Spanish Seasonings of a New Life Season

Can a dozen different orders of patatas bravas change your life? For sure the quest for the best has got me pondering the deep questions:

How many times do they fry those starchy morsels to get that cravable crisp on the outside while keeping the inside pillow-soft? What kind of oil do they use to get that addicting flavor? And the sauce, what is in their sometimes secret, pale red condiment?

We just returned from an extended trip in Spain. It was a bucket-list vacay to celebrate my husband crossing the finish line on full-time employment. Yes, we are entering a new life season where we can use acronyms like AWA as a shortcut whem describing the changes that come As We Age...But we resist calling it retirement because we have no plans to stop doing the work we are made to do:

Helping men, women, couples and organizations discover and embrace their passions, skills and gifts; and then create a future plan that aligns their life decisions with their unique wiring.

Since I started life coaching twenty years ago, I have called that sweet spot the thing you can’t not do (TTYCND). Each one of us has that thing going on. If we take the time we can find the thread of it in all of our life stages and ages.  

Take a moment to consider and reflect on this...TTYCND showed up in your childhood, perhaps through the draw your early friends had towards you. It can be found in your teen years as you started to hone what came easy for you for acceptance, advancement or recognition in particular groups, classes, sports and activities.

A thoughtful look back into your early adulthood could reveal further development of TTYCND through the jobs and friends you chose or those for which you were pursued. If you are farther down the road of life, you may have by this point, consciously or subconsciously conceded or landed on what those who have known you knew years ago: TTYCND.

I could have titled this post The One Question that Can Uncover Your Life Purpose:

If asked of your close friends or family members, What are three words that describe you? I’m wagering the majority of answers would circle your sweet spot, or TTYCND.

Ok, that might be over-simplifying it. There are about a dozen elements on my list of what encompasses personal leverage - all the elements that make you, your journey, your contribution, one-of-a-kind. How others’ see your outstanding characteristics is only one of those elements....But I can’t cover all of that in a single blog post...

Let me touch upon an important caution I would give to those who endeavor to do the DYI version of finding your life purpose: Due to both my personal and professional experience, I am compelled to forewarn you here:

What you are good at is not necessarily what you are passionate about.

Certainly part of what makes your contribution a unique asset in your field of influence has to do with your God-given gifts, skills and talents; but it will take a deeper dive into the package that is you to differentiate the long list of your natural abilities from the one or two passions that feel like fire in your belly when you think or talk about them.

Let me use myself as an example. Since I was young, I have always been called upon for tasks that require organizing and/or optimizing. I can see the order that can be made from disorder and find it easy to get there. Becoming a wife at 19 years of age and a mother at 20, those skills helped fill in for my lack of experience at those roles.

But running a household did not light a fire in my belly. I did not feel fulfilled by having an orderly home. This was one way I loved my husband and children, and for that I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom while the kids were young.

Once my children reached their teen years, I had the desire to spend some time pursuing something outside of running a household. My husband and daughter were brainstorming ideas with me...But their view of what I would be good at was weighted heavily by their experience of me as the manager of the home. Yet, doing more of what I had been immersed in for almost two decades didn’t get me excited.

As the two of them shared their description of me, I realized they were right about what they saw as my natural skills. But in that moment, I had the aha: Just because I’m good at these things doesn’t mean I’m passionate about them. I saw my organizing acumen as the means to an end – that is, get the household tasks done efficiently so I could engage in what I was passionate about: supporting and encouraging my growing family.

It took a couple more years for me to sift through my natural and practiced skills to uncover a pursuit about which I could be passionate. Eventually, I decided to try my hand at something that had become a part of my life in my twenties. I loved strength-training. I started going to a gym to lift weights when seeing a woman bench-pressing was still a rare thing.

I wanted to get more women comfortable with sculpting their bodies with muscle grown in a weight room.

And so, I investigated and pursued what was required to become certified as a personal trainer. I went on to have my own business, working with clients one-on-one in their homes. I did that work for a dozen years, loving the opportunities to impact people’s lives for good through education and encouragement.

When a consulting job called for my husband to spend some extended time in San Diego, the only way I could accompany him was to stop my PT business. I was ready...What I did not expect was the next thing to reveal itself while I was in SoCal. I happened upon a book about life coaching, specifically, Life Purpose Coaching (LPC).  As I took in what a Life Coach is or does, that fire in the belly heated up! I said to my husband, “That’s who I am!”

I recognized that when I was personal training my clients – especially in the personal context of their homes – I was impacting more than their physical fitness. I was coaching them in various domains of their lives, a lot like being a life coach. And when I went to my first round of training in Laguna Beach and the author who was instructing this first-ever class of future LPC’s asked each of us: Why do you want to be a Life Purpose Coach, it just popped into my head and out of my mouth:

Because it’s the thing I can’t not do! 

That was twenty years ago. Since then I have grown my credentials and toolbox as a professional life coach. I have also played the roles of coach instructor, a LifePlan facilitator, a retreat speaker, and administrator of several strength assessments – such as The Call, the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. But the essence of all of these roles is the same:

I am made to encourage others forward in their journeys. That’s TTICND!

My hope is you will be able to transfer my personal example to your own journey. To take a look back over the stages and ages of your life and see the common threads re: your impact on the people in your spheres of influence – whether that was the first friends you had in grade school, your family settings, your teen years and early adulthood, the years of your career(s)...There are repeatable themes, characteristics that repeat, rise to the top, stick in the minds of those who encounter you.

Since I was made to encourage and support, I offer both to you. Contact me if you would like a professional partner at this point in your pathway, or if you would benefit from experiencing a strength assessment.

Another TTICND is to take in every new experience with all five of my senses. Our trip through Spain was no exception - I saw it, smelled it, felt it, heard it and ate it! As my final encouragement, if you have the opportunity, don’t hesitate to explore España with all of its sensory experiences – not the least of which is their food! Here are a couple of shots from our paella cooking class in Valencia.

Hasta Luego!

A worthy pondering:

What’s the thing I can’t not do? What was I known for, even back in childhood? What not only comes easy for me, but lights up that fire in my belly?

If you know TTYCND, do you currently have an expression or outlet for it? Might you consider making a change to make room for such an outlet?

If you are looking at a new season approaching, how might you incorporate TTYCND into your day-to-day life, whether through a vocation or avocation?

 If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

A Valentine Message toWomen I Admire

A few years ago, I had a woman in my life, in her early forties, say to me, “I look to you to learn what it is to be a woman.” Wow, that felt like too much responsibility! But then I remembered being in that same state of looking for female role models when I was a mother and a wife at just twenty years of age.

Consider the skills above survival mode that some females may have absorbed through osmosis in their rearing – like how to apply make-up, when a slip is needed, how to set a proper table, how to make hosting look effortless...All these seemingly trivial proficiencies of refinement alluded me, growing up as the oldest girl in a family of nine children. 

During my childhood and adolescence, my mother, quite literally, was either pregnant or nursing a baby – or both! She was constrained to reside on level one of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, pretty much 24/7.

And so, as I shot abruptly into adulthood by marrying my high school sweetheart-turned-Airman 1st Class, I was a sponge for observing and imitating the female finesse necessary to achieve the desired healthy family life I pictured in my head.

An early subject of my self-study was my German landlady, Frau Wilhelm.

I can still hear her voice, calling up the stairs to our second-floor residence in their duplex, for coffee time in the afternoons: “Scherdee, comma to mia, coffee time!”

She modeled what it is (in a small German village) to keep a clean home. Things like getting on your hands and knees to scrub the cement sidewalk and stairs outside your front door. Or, airing your bedding out of the bedroom window at a respectably early hour each morning, to be observed and noted by the other hausfraus on the street. These traits earned me acceptance as the only American household on the street, but did not transfer when I returned to the States!

Next, I looked to a few females I had known pre-marriage who were about a decade older than me, for clues to raising two kids and being the household manager while my smart ambitious husband started a twenty-year career that would have him spending a lot of his non-work time commuting. I could call any one of them to vent, cry or use humor to get through the long days of no adult conversations.

And I don't want to overlook another source of learning the basics: my mother-in-law and her Lebanese side of the family. I have such fond memories of spending time in the kitchen preparing Middle Eastern classics for huge spreads on holidays. I learned some nuances as well as basics of cooking ethnic cuisines.

I'll never forget Aunt Carrie asking me to pick up a few lemons on my way to play prep chef in her kitchen where the walls had permanently absorbed the aromatics of Middle Eastern spices such as cumin and cinnamon. She took one look at the huge lemons I had handpicked and said with distain, "Ugh, look at the thick skin! They will have no good juice. They are useless!" Ha!

I came to know just how much food is love in Ron's Lebanese heritage, and how his female relatives loved me by teaching me how to cook the food that my husband would crave and request throughout our married life.

Also during this season of nurturing and growing a family, I had one of my best female-connecting experiences. The church we were attending was new and full of men and women of my age and stage of life. I started a weekly women’s group, called P & P (prayer and praise was the focus), and could never have anticipated the draw or fruit of this new thing. I quickly realized how pervasive the need was for a safe setting for young mothers and wives to be heard, known, validated, encouraged. I was not alone!

You know the ism: You never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

As much as I drank in those precious years of P & P, when we all moved on into the age of older children and shifting careers, I looked back in awe of that irreplaceable time of deep connection with females. As I endeavored to replicate that safe place, my efforts all seemed to end in disappointment and missed expectations. Something missing in the chemistry just didn’t allow for the same bonding I had experienced in the church group.

But what I did go back to was being drawn to women who were in a season of life ahead of me. I craved that mentor-mentee relationship. I had been experiencing it from the side of being the mentor with some of the women in the P & P group, but still desired to lean on and learn from those who were ahead of me on the crazy journey of being a female in the ever-changing landscape of our very American culture.

On the other hand, I have definitely experienced being the recipient of solid wisdom from a younger generation of female. First and foremost, it has been my daughter who has poured into me a perspective that brings sage advice with a fresh, younger set of glasses. Yes, Heidi was displaying her inborn discernment as young as five. She would chirp into a convo her dad and I were having about a work issue for him, with reminders about what the pastor said last Sunday. Ha! I have learned to lean into her old-soul wisdom over the years.

Our age in numbers is not always the indicator of our age in wisdom. I have such admiration (and mother's pride) for Heidi's capacity to grow through what she goes through.

I’m now officially in the retirement stage of life (whatever that is supposed to mean!). And I find I still crave deep connections with females. I have a handful of those currently in my life, for which I have deep gratitude. Interestingly, most of them don’t live in the same city – or state, for that matter – as me. Never mind proximity; I will bend over backwards to have a phone or video chat with any one of them! And oh the joy when we can meet face-to-face! What a gift to experience what it is to feel safe and known by others. (My eyes well up with tears as I type...)

Approaching this Valentine’s Day, I would like to finish this post with a shout-out to all the admirable women I have encountered and known.

*Thank you for stepping out to receive me.

*Thank you for modeling humility and vulnerability as you invite me to enter into your private worlds.

*Thank you for teaching by example, and encouraging by words and generous offerings.

*Thank you for making space for the messiness of me and my story.

*Thank you for being open to the spontaneous and planned opportunities to share time together.

*Thank you for modeling how to wait – to be comfortable with silent pauses – in conversations, in replies, in moving from listening to talking, in moving from empathy to problem-solving, in landing on the best words for the situation, in waiting for God’s green light before acting.

*Thank you for the difference you have made in my life.

When I reflect on my family and work-focused decades, I wish I had taken more opportunities to mentor those coming up behind me in life seasons. It’s what I craved as a young still-being-formed female. My hope is it is never too late to play a role in the encouragement and development of other women. In fact, that was and is my heart’s desire for this venue of blogging: For you readers to feel accompanied on your journeys. You are not alone. And neither am I.

I invite you to ponder...

What has been a theme (or themes) in your female relationships over your life seasons?

Can you pick out the commonalties across the relationships you would call healthy, reciprocal, fulfilling?

Can you pick out a learning or two you have taken away from unhealthy female relationships?

Have you been in the role of being a mentee – being mentored by another woman? What about the role of being the mentor? What was it like for you?

What is an obstacle to experiencing more mentor-mentee relationships?

Is there a female that comes to mind if you were to consider playing the role of mentor in your current life season?

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Making Room for Growth & New Life

Advent means an arrival or coming

For this Christmas post, I just wanted to throw out something I have been pondering during this 2024 Advent season: Do you think Mary was like all other pregnant women, in as much as, she had the normal pregnancy symptoms, ailments and complaints? Do you think she dealt with the normal aftermath of delivering a baby – weight to lose, some post-partum emotions, and stretch marks? Having had two births, I can imagine Mary navigating all of this on top of the unfathomable weight of carrying the Son of God!

I received an Advent Devotional from a dear friend this year ( Making Room in Advent), and have been feasting on the refreshingly different focuses of the well-known accounts of the angel pronouncement over Mary and the  story of Jesus’ birth as described by the disciple Luke. That is where my curiosity about Mary’s physical effects of pregnancy got stirred.

When the angel visited Mary to tell her she had been chosen to carry God’s Son, I imagine her in a state of shock for at least a while. And once it sunk in, 

...she would have had to begin making room for this miraculous pregnancy that had no precedent. Hmm, Making room...It is a powerful, multi-applicable metaphor, don’t you think?

There’s the consideration of making room in her life – her season of life, her plans for her future, even her daily needs would have to change to accommodate being a mother. Then there’s the making room her body would go through to facilitate the growth of the baby over nine months. There’s also the making room in her mind – from accepting the angel’s announcement of God’s plan to use her as His very special vessel, to how people would react to the explanation of her pregnancy as an unwed mother: a miraculous conception?!

And of course, Mary would need to make room in her heart for falling in love with this baby, yet knowing this child would be carrying the mission of saving all of mankind!

No wonder God gives us mothers nine months to adjust to all of this needed change in capacity!  

This idea of making room for what is coming is the advent of His plans and promises. It was for Mary, and I believe it is so for us. God is gracious in giving us time to enlarge our thinking, grow our capacity, increase our resilience and strength ahead of the arrival of His next move in our lives.

2024 has been a very challenging year for me and my family. I hold deep gratitude for all the ways I experienced God’s presence, provision and peace within the storms that came. And I am reminded of one of the aftereffects of giving birth is the stretch marks that many of us women bear after delivering our baby(ies). Those marks speak to the necessity of having made room for our role as life-givers – sacrificing ourselves to bring forth new life.   

Metaphorically, I can feel my stretch marks, left by the room made for expanding my faith and trust in God through the trials our family experienced this past year, facilitating what new thing(s) God desires to bring forth in this new year for each of us.

Several decades past their making, I’m finding a new fondness for my stretch marks as signs of growth, enlarged capacity, and the reminder that He will help me make room for whatever He is bringing to me and through me.

 As I look towards a new year – and with my husband retiring – a new season of life, I desire to respond to His rescues by making room for more of Him in 2025. I desire to love better, to respond quicker to His whispers, and to better reflect the part of His character with which He imbued me even before my mother knew she would be carrying her third of nine children and her first of three daughters. Oh, imagine her stretch marks making room to be a life-giver multiple times over the course of a couple decades!

To ponder:

What have you had to make room for in this past year?

How did you welcome or resist the process of creating the needed space? Was it internal, external or both In nature?

Have you had a glimpse of what you may need and/or want to make room for in the new year? If so, what are you feeling about it? Do you have a safe place to share that?

May you have a joy & peace-filled Christmas, reflecting on His goodness and anticipating His good plan for you in 2025.

Blessed to be journeying alongside you ~

g