“I don’t know what happened!” “That’s crazy!” “I didn’t notice.” “You should probably talk to _____ about that.” “Huh, that’s weird!” “I have no idea!”
All responses of people pretending and hiding behind their choices when they actually did play the lead role in a bad choice. So is pretending to be stupid a good defense?
Kids do it all the time. Addicts do it. Cheaters do it. And grown folks who want the benefit of your relationship without the consequences of their actions do it.
The problem with it is we WANT to believe people. We truly have a desire to think people act within the model we’ve created for them in our heads. It’s a reasonable expectation to think people will have reasonable explanations.
Some don’t. Some people don’t think about the implications of their behaviors and then wrongly believe you’ll overlook them if they tell you they’re not important or gaslight you into thinking they don’t exist.
So what do we do when this happens? It’s not hard to figure out little Johnny ate all the chocolate before dinner when there’s chocolate all over his face. It’s not hard to see the alcoholic showed up drunk. It’s really not hard to deduce a lot of things that people deny doing, so that’s when you have to rely on your intuition. Trust and also verify.
If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, looks like a duck, but talks like a pig…it’s just a bilingual duck but it’s still a duck.
I’d tell this little girl she is beautiful, smart, sweet, sassy, and that God loves her bigger than the whole sky. I’d tell her she is going to be a leader, a big sister to 4 amazing humans, have 2 exceptional children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren.
I’d tell her that her parents are her two biggest fans and mentors and her grandparents will always give the best advice and wisdom and to pay attention so she’ll remember. I’d tell her to spend as much time with those people as she could because their love is the biggest.
I’d tell her she is capable of anything, she is strong and resilient, that she has guardian angels who will help her her whole life. I’d tell her to trust her intuition, that those feelings are her superpower of truth just like Wonder Woman’s magic lasso she plays pretend with.
I’d tell her God will bless her with so many wonderful friends she won’t believe it and even more children to love on just like her grandmother and “they will call you Dee from your name like you call your grandmother BJ from hers” and watch her sweet smile get bigger when she imagines that and giggles.
I’d tell her one day she’d have her very own company and one day she’d be the boss just to watch her brown eyes light up and say “Really?” “Yes, baby. Really!”
I’d tell her those ideas she thinks up and dreams she has are real and she should follow them. I’d tell her when she wonders if she can’t do something all it means is she hasn’t figured it out yet, but she will so don’t stop thinking about it. I’d say to her “People will tell you you’re pretty, but you are really, really smart and that’s more important.“ so she never forgets to use her brain as her most valuable tool.
I’d tell her she is something special and I’d tell her that every day. I would breath life into her so she’d never forget her own potential. I would say all the things my parents said to me.
Why don’t we talk to our adult selves every day with the gentleness, promise, and grace we would speak over a child? Why don’t we remember we are God’s child and listen to the way He has always spoken to us? We should.
Chess moves involve multi step thinking, multi tool moves, and past today outcomes. Can you win at checkers with simple moves? Yes, absolutely yes. Can you do the same in chess? Hard no.
So when you think about people and business and why you do what you do and the cause and effect of those moves, you’ve got to think past tomorrow. This is otherwise known as a pyrrhic victory.
Pyrrhic victory (/ˈpɪrɪk/ (listen) PIRR-ik) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.
So if your decisions are emotional, short sighted, and long term cause you more harm than good, that’s a net negative. And that’s bad math.
It doesn’t matter if your pride misdirects you or if your ignorance leads you, bad math is bad math. Keep people around you to offer perspective, grounding, and accountability. Having yes people around you is not the way to win at chess. Have people who tell you “that’s short sighted”, “that’s not a good idea”, or “No”. And then listen to and trust them.
“A chaque oiseau, son nid est beau.” Translation “To every bird, its own nest is beautiful.” Little quotes you find in New Orleans years ago that earn meaning with gained perspective.
I’ve been in hundreds, maybe even thousands of homes throughout my career. The one thing I’ve noticed in every price point is the amount of sticks, bricks, and amenities that make up a piece of improved real estate is not what make true happiness for the people who own it.
You can have the same family in a 932 ft2 house and put them in a 9857 ft2 house and the only thing that will change is how far they can spread out. The amount of love they have won’t change, the way they talk to each other won’t change, the consideration for each other won’t change – it’s literally the same family in a different house.
Families change when the people in those families change. So it’s no surprise to me when I walk into a quaint home with a very peaceful feel to it, that I see the pride in its ownership and feel the love in its walls.
It’s no surprise to experience the same thing in a larger house, too. It’s the love in the house that makes a house a home. So no matter how much money you have, no matter how successful you become…the happiness of the place you call home will be tempered by the people you share it with.
And the lack of happiness, too. Love on your people in a way so that they never forget where their home is.
There’s something cathartic about sipping a glass of wine. Spending that 30 minutes reflecting on your day or your week…your trials, challenges, and victories.
There’s just something about taking the time to slow down and think. How are you doing? Where are you going? A lot of that forward path is created by where you’ve been and what led you to here.
If you like where you are, you keep going and that 30 minutes of sipping is filled with new ideas and dreams. If you don’t like where you are, it should be filled with the same mindset. “How can I make things better without making things worse?” SHOULD be the question that drives our thought process. If it’s not, get better wine or get better plans.
In real estate, a quitclaim deed is something you sign when you’re willing to pass your ownership of a property on to someone else. You “quit your claim” to it. It’s used for a few reasons, but I see it mostly when a couple is getting divorced and one is keeping the house.
What I never like to see is for someone to sign one of these while they’re still on the mortgage. Why? Because that’s accepting all of the responsibility and having none of the decision making ability. The only thing they can do is pay for it so they won’t get foreclosed on. They can’t sell it, rent it, Airbnb it, sign a sales contract or even put it on the market.
So in life when people make decisions for us and expect us to accept the responsibility and consequences of those decisions, it’s a lot like signing a quitclaim deed but staying on the hook for the mortgage. That’s bad.
Before you take on the responsibility of a decision that’s being made, make sure you are first involved, able, and willing to negotiate on your own behalf. It’s when we sit back and let someone else write our stories for us that we lose traction of our own lives, our resources and energy get hijacked…and maybe we even get foreclosed on.
Have you ever heard to the purity of God’s Word through the innocence of a child’s mouth? Even when we don’t have a child or teenager living at home, we should remember that when a child speaks the word of God, it’s without being filtered through the trash from the world that we’ve been around for so many more years than they have.
We have a ridiculously powerful influence to either encourage or discourage the growth of their gifts. Speak life, listen, and add light. We are not the gift givers, but we are the habitat and we choose to pollute or nurture them.
And when we nurture them, we become less jaded in the reminder that a lot of our ill emotions and thought process come from our own bad experiences and not from our own natural God given gifts.
“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.”
From time to time, I let my emotions dictate my thoughts and my thoughts dictate my decisions. We all do. What’s for the birds is stepping out of your emotions and wishing you’d made a “better” decision.
One emotional decision does not necessarily have to beget a string of bad decisions. When you’re feeling trapped or on the edge of drifting into a life you never planned for yourself, do not worry. Pray! Pray for understanding. Fast if you need complete clarity, but don’t EVER think you have to stay in the emotional state of poor decision making. That is a lie. God will guard your heart if you let Him.
You don’t “make bad decisions”. You made A bad decision.
“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7 NLT
I mostly write about women and relationships. Simply put because I’m a woman, my thoughts are largely focused on how females can love better, mother better, and how it feels to be hurt, and how I want to love when people hurt. Today I’m reminded again about leadership and how it connects men and women from a book I read in 2016.
“Men, let me plead with you. The greatest fight of your life is not lust. You may think it is, but it isn’t. The greatest fight of your life will be rejecting the passivity that has infected your heart since the fall. Your natural default, especially as it pertains to sacrificial leadership of your wife, will be to mutely witness.”
Matt Chandler, Mingling of Souls
Women are designed to be led. We are. Men, you’re designed to lovingly lead. So, fellas, if you’ve noticed you’re not the leader in your home, let me tell you how that manifested from my experience.
The word submit is broken down from Latin submittere “to yield, lower, let down, put under, reduce,” from sub “under” (see sub-) + mittere “let go, send” (see mission). This means to have a “mission” to be under, y’all have to come up with one first and then agree that’s how it’s to be done. And follow through with it, be under it together.
So men, when you and your wife decide as a team that you’re going to go to church, to have family time, to stick to a budget, to have a family mission and plan, etc., we look to you guys to help execute it. So if your wife deviates from the plan, let’s say she doesn’t want to go to church and decides to watch it online…that doesn’t seem so bad for one weekend, but one turns into 7 turns into 6 months turns into “let’s not watch it let’s just sleep in” and then you’re completely away from the plan…men, stay with the plan. Keep going to church, get those babies up and dressed and go anyway. “Are you sure you don’t want to go, honey? Ok see you when we get back.”
We can only watch you keep leading, sticking to the plan we agreed to with you, for so long until we catch back up. When we fall short and you fall short with us, when you follow us, you’ve turned US into the leaders of the house and we’re not designed for that. When we’re the leaders of the house, you’re not designed for that, either. We start to not trust you as the leader, you feel disrespected and unheard, and then the seed of resentment starts to root, which will intimately lead to behavior that leads to divorce.
Guys, I realize this may seem unfair and burdensome, but that’s how you were designed so take that up with God. I’ve been married and divorced so I can’t tell you how to stay married, but I can tell you how to get divorced, which is kind of the same thing.
Come up with a plan together, stick to the plan until there’s GOOD REASON to make a new plan, and be the leaders God designed you to be. This doesn’t include “mutely witnessing” and being “passive” when we want to unilaterally change the plan. It means keep going and let us catch up.
Do you think of people when they aren’t around and understand what they don’t say? When you’re connected to people, you should.
What I mean by this is sometimes people say things without saying them because they’re afraid to admit they’re struggling and sometimes people pull back when they need you to lean in. Sometimes when a friend says “Just having a case of the Mondays” or “I’m just tired” they really mean “I need a friend”. When people don’t say what they need to say it’s not always because they don’t want you to listen…
Maybe it’s part of our human appointment to help keep people connected. Maybe when a person we care about says things that don’t sound together it’s our actual job to offer support in words of hope. Maybe it’s as simple as asking if they have anything we can pray for.
Maybe. But what about when we can’t? When we’re the spent ones and the ones who are tired and feeling less than our best? What about when we need the good vibes?
Maybe do it anyway. At some point the chain of negativity will break and it won’t be because you turned someone away, it’ll be because you turned it around. And if you’re the one who brings joy and hope back to another human…there’s a lot of healing in that for your own heart.
Deeper Than a Puddle 