From Joan B. MacDonald and her book “The Holiness of Everyday Life”:
. . . . Once we reach adulthood. . . . there are expectations by gender, that typically define who we are. Since we’re all raised to please others and comply with authority, we often lose the ability to hear our own voices. Frantically striving to please others, we forget what pleases us.
Try to remember what pleases you. Try to remember what you liked to do in high school and college. We often forget what pleases us, but if we are to become who we truly are, and if we are to avoid getting lost along the way, we need to remember. It’s not selfish to develop our talents and pursue our own interests occasionally. Heavenly Father would not have given us individual talents and interests if he did not intend us to use them.
When I was five or six years into child-rearing, I realized that I wasn’t much fun anymore. All the fun outings, vacation ideas, and adventures were coming from my husband. I read a magazine article about how often women lose themselves in child-rearing (leading to the “empty nest” syndrome when children were grown). The article suggested remembering what you liked to do when you were in high school. I have wonderful memories of Girl Scouts as a high-school teacher. As a matter of fact, most of the lullabies I sang to my children were camp songs. How could I have forgotten! Remembering helped me start again. I took more walks in the woods with my children, and I volunteered to be a Girl Scout leader in my daughter’s troop. I had a wonderful time, I had more to contribute to the family, and learned a valuable lesson: I learned the value of remembering. As the children got older and I had a little more free time, I remembered how much I enjoyed reading in high school and which types of books I liked best. I started reading again and soon was reading everything I could get my hands on. After a couple years of voracious reading, I started writing this book. You never know where a little reading might lead you.
Solitude can also help. It’s hard to find time to be alone, especially the kind of time I’m thinking about here, but now and then life presents us with the opportunity: a husband’s business trip, a wife’s visit to her family, parents or roommates leaving town for a week. Have you ever noticed that we’re sometimes different when we’re living alone than when we are surrounded by family or friends? How do you do things differently when you are alone? Do you call a different set of friends when you are on your own? Do you eat differently, work differently or think differently when you’re alone than when surrounded by family or friends? The next time you have an opportunity to be alone for a few days, keep a journal and note the ways you are different. If your different ways of being seem positive to you, incorporate one or two of them into your usual routine. If some of your different ways of being reveal a weakness or a fault, you’ve gained insight into yourself. Set some goals, talk to a friend, read a book, or ask the Lord for help to begin overcoming or correcting the fault. The insights you gain in this process may help solve relationship problems when the family is back together.
We need other times of solitude too. Regular, small times. Daily times, if possible. We all need time to be alone with ourselves, to rest from the business of our days, to separate from others and reconnect with the reality of God. From experiences in quiet introspective times, times with scriptures, or times of prayer, we get back in touch with the central truth of who we are that goes beyond definition or description in words. We reach out to touch God, he teaches us, and we find our self-hood nurtured and affirmed.
Howard Thurman wrote: There is no clear distinction between mind and spirit, but there is a quality of mind that is more than thought and the process of thought: this quality involves feelings and the wholeness in which the life of man has being. . . .There is the rest of detachment and withdrawal when the spirit moves into the depths of the region of the Great Silence, where the world weariness is washed away and the blurred vision is once again prepared for the focus of the long view. . . .Here God speaks without words and the self listens without ears. Here at last, glimpses of the meaning . . .of one’s own life are seen with all their striving. To accept this is one meaning of the good line, “Rest in the Lord . . .” 4
To wash away world-weariness and rest in the Lord—what a beautiful image! Why do we let ourselves get so busy we deny ourselves that experience? We must make time for ourselves alone with God. We must make this time happen. Early in the morning, At lunchtime. At night, after everyone’s asleep. In the kitchen, office, car, or bedroom. Time and space for our spiritual devotions must be made. We must realize that when we neglect our own self-development, we are also damaging our relationships with our family and friends. Regardless of service we may be performing, we are withholding ourselves from God and his influence. We are pitchers, not fountains; we simply have nothing to offer without frequent trips to the well. Most of all, let yourself enjoy the process; becoming who you most truly are, looking at each day brand new, pursuing the whole, complex beauty of personal development. Then offer it all, the process and the product, to yourself, your family and your God.~~ Joan B. MacDonald, The Holiness of Everyday Life (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1995) p.41-44
4. Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey (Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), pp. 61-62
