HEART'S CRY

I'm sure if you looked back at our end of year financial records, you may say we had a few years of poverty.  My family has had some scary times and some survival times.  Honestly, I have never once felt poor.  I felt short on cash or in pickle or even scared.  My family made choices and we counted cost and prioritized.  We have made and make terrible money decisions as we learned and we are learning how to handle the resources God gives us. I never felt completely hopeless or without options.  Why?  Why haven't I given up or let up on my dreams?  My boys are asking these questions now as they venture in to their own dreams.  When they ask it, it sounds like, "Why don't you care about having money?" or "Did you know we were poor?"  "I bet according to the poverty levels etc. we were at one time." I say and I mean, "What?  We have never been poor! Poor is a mindset and we have not been poor.  We have been short, b...

So in normal life, it is hard to find the depth of relationships needed to thrive.  What happens when mental illness, addiction, abuse and other debilitating factors enter the scene?  In ones own life or in someone close to us?  When hopelessness threatens our very lives?   There is nothing quite as isolating as being trapped in one's own mind and body. There is nothing quite as hopeless as knowing one we love and adore is the one trapped. I believe the shame, guilt and defensiveness of these struggles is the true enemy to our ability to reach out and build healing connections and relationships.  The cycle of these defenses, our pride and lack of involvement from others keeps us trapped. It is our own beliefs of love, reality and God that makes or breaks us. I promised God when I was a young Mom, I would wear a sign on my back with my struggles in flashing lights if it helped one.   If I survived. As human beings, we tend t...

The poverty of identity crisis and transitions and the buffer of relationships to build the capacity to successfully move through them. If poverty is not having the capacity to fully participate, times of transitions where one's identity is in disarray is a vulnerable time.  These s seasons where we are between one time and another can be a time of great relational poverty. Young adults are one example.  Facing the metamorphosis of changing from a dependent to a fully independent one is terrifying. Facing it without the relationship and connection of trusted and healthy people is a dangerous precipice at best. Can you imagine?  A child aging out of foster care and entering this world?  A young person whose closest relationship may be present and yet fully gone.  So many parents and grandparents are so wrapped up in themselves or in substance abuse, romantic flings, mental illness or working several jobs to survive.  Our young people our...

This story is important to me.  My deep loneliness and loss and the tremendous blessing of a few very important people who helped me find the capacity to build relationships. It was a very cold spring in my tiny house in North Dakota.  All of my friends and my husband were finishing college degrees and graduating in April.  My heart hurt that I would not be one of them.  It was dark and I was so sick and exhausted.  Happy and scared to death to be a parent. Our first baby boy was due in April. I was extremely lonely.  Friends were still worried about the everyday drama of college and my family was very far away.  We were poor college kids and didn't have phone service and felt isolated and alone.  In fact, keeping heat on was a miracle.    Everything around me seemed superficial except for this life within me.  And our prenatal classes which felt like a community.  The instructor was also my WIC "lady," and had ...

Our children are facing a debilitating poverty.   The real poverty of relationship.   The lack of capacity to participate in real and meaningful relationships.  A deep poverty of the soul.  A lack of connection, secure attachment and nurturing and responsive relationships.  My kids and yours were born hardwired to seek connection and relationship.  This provides the base for their future and yet, they are not finding us available and attuned. It is not just our kids experiencing this poverty.  While we know relationships are the key to building individual capacity in all domains, we spend so little time exploring it and learning about it.  We medicate, ignore and minimize our needs for this connection.  And it is making us sick and incapable.  It reduces our capacity to succeed.   We need to reflect on it and struggle with it.  But first, we have to define it. What is a nurturing and resp...

Poverty. An emotional and multifaceted word.   An in your face word.   A word which explodes with feelings and responses. A pit in the stomach word.   Anguish.  Fear.  Worry.  Sickness. Shame.  Guilt.  Despair.  Cornered. Heavy.  Exhaustion.  Depression.  Suffocating. Poverty infiltrates a person, family and community's  identity as a virus.   A dangerous and threatening virus.  Poverty narrows ones focus and squeezes out light,  hope and life.   Poverty slashes through energy and releases the air  from one's will. Poverty is a mindset.   It is not a virtue.  It is difficult to define. It is a dynamic, relative and  subjective state. Poverty needs understood.   Poverty defined:     Merriam Webster as ...