Replacing Control With Boundaries
There is a difference between what a “control” is and what a “boundary” is. A control is a rule you make for somebody else. A boundary is a rule you…
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Control in Relationships: When Helping Turns Into Managing
Helping is good. I want to start there, because this post is going to make some of you uncomfortable and I don’t want it misread as an argument for indifference….
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When Someone Else’s Choices Disrupt Your Life
Somebody made a decision and now you’re living in it. He left. She relapsed. Your business partner did something reckless. Maybe your parents sold the place. Your kid dropped out….
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Control vs Responsibility
This is the distinction I draw on paper more than any other, and once people see it they start seeing it everywhere. Responsibility is about your actions. Control is about…
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When Things Fall Away, You Remain
We started this series back at the beginning of the season with a tree full of leaves and a question about what happens when things start coming loose. Twenty-six posts…
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Trusting God With What You’re Becoming
Most of us can eventually get to a place of trusting God with circumstances. Hard, but we know the language for it. The job, the diagnosis, the kid, the money….
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What Fall Teaches Us About Identity
You can’t tell what shape a tree is in July. The leaves are in the way. Come November the structure’s right there, every fork and angle and the one heavy…
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Releasing What Was Never Yours to Carry
There’s a certain kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix. You get eight hours and wake up heavy. You take the vacation and come back the same. You keep thinking…
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Strength Looks Different in This Season
We’ve got a picture of strength in this country and it’s all summer imagery. Full canopy, heavy fruit, everything visible and abundant and going. Nobody puts a November tree on…
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You Are Not Failing, You Are Shedding
A woman sat in my office last fall and gave me a list. Marriage in trouble. Quit a job she’d had eleven years. Hadn’t been to church since June. Kids…
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When Life Looks Bare but Isn’t Empty
Farmers around here will tell you a field in November looks like nothing. Stubble and mud. Drive past it at dusk and you’d swear the whole thing died. Underneath, there’s…
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When Roles, Relationships, or Dreams Fall Away
When somebody dies, we know what to do. There’s a visitation, there’s food on the counter you didn’t ask for, there’s a line of people at the funeral home saying…
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Fall Reminds Us That Change Can Be Beautiful
Here is a piece of grade school science that changed how I see the fall coming. Leaves do not turn colors. Not really. The yellows and the oranges were in…
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The Quiet Beauty of Letting Go
I put the garden up every September, and every year there is a strange minute in the middle of it. I stand there with the tomato cages in my arms,…
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Boundaries Without Guilt: Why a Screen Door Is Still a Door
I had a client tell me once that she felt like a hallway. Everybody walked through her to get somewhere else. However, nobody stopped to see what was on the…
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You Are More Than What You Survived
A woman sat in my office a while back at the good end of hard work. Years of it. She had stopped bracing when doors shut. This woman could say…
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What Healing Actually Looks Like Over Time
A client of mine, years into good, brave work, hit a hard anniversary and spent a weekend flat on the mat. Old symptoms, old thoughts, the works. She came in…
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Co-Regulation: Healing Happens Around Safe People
Watch a mama with a crying baby and you will see the oldest medicine on earth. She does not explain to the baby that the situation is manageable. She picks…
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Fawn Mode: When You Lose Yourself to Keep the Peace
I asked her what she wanted, and I meant it as a small question. What do you want to see change in your marriage, your week, your life? She laughed…
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Flight Mode: When You Can’t Slow Down
She showed me her calendar like it was evidence, and honestly, it was. Three months, not one white square. Work, church committee, kids’ ball, the extra project she volunteered for,…