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Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 182, "How 'Wayward' Children Bless Our Lives." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

Alright, hello there, welcome to the podcast today. It is the Monday before Christmas. Merry Christmas, my friends. I hope that you have made some small adjustments and small nudges, as we talked about last week, that are helping you to enjoy this holiday in a better, more satisfying way because it's such a beautiful holiday. And yet we tend to get caught up in so much stuff that really doesn't matter. 

00:52 

So anyway, today we are talking about how wayward children bless our lives. Now, if you looked at the title of this, you will see that "wayward" is in quotes because I want to look at how we use wayward. For example, first of all, using that adjective to describe our children implies that we believe they are doing something wrong, that we know that they should be doing something different. "Wayward" is a word that means going off the accepted path. Alright? How do we know that the path our children is on is a wayward one? How do we know that it's not the right path? Okay? Let's put it in a thought model and just see what it creates when we use an adjective like wayward. Okay? 

01:42 

The thought is "my child (let's feel in the blank there)." So let's just say "my child stopped going to church." Thought: "they are wayward." My feeling: I become kind of judge-y. I don't know about you, but judge-y is one that goes to work really well for me. And then my action: I start to hold them at arm's distance. I start to have subversive comments. I start to do sideways looks, maybe passive aggressive behaviors. Right? I start to do all these things. And the end result is that then I have a disconnected relationship with my child, because they will feel our judgment and it pushes them farther away. 

02:20 

Okay, so I read a scripture on Sunday in our Relief Society class that I read it for the first time in a completely different way. And it floored me and I was like, "whoa, wait a minute. I just saw something in this scripture that is so new to me." And this is a scripture from The Book of Mormon. So if you are not a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, just as a heads up, we do use the Bible. We also use a book called The Book of Mormon, which is a history of an ancient people that lived in the Americas. And this comes from the Book of Mosiah, chapter 4 verse 13. And this is a prophet whose name is King Benjamin. And King Benjamin shared this amazing address with his people and one thing that he was talking about when talking about being more Christlike, he says "and you will not have a mind to injure one another but to leave live peaceably and to render to every man according to that which is his due." Okay, so here's what struck me. In the context in our lesson at church, we were talking about finding peace in life and how sometimes we have to learn how to find peace even though life is not going the way that we expect it to. 

03:41 

And in the context of our children being "wayward," children making choices that we may feel uncomfortable with that we don't agree with, this scripture really taught me a lesson. And this is the thing...this last phrase that says "and render to every man according to that which is his due." What is our children's due? What do they get? They have free agency, the agency to make their own decisions. And when we accept this agency, then we can learn to live peaceably with ourselves and with our children and we will not Injure our child. Let me read this verse to you one more time just so you can hear it. "And you will not have a mind to injure one another, but to live peaceably and to render to every man according to that which is his due." So when we accept this agency, we treat our children differently and our relationship will be strengthened instead of weakened. 

04:54 

So anytime we start using adjectives to describe other people, it is important that we sleep slow down and look at what those adjectives are saying about our thinking. Is the kind of person that we ultimately want to be someone who would use 

that adjective? Is it putting us in a negatively judge-y place? And it seems so innocuous, like we're just stating a fact. "Oh,  yeah, I've got a wayward child," right? "My child is wayward." But what are we judging them to be wayward from? We're judging them to be wayward from our idea of the path that we think they should be on. And sometimes we call that "the right path." And it's so important that we learn to step back from the place where we think we know what path our children should be on. Whatever path they are on, let me tell you, my friends, it is the perfectly right path for them to experience what they need to experience. so that they can learn what they need to learn. And just because we don't see it doesn't mean it's not right. We are not omnipotent, but God is. He sees these things, He knows these things. It can be impossible for us to see because in our heads, we've created this amazing life for them that we think they should be living. 

06:21 

Remember when they were children and were like, "oh, they're gonna grow up, they're gonna be, you know, live the gospel, they're gonna go to college, then they're gonna go on a mission, and then they're gonna finish college, and then they're gonna get married, and they're gonna have children." Well, you know what, a lot of our kids don't do any of that, or some of that, but we've created this story in our head. Remember that the podcast on imaginary friends? This is what we're talking about. We've created this fantasy child in our head of who they are and of what they should be doing. And as long as we expect them to be living this fantasy life that we've created for them, they will never really feel of our love for them, and they'll never feel accepted by us, because guess what? We won't be accepting them as they are, since we're expecting them to be something that they're not. We cannot fully, completely, and cleanly love our children and have this fantasy of what they should be doing and how they should be living. 

07:26 

Okay, so the first thing that it is so important that we start to do is to stop judging our children. Take off the labels. Stop adding these adjectives to describe our children in negative ways. I know that in our brain we think, "well, it's just a fact, they're wayward." No, it's not a fact. The child does not go to church. That is a fact. The fact that they are wayward, now that's just a thought because we are the ones that think where they should be and where they're not. Okay, so first step, 

let's stop judging our children. Let's fully allow them the agency to make their own choices and let's stop making these choices that they make about us. 

08:11 

And this brings me to the next concept that I want to share with you today. The choices that our children make have nothing to do with us, except that they give us an opportunity to see how we think and feel and respond to them. We get to see if we start using unhelpful adjectives. We get to see if we are loving them unconditionally and cleanly or if we are withholding love. And it's fascinating to me that somewhere in our brains, we think that if we withhold love from them that they will want to do better. That they'll say, "oh, maybe mom will love me better if I...", right? But withholding love actually does the opposite. It closes doors. It pushes them away. It disconnects us from them. It's only when we really move into this space of clean love that we create connection. And if anything will ever have the chance of creating connection with them, it will be loving them fully and without judgment and without expectation. So fully accepting them. 

09:19 

So here is our work with our children. This is how it blesses our lives. Our children show us our crap like nobody's business, if we look for it and if we want to see it. This is our work with our children, learning to fully accept them where they are. Learning to see our own failings in this area and learning to become aware of how we are withholding love and clean that mess up. The blessing of having children who are living differently than we expected them to is that we have an incredible opportunity to grow into our next best selves. If we're not afraid to explore, to look and to see, to confront our true selves, to be honest with what we think and what we feel, we will very often see aspects of ourselves that need some cleaning up, we will see the subtleties of judgment that are showing up. We will see areas of non-acceptance that are stunting our relationship. 

10:22 

And this is the beauty and the blessing of what these children bring into our lives. And in reality, very few of our children take the path that we determined for them when they were young. That's a little presumptuous, isn't it, of us to predetermine the lives that we think our children are going to live? And yet so many of us do it so much. But they all become adults with free agency, adults who get to make their own choices. And they will either make their own choices with our love and our blessing. Or they will make their own choices without it. Doing it with our blessing creates connection. Doing it without our blessing creates disconnection, not in them. They're not the one disconnecting. We are the ones disconnecting when we don't give them that acceptance, when we don't give them that love and that blessing. And what do  we ultimately want with all of our children? We want a relationship with them. We want to be connected emotionally to them. And so often we blame our struggling relationship with them on the fact that they are not choosing the "right" path. "Right" would be in quotation marks as well. They're not choosing the "right" path. They're living a life far from the path that we had hoped that they would be living. But it's not the path that they're living that is creating the disconnect. It's not their choices that are ruining our relationship. It is our thoughts about how they're doing it wrong. That's what's creating the disconnect in us. Not their actions, not their behaviors. It's us. 

12:10 

And so if we're filling disconnected from our kids, that is our work to do. It's not theirs. It's our thoughts about how they're doing it wrong. That they're working instead of going to school. That they're going to the wrong school. That they're not going to church. That they're using substances that we wouldn't want them to. That they're engaging in relationships that are not healthy. They're dating someone who's not worthy of them. They're marrying the wrong person. They're making stupid financial decisions. They're having children too soon or too late or not at all. They're not parenting correctly. The fascinating thing about all of this is that we say it like this: "I just want them to be happy." Okay. That sounds so sweet and lovely, doesn't it? But does it make them happy to be judged by their parent? Does it make them happy to feel like they are not accepted? It does, it sounds so cute and lovely. "I just want them to be happy." But what we're really saying is that we don't approve of how they're living. We don't approve of the choices that they're making. What we're really doing is judging the path that they are on. What's really happening is a breakdown in our relationship, a disconnect. Because we want them to be happy, so we treat them like we don't accept them. If we really wanted them to be happy, we would love them unconditionally and cleanly without any expectations. It's so important that we get to a place where we accept them whatever their choices are. This doesn't mean we have to condone their behaviors and their choices, but we do need to learn to respect their agency to make whatever decisions they want, to give them their due. 

14:08 

And what this provides us is the opportunity to learn how to clean up our own love, to step into the next version of ourselves, to become more Christlike in our thoughts and our feelings and our actions, to create the kind of relationship that is sweet and fulfilling. When I have seen my children step away from the fantastical paths that I expected for them, it has given me the opportunity to see myself more clearly and to learn to love more cleanly. I see how I respond or don't respond. I see how I judge or how I accept. I see how I love or how I withhold love. And these responses show me where my work is. This is one of those times, my friends, where it is all about us. It is all about me, it's all about you. We get to see our work. They show me my weaknesses, they show me my strengths. They show me how I can step into being more Christlike because becoming more like Christ really is the goal. Christ loved everyone, Christ accepted everyone. He didn't withhold love from anybody. He gave love openly and freely without judgment. He didn't condone sinful behavior, but he always loved the person engaging in the behavior. They still felt his complete and unrestrained love. And this is our model. This is what we have to strive for. And it all begins with us being willing to look and to see ourselves clearly, to be honest with ourselves. It's so easy to see, but not really see. 

15:59 

I was reading this morning in Alma chapter nine, I think. This is also a scripture in The Book of Mormon. And Amulek is talking about how he knew of the gospel, but he was choosing not to know. He was choosing not to see. So we've talked about this before, how like sometimes things sit in our peripheral vision and we can kind of see them over there, but we refuse to turn our head and look at it square in the face. And sometimes we have these small nudges that say, "whoa, look over here, look over here." And we just don't. We don't look over there and we don't see them. And it's so vital that we listen to those small, simple nudges. I really believe that that is the Spirit of God, that that is Holy Ghost nudging us and saying "look over here, there's something you can clean up here." And so we have to be willing to see. God's not going to throw it in our face, generally. I think sometimes He will, but generally he's saying "hey, I'm gonna wait for you to come. I'm gonna wait for you to be ready," and so when we see these little things in our peripheral vision, when we when we feel these small urges and nudges to look at something more clearly, it's so important that we turn our head and look and start asking questions. And it all becomes with us being willing to look and to see and to become aware of where we are withholding. And because we're human, guess what, we are all going to withhold to some degree. That's just normal. We all struggle to accept completely and to love cleanly. That's just part of who we are. Every parent is going to struggle with this at some level, I think. Maybe there are some out there who are like 100% different than me, but I struggle with this all the time. And I've been working on this for a while, but I anticipate I'll probably struggle with my whole life, right? 

18:05 

But this is the amazing thing: these children, regardless of the path they are on, are an amazing blessing because they help us to see where our work is. My children have been my greatest blessing in this way. They have given me opportunities to see my faulty love, my judge-y thoughts, and my selfish behaviors. I'm so grateful that my children have the courage to walk their own paths, to learn their own lessons, to follow their own desires. I'm so grateful they have the courage to step away from these fantasies that I created for them, because they would not be becoming the amazing people they are had they followed the path that I had laid out for them. Because their path that they're taking, it is the right path for them, especially if it's not the path I envisioned for them when they were younger. And it creates a path for me to be able to see my weaknesses more clearly, to clean up what's going on in me, and to step into my next greatest version of myself. 

19:26 

And this is the best part about growing up into middle age, because it always feels better when we're the person we really want to be. And our children, regardless of the path they're taking, provide us with the greatest opportunities to move into this person. I love growing up into middle age. I think that there are things that are clear to us now that could never be clear to us in our 20s or our 30s. Such a brilliant time. It's the perfect storm of when all of our experiences and our expertise and our knowledge and our wisdom all kind of start swirling together and we start seeing things we didn't. 

20:09 

The beauty of coaching is that I can help you see things. That's what I'm trained to do. I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do. I help you to see the things that you need to see so that you can clean things up so that you can become this next best version of yourself. So if you want to talk to me about how coaching can work for you, guess what? It is the 

new year. It is the best time of the year because our brains naturally move into, "I want to progress. I want to move forward. I want to do this," right? So this is a great, great time to contact me. You can go to tanyahale.com. You can book a free 30 minute consult. We can talk about coaching, how it can benefit you, how it can help you start this new year off in an amazing place, and showing up more of the person that you want to be. Moving into the next best version of yourselves. My friends, this work has changed my life. Not just coaching with you, but the coaching that I receive. It has changed my life. And it has made me a much more compassionate person. And I'm so grateful. For the growth that this work has given me and gifted me with. And I just want to share this work with you because this place is beautiful and this place is amazing. OK, that is it, my friends. 

21:43 

OK, if you have not yet left me a review and yet you listen to this. What? Come on, leave me a review. OK, I love those; that helps other people to find this. It helps to bump it up so that more people can find it. Puts it higher up on the on the on the list when things pop up for them. So if you leave me a review, I would love that. So much. And I just want to say that I love you. Thank you for being here week after week and for sharing this time and this experience with me. I feel so honored to be able to share the things that I've learned and the things that I value so much. I feel so honored to be able to share them with you. And I appreciate those of you who send me small notes and expressions of gratitude and ahas. And I just appreciate you taking the time to do that and sharing them with me. They always bring me to tears. And I just feel so blessed and privileged to be here with you every week. So thank you so much and have a Merry Christmas and I will see you next week. Bye. 

22:49 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.