"Being Your Full Self"

Sometimes life feels full and wide-open and wonderful. Other times life can feel narrow and constrained. Sometimes we feel the exhilaration of freedom and success and the ability to fully be ourselves and do what we want to do. Other times we feel restricted and constrained and unsuccessful — not able to be our fullest selves.

Now if you’re in a dominance power struggle or a control power struggle, these narrow places can feel pretty awful. And you know who to blame.

There are times when that’s absolutely on-target. And the right thing to do is struggle and fight and confront and challenge and work through. So that things can improve. If you’re feeling too narrowly controlled, you definitely might want to change that. But don’t forget to see your part in it too. Usually controllers are paired with manipulators. Controllers demand very directly, manipulators get their way much more indirectly. Niether strategy is optimum

things get difficult and it’s hard to see our way through. Sometimes we get fearful, sometimes discouraged. And yet, we all know that difficult passages are part of life. Just like winter is the cold and dark season, so our lives sometimes are cold and dark. Warmth and light may be in our future, but they may not be here now.

Although the shortest (and darkest) day of this winter has passed, the coldest has not.

So what’s a person supposed to do, when his or her relationship feels that way too — when things are difficult and dark, and the cold seems to be getting colder.

Well, it’s a curious paradox:

We need to do everything we can to try to make things better.

And we need to accept that sometimes there are larger forces at work that are going to take their own sweet time.

When I lived in the State of Maine, I heard the saying:

"Pray to God, but row to shore."

That pretty well sums it up. We need to do both. We can’t just sit idly by as things drift worse and worse, but it also takes time, and grace, for things to work out. And, for that matter, sometimes things don’t work out the way we thought they would. The universe sometimes works in strange ways.