well I model "waiting" in all areas of my life. How am I really teaching them to wait? Am I willing to wait for the things I want too? Young adults are watching us more than they are listening to us. If we want them to wait, let's remember to show them how to wait and the positive results of waiting...in all areas of our life. If we teach them to wait for the little things, they will learn how to wait for the big things.

-Renee

What do you really need?

This week's blog is about something I saw on the 'Secret Life of the American Teenager' last week (so the 8/30/10 episode). Ricky is a junior in high school. He is the father of the baby, John. Some background on Ricky: Ricky plays out the ultimate 'player' character. I don't know where his father was in his life but his mom was an addict and we learned he has not had the most stable childhood. Recently he has been cared for by a foster family. The show depicts his foster parents as well educated, grounded people, trying to bring some balance and security in his life. But we can tell they came into his life late so they are doing the best they can. In fact, at this point Ricky lives in an apartnemt above the butcher shop he works in. Part of why Ricky is not currently dating the mother of his son, (well that is actually changing but more on that another week), is because he notoriously sleeps around.

I have been intrigued with the growth of this character over the last few seasons. The hopeless 'hopeful' person in me sees a young man, with no good model in his past, fight really hard to be a good dad and a good man. But well, he is 17 and he doesn't have a lot of help so he certainly messes up and slides back to his old patterns often but I see someone really trying. He is working after school to support his son and has given up many frivolous things he used to do. No big deal? I see plenty of 'baby daddies' at the high school ignoring all responsibility.

So what has intrigued me this week about Ricky has to do with the conversation he had with his male therapist. He is considering if he and the mother of his child should 'try to work on their relationship'. His one concern is his need for sex and the mother of his baby not wanting to have sex. (She got pregnant with their child the one and only time she had sex). He says: "You know me, I need sex. I can't go without sex." His therapist says: "No Ricky. I am going to challenge your thinking. I think you need to feel loved. And sex has been the only way you knew how to seek it from a woman."
And then they really explore this. Ricky doesn't tell him he is crazy for saying that! Yeah, I fell off the couch then. Do I expect to hear that from a therapist to a female client? Yes. But my own stereotypes tell me there is no way a guy would do that would they? Yes they would. Young men want to feel loved too. Just like young women. They have just been taught to go for the hunt. Have sex and take the love from a woman. But just like women who have sex to feel loved, this type of exchange is un-authentic. It feels good for the moment but like a sugar rush after a bunch of chocolate, it is not the real sustaining kind we all seek.

I am so glad we have male counselors and mentors at Hope Clinic now. These young men need us as desperately as the women do. You may think they don't talk to the men here but they do. Earl tells me time and again how MUCH the young men share, how they hug him at the end, how relieved they are to finally have someone to talk to. I keep reminding people that 60% of the young men today are growing up without a father figure in the home. We want them to 'be a real man' or 'be a Godly Man' and yet most of them have not seen this, their entire life. So this week I am encouraging all of us to do what we can to make sure the young men we know have access to Godly men who will take the time to speak into their life, share life with them and mentor them. And if you want to know more about how you can do this at Hope Clinic, contact Earl Burns at EBurns@hopeclinicforwomen.org.