Kelly Flanagan's Blog

Dear Son,

It seems like yesterday you were blowing poop out of your diaper onto your mother’s lap. Yet here we are, on the verge of the birds-and-the-bees conversation. The poop was way easier.

Before we talk about sex, though, I want to talk about marriage. Not because I’ll shun you or shame you if you don’t put them in that order—although I hope you will—but because I believe the only good reason to get married will bring clarity to every other aspect of your life, including sex.

Buddy, you’re probably going to want to get married for all the wrong reasons. We all do. In fact, the most common reason to get married also happens to be the most dangerous: we get married because we think it will make us happy. Getting married in order to be happy is the surest way to get divorced.

There are beautiful marriages. But marriages don’t become beautiful by seeking happiness; they become beautiful by seeking something else. Marriages become beautiful when two people embrace the only good reason to get married: to practice the daily sacrifice of their egos. 

Ego. You may be hearing that word for the first time. It probably sounds foreign and confusing to you. This is what it means to me:

Your ego is the part of you that protects your heart. You were born with a good and beautiful heart, and it will never leave you. But when I was too harsh toward you, or your friends began to make fun of your extracurricular choices, you started to doubt if your heart was good enough. Don’t worry, it happens to all of us at some point.

And so your mind began to build a wall around your heart. That happens to all of us, too. It’s like a big castle wall with a huge moat—it keeps us safe from invaders who might want to get in and attack our heart. And thank goodness for your ego-wall! Your heart is worthy of protection, buddy.

At first, we only use the ego-wall to keep people out. But eventually, as we grow up, we get tired of hiding fearfully and we decide the best defense is a good offense. We put cannons on our ego-wall and we start firing. For some people that looks like anger. For other people, it looks like gossip and judgment and divisiveness. One of my favorite ego-cannons is to pretend everyone on the outside of my wall is wrong. It makes me feel right and righteous, but really it just keeps me safe inside of my ideas. I know I’ve fired my ego-cannons at you from time to time, and for that I’m truly sorry.

Sometimes we need our cannons to survive. Most of the time we don’t.

Both men and women have ego-walls with cannons. But you’re going to be a man soon, so it’s important to tell you what men tend do with their ego walls—we justify them by pretending they are essential to being a “real” man. Really, most of us are just afraid our hearts won’t be good enough for the people we love, so we choose to stay safe and protected behind high walls with lots of cannons.

Can you see how that might be a problem for marriage?

If you fall into the trap of thinking your ego-wall is essential to being a man, it will destroy any chance of having an enduringly joyful marriage. Because, in the end, the entire purpose of marriage is to dismantle your ego-wall, brick by brick, until you are fully available to the person you love. Open. Vulnerable. Dangerously united.

Buddy, people have sex because for a moment at the climax of it, their mind is without walls, the ego goes away, and they feel free and fully connected. With sex, the feeling lasts for only a moment. But if you commit yourself to marriage, you commit yourself to the long, painful, joyous work of dismantling your ego-walls for good. Then, the moment can last a lifetime.

Many people are going tell you the key to a happy marriage is to put God at the center of it, but I think it depends upon what your experience of God does for your ego. Because if your God is one of strength and power and domination, a God who proves you’re always right and creates dividing lines by which you judge everyone else, a God who keeps you safe and secure, I think you should keep that God as far from the center of your marriage as you can. He’ll only build your ego-wall taller and stronger.

But if the God you experience is a vulnerable one, the kind of God that turns the world upside down and dwells in the midst of brokenness and embraces everyone on the margins and will sacrifice anything for peace and reconciliation and wants to trade safety and security for a dangerous and risky love, then I agree, put him right at the center of your marriage. If your God is in the ego dismantling business, he will transform your marriage into sacred ground.

What’s the secret to a happy marriage? Marry someone who has also embraced the only good reason to get married.

Someone who will commit to dying alongside you—not in fifty years, but daily, as they dismantle the walls of their ego with you.

Someone who will be more faithful to you than they are to their own safety.

Someone willing to embrace the beauty of sacrifice, the surrender of their strength, and the peril of vulnerability.

In other words, someone who wants to spend their one life stepping into a crazy, dangerous love with you and only you.

With my walls down,

Dad

The post A Dad’s Letter to His Son (About the Only Good Reason to Get Married) appeared first on Dr. Kelly Flanagan.

The final months of 2023 were so disorienting, it took me a few weeks to get my bearings. I’m ready now to tell you about where I am and where I’m going.

Let’s start at the end and then work our way backward:

In 2023, I’ll be blogging on Substack instead of my website and, instead of random blog posts, the posts will be a way of writing my next non-fiction book in public, with your editorial feedback and influence. It’s called The Inner Gathering: A Guided Encounter with Your Original Self and Its Three Protectors.

If you are an email subscriber, there is nothing extra you have to do to follow along. I’ve already granted you a free subscription to my Substack, so you will receive all the new book posts directly in your inbox—just like the old days when I first started blogging—with no need to click over to the website, unless you want to comment on the post. If you do not subscribe to my emails, you can head on over to my Substack right now and sign up.

A couple more quick notesIf you visit Substack, you will see the option to upgrade to a paid subscription. If you’re curious about what that includes, you can read more about it on the About page.If you’d like to find out more about why I’m writing this book on Substack, you can check out my first post, What is The Inner Gathering?And if you’d like to find out more about the book itself, by flipping it over and reading what’s on the back cover—the synopsis and an (imagined) endorsement from Oprah (ha!)—you can jump right to my second post, The Back Cover.Okay, now let’s go backward

The fourth quarter of 2022 was a whirlwind. Here’s what was happening:

I closed my therapy practice and took another step toward becoming a full-time writer.I published my first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell .I submitted a complete draft of my second novel, The Keeper of Crimes, to my publisher.I started working on my third novel, The Sadness Isn’t Badness Club, which is not under contract anywhere, but is insisting on being written anyway.I realized I have another non-fiction book inside of me, itching to get out.I asked myself how I might write it differently, in public, and with reader feedback.I was referred by smart people to Substack, which is specifically designed for such a purpose. I’m loving the writing experience there, and I can’t wait for you to join me in it.

That’s the update. If you’re subscribed to my Substack, the first installment of the Prologue to The Inner Gathering will be arriving in your inbox in the next couple of weeks. Looking forward to the journey with you!

Much love,

Kelly

The post The Inner Gathering appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

I wake up doubting my calling to be a writer in a thousand different ways.

It’s just one of those days during the quiet season after a book release. People are reading it and recommending it and choosing it for their book clubs, but all of that is happening behind the scenes. As an author, the silence makes you feel a little silly, like you turned your heart inside out and maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to do that again.

It’s just one of those days, but it also happens to be another kind of day, as well.

It’s one of those days when it feels like God—or the universe, or whatever you want to call it—decides to step in a little farther than usual, speak up a little louder than usual, help out a little more than usual. As if the powers-that-be were sitting around saying, “Hey, we can’t bail him out of his self-doubt every day—we’d have no time to get anything else done—but let’s send him some encouragement today.”

I reach for my phone on the bedside table. The first thing I see is the late Frederick Buechner’s daily email, which always begins with a Scripture verse on Mondays. This week’s is short but sweet:

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

Then the daily excerpt from his writing: “Vocation. It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work…The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

My soul grows quiet.

I’ve found enough peace to get up and go about my day, but the powers-that-be aren’t done yet. As the doubt threatens to return, my publisher lets me know The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell made the ECPA Bestseller List for November. And a few hours later, my wife spontaneously reminds me that I write for gladness not success. And a few hours after that a friend leaves a voicemail expressing appreciation for the book. And around bedtime, the author Traci Rhoades posts this review of the book:

“If Mitch Album were a psychiatrist, he’d write a book like this. Full of characters longing to make connection, with one man, Eli, struggling to keep them all connected. What a tender, gripping read.”

Days like this don’t come along very often. Most days we seem to be left alone with that voice of self-doubt, forced to wrestle with it alone, forced to remind ourselves why we do what we do with our lives. So it’s important we don’t miss these days of great encouragement when they happen.

A couple thousand years ago, Christmas was one of those days.

It was the day God—or the universe, or whatever you want to call it—decided to step in a little farther than usual, to speak up a little louder than usual, to help out a little more than usual. It was the day the powers-that-be said, “We can’t do this every day—in fact, we’re only ever going to do it one day—but today is the day.” So the Power behind the universe stepped all the way in—into a manger. Spoke up a little louder than usual—a newborn hollering into the night. Helped out a little more than usual—sending the unmistakable message that we’re worth being with, and that what we’re doing here matters.

It’s easy to miss this.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the decorating. All the buying. All the partying. All the programming. It’s easy to get caught up in downloading the “Turkey Mode” update for your smart oven.

I think that’s why the first thing Mary did was “treasure up” what had happened and “pondered it in her heart.” She started by growing still, because if you don’t start with stillness, you can’t end with awareness.

I think that’s why the first message I received on my day of doubt was, “Be still and know that I am God.” If you aren’t quiet, you can’t notice. That’s probably why the angels first announced the good news of the baby’s birth to a bunch of shepherds out in the country—they were the only ones quiet enough to hear it.

As I’m drifting off to sleep again on my day of doubt, I find myself quiet enough to become aware of one final thing: none of the encouragement I received came directly from the divine. It came through people. Frederick Buechner. My marketing director. My wife. A friend. Another author. I find myself quiet enough to realize—now we’re the angels announcing the good news to each other:

You are worth being with.

What you’re doing here matters.

This holiday season, may you grow still enough to hear the good news of your belovedness and your meaningfulness, and may you then spread the good news to others. I’m sure there’s a few doubtful authors—and about eight billion other people—who need to hear it.

Show someone they matter to you by gifting them The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell! 

The post You Are the Angels Now (A Christmas Message) appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

I once heard of a psychological phenomenon called “missing tile syndrome.”

The idea is that if you walk into a room with a beautiful marble-tiled floor and there is one tile missing in the center of the room, the missing tile will get all of your attention, and you’ll fail to notice the beauty of all the other tiles. I’m not sure if there’s any scientific data to support the theory, but I don’t think we need a bunch of expensive research on this one. Can’t we all testify to it?

The missing tile is the loved one we lost, in the crowd of those we didn’t.

Or it’s the loved one who is still here—but not really here, not really present, not really loving you the way you hope to be loved—sticking out like a sore thumb amongst everyone else who is doing their best to be with you.

It’s the bully on the playground who cancelled out every other friendly face.

It’s that one cutting remark, still echoing forward from your past, every other gentle word merely the empty space in which the painful one reverberates.

It’s the failure here and there, glaring amongst all the successes.

It’s the thing your spouse always forgets to do, like a sliver beneath the skin of everything they do remember.

It’s every gift that wasn’t under the tree with all the rest.

Last month, I released my first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell, and the launch was a commercial success—it debuted as a #1 New Release in fiction with all sorts of 5-star reviews on Amazon. That doesn’t happen without a lot of support. Nevertheless, it was tempting to stare at the missing tiles.

I didn’t give in to temptation, though, and I found myself overwhelmed with gratitude for all the other tiles in my life.

Those of us who gathered at the 4U Ranch the week before launch. My launch team who bombarded social media with their recommendation of the book. The friend who purchased a copy for everyone he knows. The Front Row Dads who pinged me all week with messages: “Ordered.” “Got mine.” “Can’t wait to read it.” The friend who checked in every night asking how all of it was going. My high school English teachers, and the mothers of two high school friends, and everyone else who showed up at Books on First in Dixon, IL, for the local book signing. The friends who rolled through our open house for the rest of the day. The lector at church who prayed for the success of the book. So many other lovely souls I couldn’t begin to name them all, and my wife amidst it all.

Beautiful tile after beautiful tile, as far as the eye could see.

Of course, we’re wired to stare at the missing tiles, to pay attention to problems so they can be fixed. And there is a time for staring at those missing tiles—we need to create spaces where we acknowledge, feel, and work through the pain of their missing-ness. But that time isn’t all the time. And as human beings, we are also wired with the capacity to consciously redirect our awareness.

We are about to enter the season of missing tiles.

The holiday season tempts us to pay attention to who isn’t there, the things we don’t have and aren’t going to get, the sometimes elusive joy of the season, the peace that isn’t present, the merriment that won’t manifest. But that might just be the blessing of putting Thanksgiving right at the beginning of it.

Thanksgiving asks us to look at the whole floor.

It asks us to pay special attention to all of the tiles that are present, in their marbled beauty. Jon Kabat-Zinn says that if you’re breathing there’s more right with you than wrong with you. The breath—that’s a pretty important tile we tend to overlook. A warm dwelling place. That’s a tile. The laughter of a child in the midst of every other unlaughable thing. That’s a tile. Some gravy. A single bite of pumpkin pie. Memories that aren’t all bad. A walk in the woods and the aching bones to walk it. A moment of rest at the end of the day.

Tile after beautiful tile, as far as the eye can see.

This year, may your gratitude turn the season of missing tiles into the season of present ones, and may your joy be abundant, not because the floor of your life is exactly the way you want it to be, but because it’s beautiful anyway.

The post Don’t Miss What’s Beautiful by Fixating on What’s Missing appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

“We think this would work better as fiction.”

I’d submitted my proposal for the second non-fiction work of a two-book contract, and I’d prepared myself for rejection. But I had not prepared myself for the encouragement to do the one thing I’ve always wanted to do: write a novel.

It scared me.

Writing a novel seemed entirely impractical. I had a plan for my career—I was first and foremost a counselor and a coach, and my non-fiction books were to be the magnet for new clients. Novels attract readers, not clients. So novels were not part of the plan.

And yet, there’s a little one who lives on in all of us, and they aren’t interested in planning; they’re interested in playing.

When I was a boy, I would sit for hours in my bedroom, every book taken down from the shelf, surrounded by all those beloved stories, delighting in them. That little boy wasn’t concerned about how to put dinner on the table; he was more interested in staying outside on a warm summer evening, biking up and down the sidewalk as the streetlights came on, until someone finally forced him to come inside, where the dinner on the table was already cold.

That little boy living on in me is fine with giving up control over his success, because he’s never really had any control anyway, nor any success for that matter.

So I surrendered to his passion and started writing a novel. However, it quickly became clear the release of control was just beginning. When you publish non-fiction, you are an authority figure writing about a small corner of the world in which you’ve developed some expertise. Your job is to make a concept completely comprehensible—to create order out of chaos, if you will.

And that feels like being in control.

A novel, on the other hand, will gradually wrest all control from your humbled human hands. Sure, at first you have some say in the story and some power over the plot, but then you conceive of a few characters, and they start wreaking havoc on your vision. As they evolve, the plot evolves with them, so the characters evolve even more, and on and on, until you can barely recognize the story that is supposed to be coming from you but feels much more like it’s coming through you.

Adult-me was more terrified than ever, but little-me was more thrilled than ever. To him, it was like tucking his arms in and tipping his body sideways at the top of a grassy hill on a summer afternoon until gravity takes him and sends him tumbling toward the bottom, carefree about what bumps he might hit along the way.

So we wrapped our arms around each other and rolled down that hill together, and eventually we got to the bottom—the manuscript was complete. We were a little banged up and bruised, but the little boy in me was bursting with joy about what had just happened. He wanted to tell everyone about it.

However, adult-me was having second thoughts.

After finishing the first draft, I went for a walk with a friend and told him it was done. He asked if I’d sent it to my editor yet. I told him I hadn’t, and I was considering never doing so. “I just don’t know if fiction is the way to go,” I said, “I’m thinking about writing a new proposal for a book about following your passion.” I’ll never forget what he said next.

“How can you write a book about following your passion if you’re not following your passion for publishing a novel?”

You see, the scariest thing about a lifelong dream is not the possibility of never living it; it’s the possibility of living it and discovering that it doesn’t live up to its possibilities. The hardest thing is to love something that doesn’t love you back. Here, the little one in me trembles, too. He knows what it’s like to love and to be left lonely. He knows how loud he echoes in silent, empty spaces. We both know that once we share what we’ve created with the world, we will have surrendered our last little bit of control: our quietude. However, we also both know you don’t tumble down a hill because it’s safe—you do it because surrendering to Gravity is the greatest thrill of all.

So, I go home, compose an email to my editor, attach the manuscript, and hit send. I take one more scary step in the transition from nonfiction author to novelist. But somewhere inside of me it’s a warm summer night and the streetlights are coming on and the crickets are tuning up, as I peddle up and down the sidewalk.

I have not a plan in my head,

but I have a heart full of play,

and as the sun disappears burning beyond the western horizon,

there is joy all around.

My first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell is out tomorrow. Click here to order it and click here to register for up to $2000 in bonuses. 

The post Why Giving Up Control is Giving In to Joy appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

It’s a Saturday in September, and we’re moving my oldest son Aidan into Chicago on his 19th birthday. After multiple trips from the moving van to his second floor apartment, wedging all manner of things through the narrow opening, I know I’ll never forget the unit number inscribed upon the door of my first son’s first apartment.

1H.

I think I’ve done all my grieving and worrying in advance, but when I depart from there for a three-hour road trip to Green Bay—where I’ll be delivering a sermon the following morning—I discover otherwise. I go through much of the human experience on that ride, but one thought in particular keeps repeating—a sort of wild, comical, half-crazy thought:

Someone should call DCFS on me, because I just left my baby boy alone in a big city.

I find my hotel and fall right to sleep, but then I wake up at three in the morning. This is not unusual on the morning of a speaking event. What’s unusual is that I’m not worrying about the talk; I’m worrying about Aidan doing this big, brave thing—moving to Chicago to chase his dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. I’m worrying about how it will all turn out.

Five hours later, I take the stage to deliver my sermon. It’s a round stage in the middle of a round room, with the band set up right in the center of it. I circle the stage as I speak. During one circuit, I look down and there is a three-digit readout attached to the equipment. Glowing up at me in red are these three figures:

01H.

My mind doesn’t know what to make of a moment like that. It is totally ridiculous, a coincidence of such absurd proportions that it doesn’t deserve a second thought, let alone a third thought or a blog post. Move on, my mind says, that’s just false hope teasing you.

And yet, right there on a stage in Green Bay, something is happening within me, about eighteen inches below my head. My heart is opening again. It’s quieting. Growing still. To borrow a phrase, I’m experiencing a peace that surpasses all understanding. That part of me doesn’t need to explain it; it just gets to experience it. And as I do, this is the thought that works its way up from my heart into my head:

It’s not necessarily going to be okay; it’s going to be, and that is okay.

The whole thing recalled to mind one of my favorite passages from one of my most treasured spiritual guides, the late Frederick Buechner…

I think of a person I haven’t seen or thought of for years, and ten minutes later I see her crossing the street. I turn on the radio to hear a voice reading the biblical story of Jael, which is the story that I have spent the morning writing about. A car passes me on the road, and its license plate consists of my wife’s and my initials side by side. When you tell people stories like that, their usual reaction is to laugh. One wonders why.

I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that’s going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: “You’ve turned up in the right place at the right time. You’re doing fine. Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten.”

I write this from a conference in Wichita, Kansas, in a breakfast diner before sunrise. I just got done FaceTiming with my other two children, who are back in Illinois, and about to depart for a soccer game and a cross country meet. Why did I make such a point of calling them this morning? Is it because an old man’s wishes of luck from a thousand miles away will make any difference in their performances? No.

It’s because the biggest difference-maker in any of our lives is to be reminded that we haven’t been forgotten.

When a father or a mother, or a husband or a wife, or a human being of any kind does this for us—reminds us that they take us with them when they go, that we are a permanent fixture within them, that they remember us in spite of every other thing they’re trying to remember—we call that love. When Something bigger than any of us goes out of its way to remind us of the very same thing, we call it something else.

We call it grace.

May you, today, watch for grace and quit calling it coincidence. And may you—so opened up and quieted down by that grace—pass it on in the form of love to someone in your orbit. May you reach out and let them know they’ve been remembered—perhaps at the very moment in which they are feeling most forgotten—and in so doing, may you become someone else’s more-graceful-than-we-can-comprehend digital readout:

01H.

Note: Another quote of Frederick Buechner’s serves as the epigraph to my forthcoming novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. Click here to pre-order and register for up to $2000 in bonuses.

The post Don’t ever think that you’ve been forgotten. appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

I’m riding on the bike path in my hometown.

As usual, I’m caught up in my thoughts about everything and nothing, missing it all, when a deer bounds across the path and I skid to a halt. Just like that, I’m awakened. I look around and take it all in.

The bike path rolls out in front of me, eventually bending out of sight in the distance. Ancient trees on both sides of it reach toward the sky, intermingling above in a canopy of summer foliage. Sunlight the color of honey dapples the path between dancing shadows, as the crowns of the trees murmur in the breeze. Ahead of me, the deer has quit bounding, trading safety for a meal, as it grazes beside the path. The only sound is the whisper of those treetops and the background music of crickets still humming from the night before.

As I take it all in, I think of all the places I’ve hauled my bike to this summer—Delaware, Wisconsin, other destinations in Illinois—riding new paths for the first time, in awe of their beauty.

And I think, If this were my first ride on the first morning of my first visit to this place, I’d be soaking up every detail of its beauty.

I’d tell everyone all day about the path that wound its way through a countryside so pastoral you wondered if you’d gone back in time. I’d get on Zillow with my wife and start looking at house prices in the area. I’d imagine waking up every morning to ride a path like this. And yet, that’s exactly what I get to do, right here in Dixon, IL.

We can be blinded by many things. Repetition is one of them.

I love this hometown of mine so much it became the inspiration for the setting of my first novel, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. Indeed, I love it so much that one reader who buys my book early is going to get two free tickets to my 2023 Retreat Weekend, which will be hosted right here in the Dixon area. That’s how much I love this place.

However, if you experience anything for long enough, you will lose sight of its beauty, even when it’s right in front of you.

Repetition can dull the vividness of things, like long years of sunlight through a kitchen window fading that old art project stuck to the fridge.

Familiarity is like a car racing along the highway, blurring every good thing it’s passing, until you can only make out the unremarkable gist of it.

It’s the over and over again of things, like the thousandth laugh of a child, making it almost impossible to remember the thrill of their first.

These are metaphors of course. Metaphors for a lot of things. But today I’m thinking about relationships.

I’m thinking about what we first saw in our beloved all those days or decades ago that made us decide so audaciously that we’d like to journey with them the rest of the way. It’s the mug of coffee no one else had ever prepared for you in the morning—now, some mornings, they inexplicably forget to put the sugar in it and it makes you wonder if they love you at all. Or the freckle in that one spot that drove you simply wild every time you saw it—now, you can’t remember the last time you looked at it. Or the toes beneath the covers in the dark, searching for yours, reassuring you that you weren’t alone—now, some nights, a sharply-clipped toenail scratches you and all you can do is wonder why they so carelessly hurt you.

I could go on and on, couldn’t I?

But I don’t want to do the work for you.

I just want to be the deer, unexpectedly bounding across the path of your life, jarring you awake, bringing you to a skidding halt, to look around and take it all in—especially your beloved—as if for the first time.

Whatever beauty was once there, it is still there, if you have the eyes to see it.

Like honey-colored sunlight filtering through the dark canopy above.

—

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The post Where to Find Beauty These Days appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

The alarm sounds at 4am, so we can begin the two-day road trip to our annual beach vacation before sunrise.

Every year, I look forward to this sandy-footed, salty-aired, sunny-skied week of respite and restoration. Glorious sunrises over the Atlantic. Bike rides in the morning through dunes and forests. Buckets of beach fries for lunch, dripping with vinegar. Diving into cold, crashing waves with the kids. Lazy afternoons of book reading. Crab feasts at night. I love our annual beach vacation.

It is everything I want my life to be.

So, when the alarm goes off at 4am, and I notice a scratchy, perhaps Covid-like feeling in my throat, I panic. I try to ignore it while I stuff suitcases into the trunk and hitch bikes to the back of the car.

Illness is not what I want my vacation to be.

During the long car ride, the discomfort in my throat recedes, but its replaced by a different kind of disappointment the next morning. I wake up to discover Marcus Mumford has released a new single from his first solo project. Mumford & Sons has always released great beach music, so I eagerly tap on the track. The new song is the heart-wrenching story of Marcus’s sexual abuse as a child. I turn it off mid-song.

Pain and heartache is not what I want my week to be.

Our stopover is planned around my wife’s grandfather’s 95th birthday, so we pick him up from his long-term care facility and take him to my mother-in-law’s house, where we start discussing dinner plans. He wants veal meatballs from a local Italian restaurant, and almost everyone else wants to get take-out from there as well. However, I’ve had my heart set on a particular local gastropub since our last visit.

Italian is not what I want my meal to be.

So I hatch a plan—we’ll have dinner delivered for some from the gastropub, and I’ll pick up the food from the Italian restaurant for others. An hour later, all of the food is there and the Italian food looks amazing. The sandwich I’d been reimagining for a year looks like a cold, dried brick of something inedible.

Cold, dried brick is not what I want my night to be.

I can’t explain what happens next, except to say that grace rushes in and saves me from my mind. I’m sitting there, grinding away at my sandwich and my thoughts, when I look up and see my grandfather-in-law slowly savoring each and every bite of his veal. He lost his wife of 72 years last November. He is quick to tell you that almost everyone he’s known is gone and he’s almost entirely alone. And yet here he is, finding perfect joy in a morsel of meat and marinara sauce.

There’s a soundtrack to the scene, too. It’s my wife and daughter and mother-in-law laughing uproariously at perhaps the crudest joke any 95-year-old has ever told, cackling at their own inside jokes, and laughing about how much they’re laughing until they’re crying and almost peeing their pants. My mother-in-law has buried three husbands. Like her father, life has not gone the way she wants. And yet here they are, four generations of a family around a table, sounding like joy in spite of it all. I take out my phone and send a text message to myself which will anchor me for the rest of the vacation:

Don’t miss the sacredness of any moment by wishing it was some other way.

We have preferences for how we want our lives to be. We want them to bring us pleasure but not pain. We want them to turn out one way and not another. We have a whole list of outcomes and experiences and sensations and thoughts and feelings we call good, and another list of such things we call bad. When life gives us things from the first list, we open up to it. And when it gives us things from the second list, we close our hearts to it. A year and a half ago I decided I was going to open my heart to whatever life sent my way, and it powerfully transformed every moment of it. Recently, I stopped doing so, and the transformation was equally as powerful.

Powerful enough to ruin a treasured beach vacation, one unwanted moment at a time.

So, sitting there at the dinner table, I renew my resolve to watch the condition of my heart, and when it begins closing to an experience, I’ll put my hand over the tightening feeling in my chest and breathe deeply into that space, until I can feel it relax. Until I can feel my heart open. I do this over and over again throughout the next week, and nothing changes around me, but something changes inside me. It’s peace, welling up like a fountain.

I listen to Marcus Mumford’s new song on repeat, and weep for it, and there is room in me for both salty seawater and salty tears.

We want many things in life, but the truth is, we mostly just want them because we believe they will bring us peace and joy. However, in the wanting of them—in the insisting on them—we often push peach and joy even further away, or further down inside of us. Sometimes we have to give up what we think we want to get what we really want:

Joy and peace, like a wellspring within us.

The post How to Get What You Want (By Giving Up What You Want) appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

You have viewed them on VH1’s Hard appreciation. You may possibly have even acquired their book Crash program crazy. However you’ve made Steve and Joann Ward’s friend (even in the event it is simply now), you’ll discover they can be no strangers to mincing words. This mother-son matchmaking duo provides Oprah.com their particular leading five tidbits for generating profitable interactions.

How come “difficult love” work?

Occasionally men and women in your area only let you know what you want to hearAn outsider may be savagely honest as to what you are carrying out incorrect that assist you focus on locations to better the interactions.

Any kind of “good” people left out there?

Yes, they may be every where!you have to have the expertise to identify them.You really must be in a position to focus on the positive!

What is the distinction between visualizing your own many suitable match and being too fussy?

concentrating a lot of on real criteria can blind you from finding the right person.In case your emphasis on bodily or cloth conditions is just too heavy, its probably you are as well particular!Interactions are about interaction, respect and confidence – those must be on your record.

Which are the cardinal rules of dating?

maintain positivity! No-one likes a downer.Improve other person a priority.You should not talk about things such as politics, money or faith quickly.Joann’s opinions say you should not go over intercourse throughout the basic go out while Steve claims it could arise hence best for you personally to talk about truly before you decide to have sexual intercourse.

What can partners do in order to keep consitently the really love alive once they’ve found it?

hold situations fun, interesting and interesting.Love everything do and that implies the time and effort the put into the relationship.You ought to be prepared to hold working at it!

Check the total article here.

meeting-love.net

The post Master Matchmakers Sound Off About Matchmaking appeared first on Kelly Flanagan.

The Short Version: Enriched by the woman education as a psychotherapist, Rhonda Richards-Smith, LCSW, now delivers her emotional instinct for the dating and connection globe. She works as a life advisor, inspirational presenter, and blogger to encourage individuals to take control of their own love schedules and develop significant relationships. Her spot-on analysis provides generated her nationwide recognition from several media sites such as Match, Glamour, teenage Vogue, in addition to Huffington Post. In almost every post, mentoring treatment, and talking wedding, she advocates for an excellent work-life balance, mindful tension control, and intentional matchmaking techniques to teach singles and couples how exactly to maintain fulfilling associations in their schedules.

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Rhonda Richards-Smith provides conventional trained in psychotherapy, with a grasp’s amount in personal welfare and a license as a clinical personal individual, but her life’s passion is actually working with women on improving their romantic connections.

After performing numerous treatment sessions with couples about brink of separation and divorce and folks battling stress and anxiety and depression, Rhonda understood that so many regarding dilemmas stemmed from an inability to connect meaningfully, tightly, and indelibly with other people.

“we noticed over the years the powerful effect interactions use relation to overall wellness,” she explained. “Our relationships are at the center of every little thing. Thus I turned into into checking out the way I can assist people in finding healthier and loving connections.”

Now, Rhonda is actually an extremely well-informed presenter, author, and connection advisor based in la.

Rhonda has actually branched faraway from the woman are employed in psychological state to handle as a whole mental wellness in everyday life. Drawing from over fifteen years of expertise, Rhonda provides shared the woman terms of knowledge with audience people Weekly, The Huffington article, Glamour, Brides, Redbook, and Ebony.

In her own private coaching business, Rhonda mostly works closely with professional females centuries 25 to 44. She rests down with visitors to mention the significance of prioritizing and keeping a healthier private life together with an effective job. She focuses primarily on providing her clients the understanding and inspiration to follow the schedules they need and the interactions they are entitled to.

“i am a large proponent of living the life you prefer,” she informed us. “your targets should always be self-directed. You have to clear out the noise to make sure the sounds you’re playing are yours.”

Tapped On Her Heartfelt Expertise By Match.com & you Weekly

Over many years, Rhonda happens to be a visitor blogger for several news channels aligned together with her philosophy of love and health. She’s composed articles for fit, Us Weekly, and teenage Vogue, among others, and is also constantly networking with top sector leaders to distribute her reach internationally.

In 2016, Glamour interviewed Rhonda on her behalf ideas as to how people know they’re with the person they need to marry. The psychotherapist directed, “Give yourself some time to permit the partnership to withstand some of life’s examinations before taking the next phase.”

Whether she’s speaking at conferences or providing her two dollars on specialist panels, Rhonda will notify, advise, and empower daters every-where. The woman considerate evaluation enlightens folks about what tends to make a relationship work in the future and ways to intentionally develop rewarding private physical lives.

Rhonda is actually ever-mindful in the further problems impacting daters and seeks to shine lighting regarding mental factors behind commitment problems.

“My emphasis is on connections,” she told all of us. “its so important. Whenever it clicks with people plus they recognize they get to decide what their own interactions look like — next everything modifications on their behalf.”

A Love-Oriented site filled with pro Insight

About when every month, Rhonda sits right down to compose this short but information-rich article for singles and partners on the web. These straight-to-the-point pep talks communicate with typical mental problems that continue folks from building healthier romantic contacts.

From parenting ideas to relationship no-nos, the website addresses an entire range of issues during the dating and relationship area. Rhonda delivers this lady learned viewpoint as a therapist to create her reason for a persuasive and encouraging method.

“a lot of us usually attempt so difficult to either replicate or deny the encounters of your parents,” she had written in articles about resetting commitment designs. “Whether through treatment, prayer, or self-reflection, analyze what your household trained you about interactions and just how these instructions may or may not end up being providing you really today.”

Rhonda’s web log supplies audience a primary line to professional advice totally free. This is certainly a great reference for everyone searching for fast guidelines or good support within private schedules. These on the web tools give you the same healing help of a coaching program in a more obtainable and less overwhelming platform.

For the upcoming several months, Rhonda intentions to start a cutting-edge on the web mentoring plan known as admiration around the corner to advance engage with singles and lovers seeking improved ways to link and talk to one another. Any person battling through adverse dating designs can find out and expand from Rhonda’s growing online learning resources for active daters.

“you should be clear in what it is you are looking for,” she told you. “Absolutely an improvement between whom you must certanly be with and the person you’re pursuing.”

Helping Daters Overcome worries & Come Into their own Own

Rhonda’s empathetic and inspirational sound empowers individuals to foster healthier and pleased interactions. She knows things to tell bring out the very best in her own customers and certainly will demonstrate to them tips switch their particular love resides about.

Oftentimes, Rhonda locates that the woman customers’ past experiences are behind their particular existing relationship issues, along with her training as a professional uniquely suits her to handle those deep-seated problems. One customer concerned the coaching periods experiencing unworthy of love and unequipped for online dating considering her family members’ conflict-ridden past. The old unmarried lady avoided devotion because she dreaded obtaining stuck in an abusive matrimony like the woman mama ended up being.

“this really is essential my personal clients to just take a no-nonsense method to their own love life to make positive modifications.” — Rhonda Richards-Smith, relationship expert, presenter, and author

Rhonda coached the afraid one through those anxieties and pressed their to try online dating. Heartened from the therapist’s help, the girl could overcome the woman devotion dilemmas and meet that special someone. She has been in a loving union for over 2 years now.

“Her achievements ended up being pushed by understanding the woman issues of worthiness,” Rhonda mentioned, “and acknowledging that she warrants having love.”

Rhonda likes seeing the woman customers change on the months and several months that she deals with all of them. The woman aim is always to talk through any emotional hurdles that assist individuals see that their particular connection targets are attainable. “your lifetime will be your very own,” she said, “along with your experience is independent of one’s parents and whatever you experience in childhood.”

Rhonda Richards-Smith: An Inspirational sound For Singles & Couples

Rhonda’s work as a mental health expert and clinical therapist aided the lady observe how instrumental all of our individual connections should be overall health and contentment. After above 10 years functioning directly with folks of most experiences, the therapist decided to move the woman focus toward relationships to positively influence anyone striving to make and continue maintaining top quality private contacts.

Her powerful love-oriented information was highlighted by very top media channels given that it hits a chord with people old and young. She can make a long-lasting influence on individuals by getting to the heart of what exactly is maintaining daters from attaining their life targets.

Plus, working with Rhonda in one-to-one mentoring sessions gives singles and partners the strength, bravery, and expertise to tackle a variety of relationship dilemmas. At each part of the internet dating process, Rhonda tends to make a time to remain good and energetically convince men and women to never ever give up by themselves.

“there’s really no reasons why internet dating needs to be frightening, really serious, or stressful,” she said. “Dating and wedding must certanly be fun. You really need to do what you are able to enjoy your self inside the moment you are in — since it is your lifetime.”

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