Who's to navigate and who's to steer...?

On the treadmill the other morning, I was thinking about one of the couples I am counseling—pondering their issues, ways to address them, and approaches to help the couple work through them.

Once again, my Pandora “Oldies” station gave me some food for thought. This time it Dan Fogelberg’s song “Hard to Say.”  When he sang the words “it’s never easy and it’s never clear who’s to navigate and who’s to steer” it hit me. That was the problem! They were having a tug-of-war with the steering wheel.

Driving is easy if you know where you’re going. When you’re in a new place, trying to follow directions, trying to locate and read street signs, as well as operate the car in a safe manner, it can be a difficult challenge. It’s a great benefit to have a navigator. Working as a team—with each person fulfilling their particular task—the challenge is a lot less daunting and you arrive safely at your destination. Smooth as silk—right? Well, as one who has operated as navigator for my husband on multiple occasions, it doesn’t always go smoothly. So what’s the problem and how can we overcome the conflicts and obstacles that arise?

In the first place, it’s important to know your task. The one steering needs to know how to operate the car. The one navigating needs to know how to read a map. In marriage, we need to know the tasks, roles, and functions that are before us as husbands and wives. We come into marriage with an idea of how marriage is supposed to work (or not work) from our parents and our spouse comes in with their own idea (sometimes diametrically opposed to our own ideas). Discovering, examining, reassessing, and adjusting those ideas together as a couple can be a daunting challenge but a very beneficial exercise. If that doesn’t get figured out, there will be a tug-of-war over roles, functions, and tasks…and you’ll get nowhere.

In addition to knowing your task, it’s important to actually do your task.  Once on a long trip, when I was acting as navigator, I became enthralled with the beautiful scenery and forgot about checking the map. As a result, we missed our exit and ended up making about a twenty-mile detour. Yes, that made our trip a bit longer, but it wasn’t horribly drastic. In marriage, both partners need to be on board and contributing to the relationship in order to make it work. One person cannot carry the weight alone. Refusing, or just not bothering, to do your part can have drastic results.

The other side of that coin is that you need to let your partner do their task. Trying to drive and read a map at the same time is very stressful and certainly not safe. Having a navigator grab the wheel to force the car to turn where they want to turn could be disastrous. However, each one knowing and doing their own task and allowing the other to do their task produces teamwork that can accomplish great things.

This teamwork is what marriage is all about—two together, going in the same direction, working toward the same goals, arriving at the destination together. Some couples have gotten so tired of the tug-of-war that (to keep the analogy going) they’ve given up and each have their own car. Teamwork or togetherness only occurs when the cars are parked side-by-side in the garage at night. Separate directions, goals, and destinations.

How about your marriage? Who’s navigating? Who’s steering? Are you headed in the same direction? Do you have the same destination? Are you in it together—or just going through life side-by-side? Take time to talk about it.

Who Are YOU? Who? Who?

So in the mornings when I’m on the treadmill, I have my Pandora “Oldies” station belting out tunes from my teen years. I think it’s an attempt at denial about the years creeping up on me. But in any case, as I walk and have time to listen and contemplate the lyrics, it provides a lot of material for reflection.

One of the common themes I hear expressed nearly every day from my counseling clients—in a hugely divergent variety of ways—has to do with identity issues. They don’t know who they are. They are stumbling through life with no direction or purpose—tossed back and forth by difficult circumstances, traumatized by abusive people, terrorized by the uncertainty of the future.

All of these thoughts rattled around in my head one morning as I was walking and “The Who” belted out their famous song “Who are you? Who? Who?” Many of my clients have no answer.

Identity is intimately and intrinsically tied to purpose. Being able to identify various tools informs us of their use. You don’t try to pound a nail with a snow shovel or remove the snow from your driveway with a hammer. Well, I guess you can try, but it will only produce frustration and be very ineffective and inefficient in accomplishing the task at hand.

So it is with knowing who we are and being able to live according to our purpose. Stumbling along with no identity, no purpose, only produces frustration and heartache. We know inherently that we are made for something different or something more—but what? Trying to find a purpose without first knowing our identity is like using the wrong tool. Our lives are marked by ineffectiveness and are currently frustrating and ultimately unfulfilling. On the other hand, knowing who we are and living with intention produces purpose, productiveness, and peace.

For me—as a Christian— I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by a Father who loves me, designed me, and orchestrated every one of my days to shape me into the person I am to accomplish a specific purpose in this world. Knowing this deep within my soul gives me an amazingly solid place to stand as I establish my identity and explore my purpose.

What about you? Do you have an answer? Who are you? 

The Plague of Addiction

It is very interesting how my time of studying counseling has influenced my perspective on a lot of things—including what I see when I read Scripture. Today I was reading Exodus 7 – 15, the account of the plagues and the Israelites deliverance from Egypt. As I was reading about the various plagues and Pharaoh’s reactions to them, it occurred to me that this whole episode is very similar to the cycle of addiction. At first, Pharaoh is not impressed with the plagues and the hardships they present, then he begins to start bargaining with Moses. He says, “Take away the frogs and I will let you go.” But of course, as soon as the plague is gone, he changes his mind. As the plagues get progressively worse, he actually comes to the place where he admits that he has sinned, says that Moses and the Israelites can leave but, as soon as the hardship of the plague is removed, changes his mind once again.

So it is with addiction. Addicts will bargain and agree to whatever is demanded to get relief from the hard consequences, but as soon as the pressure is off, they return to the addiction. It is only when the addict “hits bottom” that true change and healing can occur. There were several “bottoms” for Pharaoh. In Exodus 10:7—after the plagues of the water turning to blood, the frogs, the gnats, the flies, the livestock dying, the boils, and the hail—Pharaoh’s officials say to him “Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?” Everyone else could see the bottom, but Pharaoh could not and continued to insist on his own way. That brought the plague of the locusts and finally the death of the firstborn of all of Egypt, including Pharaoh’s son. That was finally the “bottom” for Pharaoh and he allowed the Israelites to leave.

But was it really the “bottom?” Unfortunately, no. Once the Israelites were gone, Pharaoh wonders how his country will function without the labor force that was represented by all of those people and he goes after them. That’s when he really hits bottom. His entire army is wiped out. There is no way to tell unequivocally, from what the Scriptures reveal, whether Pharaoh himself, was lost in the Dead Sea. We are told that Pharaoh pursued them with his army (Exodus 14:6) and “not one of them survived” (14:28). Regardless, his actions brought widespread death and destruction of a nation.

So what was Pharaoh’s addiction? When we think of addictions, our first thought goes to alcohol or drugs but in reality, there are a lot of non-substance addictions that are just as destructive. Whether it is work, food, shopping, gambling, sex, fame, relationships, risky behavior, or whatever—all of these things can wreak havoc and bring utter devastation to our lives. Pharaoh’s addiction—and understandably, since he was regarded as a deity—was power. Truly it is the same for all of us. “Our greatest addiction is our own personality.” We want what we want, when we want it, how we want it, and we will do whatever it takes, sacrifice whatever is demanded, to get it.

Ed Welch has written an excellent book, the title of which describes the circumstance of addictions extremely well. It is called Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave. The addiction seems to be providing all the good things we desire in life—security, significance, belonging, love—right up until it becomes the doorway to death. There is only one thing that can fulfill the longing and emptiness in our hearts. It is knowing God and knowing ourselves as He created us to be and living in all the richness, completeness, and fulfillment of what that really means. What is holding you back from experiencing that today?