The miracle of being at peace with yourself

December, 2007
with John Kuypers

Dear Friend,

This has been a difficult year in our family.   Now, it is Christmas and it is the time for a new perspective.  A new perspective is really the main benefit of living more fully in the present. 

Our difficulties were primarily caused by a troubled teenage stepdaughter and an aggressive ex-husband.  With that has come a lot of new hurts and wounds, all of which are now in the past but whose scars remain fresh, painful and unhealed.

How do you get a new perspective on such wounds?  Never have I felt more challenged and less capable of answering that question than this year.  

Every day in the news, we see new wounds which the participants will have to digest, grieve and overcome.  No doubt you have had some in your life - from "ordinary" struggles like unhappiness at work to deeper hurts like serious sickness, injury, divorce and deaths.

The biggest lesson for me has been one of humbly accepting that people around me can make destructive choices and there is almost nothing I can do to stop them.  For someone like me who feels he has some insights on human behaviour, that has hurt.   All I can do is choose my own response in a way that maintains my dignity while helping others see different choices.

When they fail to change (as is often the case), we are left with picking up broken pieces.  How hard it is to see the pieces that can be nurtured into something positive!  The most difficult part of finding a new perspective is that our dearly-held hopes and dreams have been crushed.  The pain of this loss is very great. 

More than anything, trust has been broken.  Without trust, it is very difficult to love.  All the Bible talk about "love your neighbour" and "forgive them seventy times seven" seemed a bit empty throughout this time. Instead, I rode a roller coaster of feeling angry and judgmental, along with doses of despair and resignation.

Many months later, I found a new perspective - a way to see the advantages in the new reality of this present moment.  It began when I finally accepted that my old vision had died - the dream of a "blended family" that was unified and loving and caring about each other. 

Instead, a new vision has emerged - one that is a collection of individual pairs of relationships.  Mother to daughter.  Stepfather to stepdaughter.  Brother to sister.  Step-brother to step-sister.  Mother-in-law to son-in-law.  Husband to wife.  Ex-spouse to ex-spouse.

My old perspective of a traditional family is over for me.  Indeed, we live in an era of "mass customization" as the marketers like to call it.  Each person has his or her own preferences, increasingly unencumbered by "fitting in" to the norms of a family, or a business, or even a society.  Perhaps the I-pod is the greatest evidence of this new reality.  Each of us believes we have the right to enjoy our own preferences and inevitably that means bumping and crashing into what others want from us.

I can only conclude that more conflict is inevitable.  A tragic example is the 16 yr old Canadian Muslim girl strangled by her father for not wearing a hijab head covering.  Underneath this tragedy is the conflict of tradition vs self-expression.   The timeless 1971 film, "The Fiddler on the Roof," comes to mind.

This Christmas, my prayer for you, for me, and for the whole world, is that each of us can find peace between these two conflicting ideals.  Even Jesus warned that he did not come to bring peace to this earth but rather division between father and son, and mother and daughter (Luke 12:51-53).  I believe that the answer lies in being true to God's will for your life.

May you find peace in your heart this Christmas and throughout 2008.

Please forward this Present Living Thought to friends and colleagues.  Present living feels too good to keep it a secret!
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