Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

For about a year I have been a grumbling discontented housewife living in suburbia. I have never really known what I wanted to do when I grew up and now that I am grown up I know I’m not doing what I want! I live in a town of yuppies where well meaning wives attend Bible study, participate in the PTA, give to the poor and constantly redecorate their homes. For a while I too was caught up in this game but it has left me wanting. Indeed, I often feel angry, jealous and discontent and can’t exactly figure out why. My constant prayer is “Lord how could Paul be content in all circumstances?” I thought I would find it through education so I went to graduate school for six years and finally rapped up the coursework only a month ago. I thought I would feel complete that I had ‘arrived” but no, I still felt like something is missing. I recalled advice from a professor in the counseling program who stressed the importance of helping our clients see the Imago Dei (the image of God) in them and help them to find a ways to live their lives more abundantly. Now that I have completed the program I am aware that I am not living the abundant life and I have not been seeking God’s presence in my life.

All summer I have been looking for a job; i thought maybe this would make me content. As a licensed counselor I have to work under someone else’s supervision for two more years until I can become a full-fledged counselor. There are so many people who need help and so many counselors but I have this longing to do something beyond me. I long to live a better story. Perhaps I’m just experiencing burn out or perhaps fear. I have found that entering into someone else’s pain is always a little mysterious and frightening; you never know what you might unearth in there. Clients have spent years developing their masks and building up their defenses and in just a few moments I have seen it all come crashing down.

But this summer a friend gave me the book “Radically Obedient, Radically Blessed.” In it Lysa Terkeurst states that we become so accustomed to God that we are unaware of him in our lives. We follow typical Christian customs that we have devised like journaling, reading daily devotionals with our children and attending church while our soul hungers for a more rich experience. An experience that allows us to escape the physical and enter into the spiritual presence of God. I believe this rich encounter with God is what I have been longing for. She continues: if we say “yes” to God, we don’t have to wait until the next time we go to church to experience him. Instead “a holy God can meet you in the middle of life’s mundane activities and change your life.” That is what I want to experience in my life: “a changed life” and as I write this I may have just discovered my answer to Paul’s contentment. He was content because he lived a life fully devoted to God.

Another part of my discontentment was that I constantly compare myself to others. Yet I also discovered this quote by Nancy Ortberg, “Comparison is so destructive. It erodes our love for other people and causes us to shun the gifts that God has given us. It robs us of our stories and gifts from God, all because we like someone else’s better.” I have been loving others less and I have robbed myself of my own stories as I tried to copy theirs. So I have begun to wonder about what I feel most passionate about, what story do I want to live?

I think the answer is the parent-child relationship. This relationship is where a child learns whether or not he has value, is significant, and loved. Where I feel most fervently about this is in my home with my own children or Target.

After reading Lysa’s book I asked God to give me the direction and the words to say to a Mom in the distress in the marketplace. One day I was in WalMart and I kept hearing an interchange between a mother and her son. He had misbehaved so she made him sit in the shopping cart. He was protesting for all the store to hear. I watched to see if I should intervene. Then the mother told him she was taking him to the car. Then I got scared for I feared that she would leave him there and I would really have to say something to her when she came back in the store without him. So I prayed for guidance, as she returned with him in the cart. I approached her and asked her if I could talk with her. About what I did not know! She proceeded to pour out her heart to me about how her child had special needs, and she had taken him to a psychologist and was trying the best she could to help him learn to behave. I told her I thought she was doing a great. For a moment I felt that my obedience allowed God to intervene in the mundane and bring life. I’m sure if I had not allowed God to be present in this circumstance I would have judged her as a bad mother or tried to give her parenting advice.

This experience got me thinking about what I want to do with my life. Imagine what it would look like if there was a Super Nanny for retail. It could put a new spin on the term “Retail Therapy.” I long to have a voice for children and be a comfort to mothers who are apparently at their wits end. I’ve watched it for years. The mother who pushes her screaming child in her cart and hardly looks at her or picks her up. The mother chastising her son at the library for not bringing his library card. She seems so smug in her pious way as she tells him “well maybe you’ll remember next time.” My heart aches for these children who no doubt feel misunderstood and guilty. Standing in line for coffee one day I heard one mother complaining about how her children were out of school and her husband was lucky that he got to go to work. At the same time she made it very clear to the younger son that the older brother was so well behaved. Who came up with that parenting technique? One of the worst scenes I saw was when a woman was chasing her son into the gym, screaming at him as she slapped him on the rear. She spoke to him no better than you might an animal. Each time I see a scene like this something wells up inside of me, it seems so unjust. Then I hear God say “What are you doing to do about it?”

Of course my first instinct is to blame the mother and scream at her. Then I remember I’m a mother too and we get blamed for everything. But how could I intervene with compassion for the mother as well? What right do I have to say anything to her? How can I build a name in order to have a platform to do this? Perhaps I could write a book called: “How Not to Act - Retail Therapy for Stressed Moms” ... something like that I guess. Or I could have a realty show by the same name where a mother comes to the store and we video tape how she interacts with her children. Then we could strategize about more positive loving ways of relating to them.

This could become infectious, we could implement it in retail stores all over the United States. Mothers would be less stressed and feel better about themselves and children would feel loved and understood. But it is a scary proposition, I’m just a housewife living in Columbia, Maryland. What impact can I have? But God, I am reminded has not given me a spirit of fear. Instead I am filled with the same spirit that rose Jesus Christ from the dead. So it really isn’t about me but about what God can do through me.

Where to start? I would need to write a book. Well I’ve never written a book. Maybe I should write a blog. But everyone is writing a blog these days and the people I want to reach are at the store. I guess I should start by taking a writing class. , attending Don’s seminar to uncover this story-line would also be a great benefit. I’m almost 50 and want to have more clarity about where I’m headed in the second half of my life. I’m sure the writing of the book would seem daunting, most likely it would become frightening. If the writing does not come naturally, I would go out into the marketplace and allow God to lead me to intervene. As I do this I will keep track of these events and make them into a story. Then I would need to find a publisher interested in the topic and perhaps get an agent to market it. I guess my face would have to be emblazoned on the cover of my book like Martha Stewart's books or Oprah’s magazine, so when people see me in Target or Costco they might invite me the “Retail Therapist” into their conflict to help them.