Episode 18: The Shift From Resisting to Celebrating Agency
My oldest son is about to turn 20. Over the years I have shifted my mindest from being frustrated that my kids have the ability to make choices I wouldn't make, more toward honoring and celebrating their god-given right to decide how they will live their lives and who they want to be. In today's episode I share a piece of my journey in the form of a letter I wrote to my son a few years ago. If you are raising teenagers, or are in any other situation where you find yourself reaching over wanting to control other people ("just do what I want you to do, dang it!")this episode is for you.
Links:
Free Forgiveness Class
I'm teaching a free forgiveness class Friday, January 10th on zoom.
It's called "Rewrite Your Story."
If you missed the live class, you can sign up and access the replay until January 17th.
Think New Thoughts Academy:
Join the Think New Thoughts Academy to get help applying the tools you're learning on the podcast.
100 Thoughts for More Joy
Wanna think some new thoughts? Here are 100 of my favorites that you can try out. Be warned, though. Choosing to really, truly believe even one of these thoughts could drastically impact the way you view yourself and others, and might completely change your life. :)
Full Transcript:
You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 18, the shift from resisting to celebrating agency.
I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.
Hi, I'm so glad you're here today. So my oldest son, Ethan, is almost 20 years old, so he has just a few weeks left of being a teenager.
He's an amazing guy. And like pretty much everyone I know, he slogged through some tough times as he was growing up. And of course, as his mom, I've experienced my own frustrations and worries and tear-filled prayers as I've done my best to imperfectly walk alongside him on his road to becoming a man.
When I look back on 20 years of being a mom, I can see a distinct progression in my beliefs about other people having agency, the power to make their own choices. Years ago, I resisted this, especially with my own kids. I actually wanted them not to have the power to make their own choices.
I kind of felt like things would go better for everyone if I mostly made their choices for them, keep them from doing anything awful or making any big mistakes. Then over a period of time, gradually learning from my own experience that I'm not actually powerful enough to control what other people choose, no matter how hard I try, I somewhat grudgingly moved instead of resisting agency into feeling resigned, that other people have agency to make their own choices and sort of tolerating it. Like, well, I wish they didn't have agency, but I guess I can't take it away from them.
I've tried, it doesn't work. In more recent years through coaching and prayer and study and lots of long walks with my husband, I've been able to move into a space that I call celebrating the agency of others, not resisting it, but also not just tolerating it, but truly celebrating, honoring and rejoicing in the reality that all of us, myself and everyone else, we have the power to make decisions and choose who we want to be. And this is a good thing.
This mindset shift from resisting and resenting into tolerating, into accepting, and ultimately on my best days anyway, I'm still working on this into celebrating and rejoicing that God designed our life experience in this way and gave us this incredible gift to choose what we want and who we will become. This shift in my thinking has impacted my life and my relationships in really, really positive ways. Today, I want to share with you a piece of that journey.
It's a letter I wrote to my son about three years ago. He has given me permission to share this and my hope is that hearing it today will help you in some way along your journey. If you're raising teenagers or you're in any other situation where you find yourself reaching over, wanting to control other people, get them to do what you want them to do and live like you want them to live, wishing they didn't actually have God-given agency to make their own choices, this episode is for you.
Here's the letter I wrote to my son. Dear Ethan, Hey, a few days ago, I read this in a life coaching book. Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have until we realize what it is we don't want to know about ourselves yet.
They will point us to our freedom every time. I've been thinking about this a lot and realizing how true it has been for me. Today, I found myself crying tears of gratitude for the many ways that you have been an instrument to help me learn things about myself that I didn't want to know.
It has been difficult and painful and there have been a lot of times that I've resented it, resented you for it, but today I feel really, truly, deeply grateful. So I wanted to say thank you and share some of the discoveries I've made. Motherhood is an incredible journey.
It begins with nine months of what, if done for any other reason than to create life, would be called torture. Feeling like I'm going to throw up pretty much constantly for months, my blood sugar's going crazy from the constant change in hormones, my skin being stretched literally to its breaking point over and over as it continued to make room for the growing body of this baby, connected to me, living in me, alive through my energy, my nutrients, leaving me with whatever's left, flesh of my flesh, part of me. I can't possibly carry this baby inside me for one more day, I think.
Kicking my ribs, keeping me up in the night to pee every two hours, constantly stretching my body, stretching my skin to make room, more room, making it impossible to be comfortable in any position in any moment, and then delivery. I've heard it said that to give birth is to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I don't think it's an exaggeration.
The pain is excruciating, the reality unrelenting. There is no turning back, there's no way out, only through. Nature demands that it must be done, no matter the cost.
But the suffering, the agony, the struggle, the sacrifice is matched, exceeded even, when I hold in my arms this perfect, tiny, fresh from heaven child. The fruit of a love so deep, so powerful as to create life. And in that moment, I know my life will never be the same.
And in that moment, I know nothing of what that actually means. With a newborn baby, suddenly a daily shower becomes a luxury, and a full night's rest only a fantasy. All thoughts center around caring for this new baby.
How to feed him, clothe him, teach him to sleep every hour of every day. He can breathe without me now, he can wave his arms and cry without me, but is still totally dependent on me to eat, to be clean, to be warm, to stay alive. I wonder sometimes, is this child, this flesh of my flesh, actually me? Or just an extension of me? Or is he himself? I think of nothing but what he needs, what his cries mean, when he last ate, when he will sleep again.
And whether my body will ever heal from the trauma of bringing him into this world. When we hold him, when we look at him, Kyle and I know somehow that he's a miracle. That life itself is a miracle.
That as he learns to laugh and crawl and walk and talk, we are witnessing a miracle. I will teach him everything I know. I will teach him everything I can, I think.
I will do everything I can to protect him, to keep him from drinking bleach, swallowing marbles, getting run over by a car, falling down the stairs, or electrocuting himself. It's my job to protect him, to keep him alive. I take my job seriously, and I save his life multiple times a week.
Fast forward several years. The innocent child experiences a metamorphosis that emerges as a teenage boy, an altogether unrecognizable species compared with the fresh from heaven baby we once held in our arms. My metamorphosis is coming too, but I don't know it yet.
There are many days I just can't understand. Why is this child not me? Why doesn't he think the way I think? Why doesn't he do things the way I would do them? How could something that once was me, was once inside of me, be so different from me? I was supposed to teach him everything I know, I lament, but I didn't. I must have failed.
What I'm sorry about is the period of time when I looked at you and saw a shattered reflection of myself. I looked at you and saw that I was supposed to teach you to work hard in school and get good grades, but that I failed. I looked at you and saw that I was supposed to teach you to stay away from worldly influences that would harm you, and I failed.
I looked at you and saw myself as a failure, the thing I wanted never ever to be, the thing I had feared deep down all my life that I would be. I felt so terrible about myself, and I resented you for that. And that's what I didn't know until now was the real problem, looking at you and seeing myself instead of looking at you and seeing you.
I didn't know that's what I was doing, and to be fair you sort of were me for those nine months I lent my body to you, in a way for the year that I created the milk that kept you alive hour to hour, but never really. You've always been you, and in some ways I didn't want you to be. I understand that now.
What I'm sorry for is all the times I've tried to control you, tried to get you to do what I wanted you to do. I didn't understand that that's what I was doing. I thought I was protecting you, teaching you, helping you.
Hopefully I was doing those things too, but when you really pushed back, when you really lashed out, it was usually in response to me trying to get you to do something you didn't want to do, something I thought was best for you, and you didn't. We resented each other. What I can see now is that you haven't been the only one throwing a tantrum in the grocery store, having a candy bar pried out of your stubborn fingers.
I've had tantrums too. I've wanted control. I have wanted to hold the reins to your life, to make the decisions, to call the shots, to protect him I would think, to keep him safe, to make sure things turn out right, to help him thrive, I told myself.
But you wanted freedom. I can see that now. Freedom from someone else getting to make your decisions.
Freedom from someone else trying to steer your ship for you. You have shown me so very clearly that your god-given power to choose is not mine to have. What is wrong with this child? I sometimes thought, why does he fight me? Why doesn't he trust that we know what's best for him? What I can see now is that I actually don't.
I don't know what's best. I really thought I did. I thought it was my job to know.
I thought it was my job to make sure you skipped over all the learning opportunities of your teenage years and jumped seamlessly into adulthood without any serious bumps or bruises. It sounds funny now that I'm typing it. I mean, why come to earth at all if the point of existence is for your parents to just insulate and protect you from actually living? It sounds absurd to me now.
My job is to keep my child from ever needing a savior. I'm totally powerful enough to do that. Insanity.
Here's what else I can see now. My view of you always fighting me has another side. I have also been fighting you.
Fighting you for something god gave you that I didn't want you to have. The power to choose. The to make quote-unquote mistakes.
I didn't know I was trying to take that from you, but you knew you were never giving it up. I see that now. I honor that in you now.
Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves yet. They will point us to our freedom every time. And so my amazing son, I want to say thank you.
Thank you for pressing all the buttons I have. Thank you for helping me to realize what I didn't want to know about myself. For helping me to face my own fears, my own inadequacies, my own thirst for control and certainty that has kept me from seeing you.
Thank you for being you in exactly the way you have so that I could come to understand that my obsession with trying to prevent mistakes and keep everyone safe isn't in line with God's plan at all. And that your agency is in fact, well, yours. I want you to know that I think I see you now.
And I'm so glad that you're not me. I'm so glad that you are you. As I have struggled and learned to accept imperfection in you, what it has really allowed me to do is accept imperfection in myself.
I'm not afraid of mistakes anymore. Not afraid of failure. Not afraid of messing up.
I can see how all of it is part of learning, part of growth, part of why Jesus died, and part of what God put us on this planet to experience. As you have asserted your independence and your right to your own agency, I have been the toddler throwing a fit. But I want it, has been my cry.
But you have always known that it is not mine to have. And now I know that too. And so you have pointed me toward freedom, toward truth, toward a much more God-like viewpoint of what it means to be a parent.
I want you to know that I love you, Ethan. Not the version of me that I somehow thought you were supposed to be. I love you.
And I will be forever grateful for the adventure it has been and will be to get to be your mom. So that's the letter. I remember the day I typed it up.
I originally intended it as an unsent letter. I was just writing as a journaling exercise to process my own emotions. I wasn't planning to actually give it to Ethan.
When I was done, I decided to print it out and I put it on his bed. He wrote me a letter back and that was a turning point in our relationship. I'm so thankful for the insights, the coaching sessions, the tools and the inspiration from God that helped me change and repent in this way so that I can love others more deeply than I used to be able to.
And I can honor and celebrate the God-given power that every other human has to choose what they want to value, what decisions they want to make, and ultimately who they want to become. I believe that when we can honor the agency of others, even when they make decisions we don't agree with, that we gain a deeper understanding of how God views us and feels about us. I'm teaching a free forgiveness class tomorrow, Friday, January 10th called Rewrite Your Story.
It's a 45-minute live webinar on Zoom where I will guide you through a framework that you can use over and over again to help you let go of anger and resentment about things that have happened in your past. This class will help you move closer to honoring the agency of others if you've been in a place of resisting and resenting that other people have the power to do things that you don't want them to do. If you're listening to this episode after January 10th, you still have a little longer to benefit from this free class.
If you sign up now, you can get access to the replay until January 17th. There's a link in the show notes. You can go to emilybrickscoaching.com slash forgiveness to sign up, but be warned, this class could change your life.
So don't come to it and don't watch the replay if you want your life to stay exactly the way it is. All right. Thanks for joining me today.