When I tell people that we moved here from California, the first thing people say is WHY? Why leave the perfect weather and all your friends? Well, we have a really great reason! So here it is:
I first heard about Option in the mid-80’s. I was attending college in Los Angeles, studying to be a teacher. I don’t remember how (perhaps it was part of the curriculum?) but I saw the movie, Son Rise, and then read the book. (Son Rise is the story of how Bears and Samahria Kaufmann loved and accepted their autistic son. They developed a program for him, based on the Option Process. He came out of his autism fully, and went on to graduate from Brown University with a degree in Biomedical Ethics. He currently acts as CEO for the institute.) I was deeply moved by their story. I found it all fascinating, but didn’t move on it. However, I tucked it away in my mind. (The cause is in the future.)
Fast forward to 2005. All my life I have wanted to be a wife and mother. I am a devout Christian, and always considered myself to be a happy person. But I was shocked by my own desperate unhappiness two-and-a-half years ago. I was married for 13 years to what everyone agreed was a wonderful man. We had two beautiful, healthy children, and one more on the way. Yet, I hated my life. It was everything I had ever wanted and I was miserable.
A close friend’s child was diagnosed with autism. Wanting to be helpful, I remembered Son Rise, and found it in our local library. Because my friend and I are both Christians, I reread it to be certain that it is something I want to share. It was. This sparked a renewed interested in Option for me. I noticed that Bears had written other books, including one on grieving. I had just lost my father to cancer and was inconsolable about it. I ordered the book. I got on the Option mailing list. I looked at the website (www.option.org).
Meanwhile, my husband, Jon and I were having an awful time. Different parenting philosophies have pitted us against each other. I felt he had left our marriage relationship for an unhealthy relationship placating our then 5 year old son. Jon judged me and my parenting relentlessly. I yelled at the kids constantly out of a feeling of utter powerlessness. I was at my wits’ end.
I ordered the “No Risk, No Fault Parenting” CDs. The first time I listened to them, I found them so radical that I thought Bears should be jailed! But by the fifth listen, I decided he was a genius. I gave it a try, and for a week, I didn’t yell at my kids. Which at that point was miraculous!
My husband noticed the change, and asked me about it. When I told him about the CDs he asked, “Do they have classes we could send you to?” So in May of 2005, I flew from San Diego out to Option for the Happiness Option Weekend (HOW). I believed in my heart that I would never come home. Sure, the CDs had helped, but eventually I went back to yelling. I felt so lost and depressed and out of control. I feared what I might do to one of the kids in a fit of anger. Jon and I had been in Christian counseling for years. But I felt as though things weren’t changing; only getting worse. I figured I would go to the Option weekend, and then fly someplace beautiful (like Tahiti) and disappear. I couldn’t face my life.
When I told the 100 or so people who had come to HOW that I was a Christian mom with two kids and another on the way. And that all I had ever wanted was to be a stay at home mom, but that now I hated it. And I was leaving and never coming back – Well, I expected people to stop me. I thought someone would say, “You can’t do that!” But no one did. Rather they challenged me that I had never been doing anything other than exactly what I wanted to do. And when I finally realized that no one was holding a gun to my head and making me stay; when I gave myself permission to go; that is when I realized that I wanted to stay. I wanted to be a mom to my kids. And I found a way to go back on my terms.
It was such an incredible change in me, that my husband starting reading the books, and attending the classes. When he returned from his first classes, I was surprised. He was once again the man I had married. I remembered again why I had loved him in the first place. So many years of judgments and anxiety were gone. And here was this wonderful happy person that I fell in love with all over again.
Last year we moved to the east coast from California so that he could pursue his dream of working at Option. He is a certified mentor (which means he works with people, helping them to gain clarity regarding their beliefs, and choose happiness regardless of their current circumstances), and is on his way to being an instructor. We want to lead the happiest lives we possibly can. We also want to learn everything that Option has to teach us, and make it accessible to the Christian Church. It is a powerful set of tools for living out the Gospel.
We are forever grateful to the Option Institute for giving us the tools with which to create the happy lives we have always wanted for ourselves and our children. I am a better mother, a better wife, a better follower of Jesus, and a happier me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment