4 Feb
“The times I feel irritated are really inconvenient times to be a mom. Those are the times I tend to react poorly to even the most innocent of my son’s behaviors. And I worry, am I the angry mom who is impossible to please? Am I setting up my kid for years of self-destructive self-talk?”
I’m at Life & Liberty today trying to work out some of this about Anger and Parenting. Please click the thermal photo above and surf you way over to Life & Liberty to read the rest of my thoughts on this issue.
24 Jan
The parents in Frozen inadvertently fueled the monstrous side of their daughter’s powers.
So, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a whole book in me about Disney’s Frozen because I like it so much and it really gets me thinking. I’m writing a pair of essays for Life & Liberty about what the movie can teach us about the use and misuse of power, but I wanted to insert this between those essays to expand on a problem I have with the parents in that movie.
*SPOILER ALERT* This essay discusses major plot points of the movie including surprising twists to the story. If you have not seen the movie and do not want to know how the story unfolds, do not read this essay.
In my first Frozen essay, Disney’s Frozen and the Misuse of Power, I wrote the following about the role that fear plays in how the main character misuses her powers:
As we get to know Queen Elsa, we see that she has a great struggle within herself that is grounded in fear. Her particular fear is that she will hurt someone with her powers just like when she accidentally struck her sister, Anna, with them in when they were children.
In all fairness, the wacky troll that heals Anna and the girls’ parents feed right into Elsa’s fears. The troll erases Anna’s memories of Elsa’s magic and warns Elsa that fear will make her powers more dangerous. The parents then keep Elsa away from other people—including Anna—as much as possible.
The more Elsa tries to conceal and control her powers, the more afraid she becomes and the more of a threat her powers present. So primal is her fear, that it manifests violently against others—including her beloved sister—in order to protect them from her.
I mentioned the parents in passing, but the truth is that they played a significant negative role in their daughters’ lives by keeping them apart, isolating Elsa, and hiding the truth from Anna.
I suppose it makes a more compelling story to have the girls grow up with this gulf between them. It makes it more dramatic when Anna–who has been shut out by Elsa for so long–stands between Elsa and the sword intended for her.
Storytelling devices aside, it’s pretty terrible to lock a girl away just because of one mishap with her powers.
As we see early on, Elsa’s powers can be used to create the most amazing, fun and beautiful playscapes. She and Anna enjoy the winter wonderland that she creates in the castle ballroom. The accident in which Anna gets struck by Elsa’s powers was because Anna was so absorbed in her enjoyment of her sister’s creations that she misjudged a jump from one snowy peak. It was only in trying to give Anna a safe landing place that Elsa accidentally struck her sister with her powers.
There was no malicious intent in Elsa’s actions. She was not some monster, she was a young girl with an extraordinary gift that accidentally got out of control once.
I understand that the parents were concerned for Anna’s safety. And they were concerned for the safety of their kingdom. I get that, I really do.
But there had to have been a better way. There just had to have been.
I’m not a perfect parent, but I do make a point to honor my kid for who he is. And I try to encourage his best gifts rather than squash his potential at the first sign of struggle.
The obvious key to Elsa harnessing her powers for good was the emotional support she received from Anna and others at the end of the movie. What if the parents had been giving that kind of support all along?
See, to me, that’s a big part of a parent’s job. As kids discover the range of their capabilities, parents are in a unique position to help their kids learn appropriate applications of their skills. Kids can live more fully into the positive & appropriate applications of their skills when parents come alongside them and allow them to practice using them.
I recognize that practice can be messy. There will be risks, missed marks, and set-backs. These are hard, but the best skills are worth honing for the good they can bring to our world.
But Elsa’s parents didn’t allow her to practice her powers. They decided for her that she shouldn’t because they assessed that the risks of her using them were too great. By imposing strict control on her and isolating her they seemed to think they could eliminate the risks associated with her powers.
Risk-elimination, no matter how well-intentioned, is as destructive as it is naive. We can never eliminate all risks and to try to eliminate risks is only to introduce different risks.
People are not meant to live isolated lives of fear. We are given gifts and skills to be used for the good of others. When people don’t get to use their gifts then they are at risk for shame, self-loathing, and depression because of the belief that their skills are bad. And when our abilities are not harnessed and guided for good, then the risks get exponentially greater when our abilities manifest in negative or destructive ways.
And so, by trying to eliminate the risks of Elsa using her powers, the parents in Frozen made the situation worse. Elsa hated herself and her abilities and no matter how hard she tried to stop using her powers, they could not be contained. And not having practiced positive applications of her powers in a loving environment, she did not have the emotional resources to direct them for good.
On top of that, their deception of Anna came with additional risks. Of course, there was the obvious risk of Anna losing her favorite playmate. But beyond that, and I want to tread carefully here because I would not want to crush the spirit of a dear soul like Anna, but the parents never dealt with the risky behavior of Anna that led up to the accident with Elsa’s powers.
Anna was a free spirit and we love that about her. Nonetheless, learning to look before she leapt could have served her well in life. She loved and trusted easily which are admirable qualities, to be sure. But instead of helping her learn to manage the risks of her approach to life, the parents enabled her to remain oblivious to the dangers they posed.
And the risks of Anna’s approach to life were great. Let us not forget that the man who tried to kill Elsa was the man with whom Anna had jumped into engagement after singing and dancing with him for just a few hours. It was not Anna’s fault that Hans was a bad guy, but she was responsible for putting in charge of the kingdom a man she barely knew.
Of course, we know how the story ends and that Anna’s power of love saves the day. So, like I say, I wouldn’t want to squelch this power of Anna’s! But the parents could have been better resources for her as a child by allowing her to see the risks involved in loving and trusting so fully and so readily.
As I say, I realize that the situation the parents created sets up a great story. And this is only fiction. But those parents just bug me.
21 Jan
In Frozen, the character of Queen Elsa is loosely based on the villainous Snow Queen in a story by Hans Christian Anderson. Disney’s choice to make the Snow Queen a sympathetic character was brilliant as it exposes two important realities about our own misuse of power. First, the real villains in our world are only human after all; each of us have the capacity to use our abilities for good or for harm. Second, if you drill down deep enough, the most villainous acts we each commit are driven by fear of some kind.
Read the rest of this essay at Life & Liberty to see how I use the above insights as the basis to further explore the misuse of power in our real lives. Click Elsa’s intense eyes in the picture above to read the essay.
13 Jan
David Housholder takes some real risks with The Blackberry Bush–risks that yield sweet results.
NOTE: I received a signed copy of The Blackberry Bush novel as a gift from the author, David Housholder. We are friends and we work together at Life & Liberty, which is Housholder’s online magazine. His gift of this (and his other book) was with no strings attached. I am under no obligation to give a positive review of the book.
The Blackberry Bush is the coming of age story of Kati and Josh, two young people whose destinies are intertwined. The characters were born on the same day and are distantly related. But they live on separate continents and have no concrete knowledge of one another until a brief and life-changing encounter in their early twenties.
The book repeatedly mentions blackberry bushes: characters walk among the bushes, get scraped by the thorns, etc. Housholder uses the blackberry bush symbolism to represent that which ensnares us in life. The challenges we face, the demands made of us, and the choices we make often grow out of control and it is hard to emerge from the bracken unscathed.
As Housholder leads us through the thicket with Kati and Josh’s stories, he personally risks some scrapes in the choices he has made as a storyteller. These risks prove to be fruitful for the reader.
The first major risk that Housholder takes with the novel is that of introducing a cast of characters that span generations and live on separate continents. The stories of numerous characters are woven in with the telling of Kati and Josh’s stories as we learn about their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and find out how Kati and Josh are related.
While telling so many stories in the space of one novel may be risky, I found each of the characters to be very interesting. I loved hearing the backstories of the choices of Kati and Josh’s elders that led to where they each wind up. If anything, I would enjoy learning even more about Kati and Josh’s parents. And I was especially intrigued by Josh’s grandmother, Adri.
To hear all of these stories, the reader is taken back and forth–through time and across continents. Housholder pulls this off beautifully. It helps that he provides a family tree that the reader can refer back to as the characters are introduced, and he makes effective use of the omniscient “Angelo” who narrates just enough to seamlessly weave the stories together.
A second big risk that Housholder makes is that he does not shy away from difficult realities of life. While the book’s central theme is deeply grounded in biblical truth and the main characters are Christians, Housholder does not try to sell the Christian life as all sunshine and puppies. Characters go to church faithfully while also wrestling with substance problems, thorny relationships, and troubling self-image.
This is risky on Housholder’s part because many Christians see struggles in life as a sign of weakness or lack of faith. Furthermore, a frequent criticism of Christians from those outside the faith is that they are just a bunch of hypocrites who say they believe in Jesus but fail to live up to his name.
Promotions of the novel promise that readers will find their stories in this book. Despite my friendship with the author, I was skeptical of this promise. I mean, how could my life possibly be reflected in a novel written three years ago by someone I just met last summer? Pluswhich, since the main characters are just kids, I didn’t think that I, as late-thirty-something, would have much to relate to. As much as I admire Housholder’s work and value his writing, I just could not imagine I would see myself in the book.
I was so wrong.
First of all, I found bits and pieces of both Kati and Josh’s stories with which I could personally relate. But I was especially taken aback by elements of other characters’ stories that felt intensely personal to me. The truth is, this book hit me in ways that I will not be writing about publicly–ever.
By exposing so many very real and very raw realities of our human experience, the book does keep the promise of readers each finding their own stories in it. The truth is we all have struggles–no matter how strongly we try to keep the faith. And as so much of my own life still seems so very much a work in progress, I feel very much that I personally am still in the thick of the blackberry bushes.
But Housholder does not leave Kati, Josh, and the others, or you and me, lost in the bracken. He gives us the hope of a God who seeks to free us from the entanglements of life.
The third big risk that Housholder takes is that of choosing to talk about God and faith in very ordinary language rather than distinctively Christian vocabulary. His language about God and faith is approachable even for those with minimal experience with the Christian faith. While church attendance is mentioned, and the name of Jesus is invoked in prayer, this book is not a sermon or a doctrinal statement about the Christian faith.
Consistent with my experience in working with Housholder, he seems, in the novel, to be more interested in the character’s spiritual experiences than with their theology. What Housholder or his characters believe about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not given much detail.
Readers looking for a Christian novel to use as a glorified Gospel tract will be disappointed with The Blackberry Bush. On the other hand, readers looking for conversation about what it means to live fully for God will find this to be a brilliant discussion-starter.
Through the risks that Housholder takes with generations and geographies, acknowledging the entanglements of life, and fresh vocabulary for God and faith, he yields a thought-provoking and heart-warming novel. And while it stands on its own as a meaningful work of fiction, it can bear even more fruit for readers who do allow the stories in it to interact with their stories. This would work well as a springboard for personal journaling or for book discussion groups. Questions in the back of the book can help readers work through the major themes presented in the novel. I recommend reading and sharing The Blackberry Bush.
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For more information about The Blackberry Bush, you can visit the novel’s website: http://blackberrynovel.com
To read my reaction to Housholder’s other book, Light Your Church On Fire Without Burning It Down, click the title.
To order Housholder’s books, please visit his online store at Life & Liberty: http://astore.amazon.com/davidhoush-20
10 Jan
My son had a fall today and it was a sobering moment.
We had been goofing off when he fell backwards and hit his head. All I could do in that moment was to completely freeze because if I had reached for him as he was falling, the shift of my body would have made him fall harder.
I just waited and pictured the worst in my mind.
You know how they talk about people having their whole lives flash before their eyes? Well, in that moment when my son was free-falling, his whole life flashed before my eyes.
And, of course, what that meant was my entire career as a mother flashed before my eyes. And I thought about all the ways that I have let my child down.
I can never quite decide if this portrait my son drew of me is flattering or frightening.
I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see it that way. He got up and let me comfort him and we both vowed not to try that stunt again.
He was a bit stunned and his head was a little sore, but he was okay. Nothing was broken and he was still alive and able to speak, hear and all that.
The worst case that I imagined had not occurred, not even close.
He was okay.
But I sobbed, uncontrollably.
I sobbed over what might have happened–that I might have lost my child in a fall that I was partly responsible for.
I sobbed thinking about the time when he was a babe in arms and we both fell and I almost lost him then too.
I sobbed thinking about the times that I am cranky or cross with him even when he has done nothing to deserve my bad attitude.
And I sobbed thinking of all the times when I have put him off when he has wanted me to play with him because I just wanted to finish writing or reading whatever I was working on.
And I sobbed thinking about how hard it was for me to bond with him when he was first born because my postpartum depression put such a whammy on me.
And I sobbed worrying if my bond with my son will be healthy and strong as he gets older.
And I just wanted to hold him and pray and hope that we will be okay.
And now, he is waiting for me to finish writing this so we can spend some time together…I want to make it count, because I really do love that kid more than I can say.
Jennifer Clark Tinker 