Peace is Priceless #1

Hezekiah prospered in all that he did. 31And so when ambassadors of the rulers of Babylon were sent to him to inquire about the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone to test him, that He might know all that was in Hezekiah's heart. 2 Chronicles 32

I was at a place in life of facing myraid challenges and unexpected, repeated, tragedies, including but not limited to a divorce and my son being injured and hospitalized multiple times.

In spite of these of these hostile invasive events, my professional life flouished. My busines grew. I received recognition and accolades. My material possesions and trappings increased, while I travelled and fully enjoyed single life. I struggled though, internally, with the propriety of my work, the meaning of it all, and in general, perpetully questioning my own okay-ness.

On one typical Thursday afternoon, I was leaving my beautiful tenth floor office in South Orange County I was headed to my favorite wine bar, not too far away, when I got rear ended in my beautiful blue Mercedes.

Peace is priceless, was my motto in all things and something I constantly communicated to my divorce clients. As we had to put a dollar value on pretty much everythig in their lives, I told them, peace is priceless, but in this process you will have an oppotunity to purchase it, and only you can decide how much it will be.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Wine Bar, where the valet usually greeted me by name,. Instead this time, I got out of the car to find out the name of stranger who just hit me. A Prius pulled in right behind me and a young man jumped out, rubbing his head and apologizing. I told him to take a deep breath and just tell me his name. He said his name was Noah.

I just stared at him and said, “Of course it is”.

At that moment in my life, it really was as thoguht Babylonian invaders, had wanderded through my life to see what I was made of, and the Lord was watching to see form my choices, what was in my heart. I was broken, and searching, and hearing the call of the Lord to the things and the ministry I had long ago laid down, and what I really needed, more than anything, at that moment, would have been an ark. An ark to resuce me from the flood that I knew was coming. There I stood, with Noah, and his Prius, and him having a panic attack over rear ending my Mercedes.

I realized this was one of those moments that I could choose, and that how this was going to go, was dependent upon me. That motto, about peace, is really about taking the power, to choose, and not allowing circumstances to be an excuse for not choosing. There is no reason to allow circumstances to dictate your identity, your future or the outcome. The Lord stood back and allowed me to make choices in these difficult places and events in my Life. God showed up, through a supportive Pastor, a scripture at the right time and place, a word of reminder about the promises I had made, my own inadequacy and His unfailing faithfulness. Each time, it was up to me though, to choose. I could choose His promises, or I could choose me, my way, or the World’s way.

I told Noah that he should have a nice evening and forget this ever happened. He looked at me stunned. He continued to comment on what a beautiful car I had and asked if there was anything he could do for me. I told him to pray for me.

Hezekiah had succeded in everything he put his hands to. (v.30) He really made a name for himself, and pepe noticed. I know what that is like. It makes it easy to take yourself too seriously, and it doesnt always result in peace. Peace is priceless, but we have to pay something for it. The cost of peace, is surrender.

The Lord was watching, to see what was in my heart. On that day, it was Peace.

Divorce is Easy: Only people who have never been divorced say this

In the thousands of times that I have sat across the desk from an individual contemplating ending their marriage, I have on only two occasions, had a person acknowledge that they fully expected the relationship to end this way. The point being, everyone is surprised when they end up in a divorce lawyers office. Everyone is surprised when their relationship is the one that ends in some fashion other than “death do us part”. No one expects it, because everyone believes it when they say, “In sickness and in health”, “For richer for poorer”. We humans are imminently hopeful beings. We want it to work. We know the statistics, yet we march down the aisle and say those words. Each one of us who has done so, did it and said it, and believed it, and had total confidence that WE were the couple that would beat the odds. We heard what the personal skeptics said, the ones who told us we were too different, it would never work, we were too young, too old, too naïve, and did it anyways. Because we believed it. We would be different.

The shock of ending up in my office is overwhelming. I get it. I did it. I was a disaster when I unexpectedly ended up in the office of one of my colleagues as a client, after 19 years of marriage. I was the same as any of my clients. Shocked, ashamed, bewildered, disoriented and numb.

Every study on the subject tells us that half or more of marriages end in divorce. Everyone knows it. It doesn’t help to ease the pain of that moment.

Pundits and many religious teachers say that there are so many divorces because it has become too easy. That myth likely began when states like California began “No Fault” Divorce. Which just means, if you ask for a divorce, you get a divorce. Period. Who did what to who, is not a consideration in the granting of a divorce. “Dissolution of Marriage” is the legal term. Changing the verbiage has not made it easier. Changing the burden of proof, to “Irreconcilable Differences” (That’s the fancy term for No Fault) has perhaps in some ways shortcut the litigation, but the pain is the same.

The grieving process is what it is. There is no court order or legal process to change the way people do it, and everyone grieves the end of the marriage that they expected to last until death. Even if they are relieved to be away from a person who was a danger, aggravation or nuisance, the grieving still must happen. The bargaining, the anger, the sadness, it all happens. Everytime.

It is not ever “easy”. Some cases move faster and with less drama and legal activity than others, but I have yet to see one in which it was “easy” for the parties.

The purpose here, it to help people appreciate this. I am occasionally frustrated, when I have this conversation, one on one, for the umpteen thousandth time. I keep thinking, if only people knew. It takes a great deal of courage to make an appointment with a lawyer and actually show up to talk about this. I am certain that there are many people who are having this emotional process going on and think they are the only one. The only one plagued by the failure, the shame, the disarray that occurs in the life of one grieving the loss of relationship, and I want to help them know that it is a process, with stages, and there is something better on the other side.

It is notoriously, one of those awful times in life, that the only way out is through. If I could speak to those people, I would tell them to talk to someone, a lawyer, a therapist, and explore the options, take a step, start the process, of whatever it is you need to do. It can’t get better through inaction.

I believe that any marriage can be saved, but we all know that many just are not. It is not the end of the world, it just feels like it. Divorces happen because people are human and flawed. When two flawed humans come together, not only do they not fix each other, sometimes they make each other worse. In and through it all, humans keep signing up and walking down that aisle. The death of that expectation and hope of “forever”, is anything but “easy”.

Relationship Reset

For over 17 years now, I have worked hard to help people keep it together while their lives are falling apart. I have experienced fatalities within the context of a half dozen of my cases, due to heart failure, overdose, suicide and substance abuse. I have sat with a client at counsel table while they are told that they will no longer have their children in their residence. I have asked questions in a courtroom, on hundreds of occasions, about the final and complete breakdown of a marriage and have on a few occasions donned a black robe to make a judicial finding and affix my signature to a Judgment stating that a marriage is irretrievably broken and therefore dissolved. I have received phone calls from a client on their way to jail, on their way out of jail, or telling me their spouse is in or going to jail. I have met with clients in rehabilitation and mental health locked facilities. I have met with clients in the presence of their mental health professionals. I have seen and heard about the stitches, bruises and mental scars of physical, verbal and sexual abuse. I have conversed with clients about what it is like to find your child dead, to find your spouse with another lover, to want to end your own life.

I have done these things at times, while my own life felt like, or actually was falling apart. I continued to practice, show up to court and hit my mark, through a variety health crises
(a miscarriage on the eve of my 40th birthday); injuries (a fractured vertebrae); and personal losses (my Grandmother, my Grandfather, my beloved Mother-in-law); through the emotional ends of close professional alliances (The best paralegal I ever knew, wisely chose motherhood over the practice of law, several associates left me for greener pastures, and a dear friend and colleague recently abused and betrayed my trust); divorce, recession, several office and home relocation and two too many visits to the ICU with my son. I learned a few things in this battle field of humanity about myself and others, and I‘m compelled to share what I have learned.

What I have learned is, you don’t have to stay in that place, the excruciating location in your life, where things are unmanageable and hope is gone. Humans possess an immense and amazing power, that is, to accept our human condition, to recognize and acknowledge God, and to surrender our will and our ego.

If and when we truly put those simple concepts to work, we then become able to transcend the greatest tragedies and challenges that life can hand us. Our ego, our mind, as it struggles against circumstances that we judge as “wrong” or unfair, unjust, exacerbates our condition, and complicates our difficulties. When we come to a place that we can surrender to what is, focus on what we can control, ourselves. Release the past and embrace the uncertainty of the future, everything changes. We change.

Any relationship can be saved. That doesn’t mean that every relationship will be saved, but, if both parties, to any relationship are willing to truly get over themselves, get right with God, release their ego attachments to “what is” and accept the uncertainty of life, that dramatic change would heal any rift.

This is biblical, this is spiritual, and what I have seen in the myriad tragedies that I describe above. A spiritual awakening precedes any real life change. I am hoping to help people discover and find this in their own lives. I have worked and coached and supported people through tragedies and break ups for so many years. I am eager to work with people who wish to avoid the devastation, head off a divorce before it happens, roll up their emotional work sleeves and do the personal work of transformation that can keep things together, before it all falls completely apart.

I used to always marvel at the amazing transformation my clients go through in the course of their divorce. Abusers must gain insight, victims must learn self respect, addicts must become clean and sober, and liars must tell the truth. Whether by virtue of the court’s requirements upon them, or the transitions of life in the process or the desire to maintain a relationship with one’s children. I have always marveled about how different it would be if the transformation was sought and achieved before the dismantling of the marriage and the family. I am working on that now. Attempting to help people with these lessons, these realizations and practices that can reset a relationship.

Are you the Same or Different?

Why is it so hard for us as humans to see things other than through the lens of our own experience. Simply, it is because that is our experience. Experience that is colored by the animosity, anger, hatred, reproval, injustice and prejudice. Our experiences color, taint or enhance, our perception of the things we experience and perceive in the world.

What if, we took control and command of our lenses. What if we decided not to judge. Just for one day, what would happen. If we looked at, perceived and sensed things that occurred in the world or in our daily life, without attributing a value to it.

You would be surprised at how many things you judge. Not just the things that you think “offend” you, but simple things, like colors, like speech, words, gestures. You attribute meaning to many things. The meaning you attribute comes from you, your choice, based upon your beliefs and your experiences. Once you get in tune with your judgment and how often you engage it, your perception of it, or everything, of yourself and your world, will change. Your level of engagement in negative emotions will also change. Your level of comfort, peace and safety in your world will change.

You choose to respond. You choose to react. None of it is required, or inevitable, it is chosen. You can chose forgiveness. You can chose peace. You can chose safety. You can choose non-judgment daily.

There is so much bias in our world today and it fosters so much strife. Every person on every side of every debate, blames the people on the other side for being so imminently unreasonable and biased.

They all miss the point. You will never convince those who disagree with you. You will never win over those whose ideals and lifestyles are opposed to yours. How bad would it be, how would it really hurt you, to accept their diversity and difference? Not join it, just engage in non-judgment and accept. How would it make you better, would you feel better, sleep better, have greater peace, if you shared with them your animosity and hatred? Does holding onto your animosity and hatred, help you....?

A quote attributed to Nelson Mandela is something like this, holding onto hatred and unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die. This great thought, comes from the man who embraced his prison guards when he was released after nearly three decades imprisoned.

Yet most of us can not even muster common courtesy to those whose political and religious views are different than ours, and certainly to advocate for those different than us to maintain the right to be different than us has become almost unspeakable.

So, if you are not willing to try acceptance as a path to inner peace and you remain intent on staying in your corner of animosity and hatred, consider a broader perspective. It was not all that long ago that we were burning people at the stake for being different. That’s okay, so long as you are not the one considered to be “different”. Now that we don’t do that, is the fight to make others “different’ and be part of the same-ness group really working for you? How long till your not same-enough?

Freedom must be for all or it is for none. Peace is priceless, but it is also free. Non-judgment would cost you nothing. Releasing animosity would would harm no one, but it will bring peace to anyone who simply chooses to release it.

Change

Change is not evil or good, change is just life. The earth turns around again. The sun goes down and comes up again. Tomorrow is different than today, and today is different than yesterday. You are different, the world is different, than it was, even when you started reading this. You can not stop or prevent it. Things change.

A few weeks ago, the universe of my backyard changed forever.

Since our German Shephard puppy, Diesel, arrived about a year ago, my little terriers have been able to escape his puppy harassment by leaping up onto the four foot high retaining wall, and hiding out, on the slope above. I’m not sure how, but Diesel recently realized, that he has gotten big and strong enough to leap up onto the slope himself. The little doggies knew very little peace in that first few weeks that their safe haven had been violated by this giant baby dog.

What has transpired though, has been mildly inspirational to me. Of course my worry was that the incessant barking of Diesel chasing the little dogs around on the slope, would be unending. Well, it is ongoing, and recurring, but there are those amazing moments when I catch all three of them sunning themselves on the patio in the afternoon sun. Amazingly cute, peaceful bliss, all laying together. What has transpired is a more tolerant, more congenial and closer relation between the three. They can’t get away from him, so they have all had to deal with each other. He even managed to squeeze into their bed with one of them this evening. They have to tolerate his harassment, but they all tire out together and have learned to get out of the way of his enormous feet when they are all chasing a cat together. Adaptation, occurring right before my eyes.

The funny thing about us as humans is with our ability to choose, we can create our own adaptations.

We can choose change. We can roll with change. We can resist change. We must cope with change, because, like it or not, it is coming, but our coping mechanism, which one we will utilize, is uniquely within our own power.

The sun will come up tomorrow. Slightly different than it did today, greeting a slightly different you than it did today. We can greet the changed day with recalcitrance and obstinance, resisting its difference than the days we already knew. We can greet it with acceptance, with gratitude, flow with the newness and ferret out even more newness, or stagnate and grieve the loss of that day that we already knew and understood.

It’s a fundamental philosophy of life, I know. I seem to find myself constantly struggling against those who hold fast to sameness, and view the embracing of constancy as a moral battle. So, I will choose. I will embrace the change and the newness, encourage newness when I see the opportunity, and accept those who cling to the past and the loss of sameness. If my little doggies can adapt and find bliss in a new world order, then certainly I can too.

The Fallacy of Fault

I read a newspaper article recently about a group of investors who lost a great deal of money with a real estate investment firm. An investment firm, that by definition was managing and acquiring a variety of speculative real estate ventures. The firm is now in bankruptcy, with lawsuits pending in two counties, the ongoing obligations of taxes and maintenance of the properties, not to mention no further influx of investor cash. The news article alluded to some possible fault or mismanagement of the executive at the helm.

Really, people lost money in real estate in the past five years? You would have to live on Mars to not know and expect that turn of events.

As I recently sat through a morning calendar in an Orange County courtroom, I watched an attorney argue vigorously that a spouse who had been awarded the family home, had a duty to continue paying and pay off a second mortgage, on a house that had been short-sold or foreclosed upon, in order to protect the credit rating of his client, the spouse who was not awarded the house. Essentially, requesting spouse be an absolute guarantor to the other spouse. The judge cited, more than once, that the Judgment in that case was entered five years prior and that the house was gone. Each spouse got his/her bargained for exchange, along with whatever risk and benefits came with it, but now with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, someone has buyers remorse, as well as the energy and disposable funds to march in and complain about it.

Five years later?? If there was no order to refinance the debt into the sole name of the recipient spouse, the client who is out, and still on that outstanding second loan is most certainly on the hook still, as to the lender. The family law judgment does not have jurisdiction over creditors. First year divorce lawyer stuff. Civil Procedure? WHO does the court have jurisdiction over? First year law student stuff. Come on.

Periodically, on the court days that we call Mandatory Settlement Conferences, parties (not surprisingly), as they stare down the barrel at a trial date, become far more flexible in their positions and their overall willingness to compromise. What I have observed is that it is very easy to be courageous and bold in the safety of my office, on the phone or in an email, but once we are at court, with the prospect of that stranger in the black robe taking a few minutes to decide a litigants’ future, they become far more in tune to what result they can and can not live with, and cases settle.

However, that weary litigant, home after a long hard day of hammering this out in the courthouse cafeteria, then has to answer to a plethora of their cheerleaders, Mother, Father, sister, brother, significant other. All of whom have been this litigant’s emotional and sometimes financial support, crying shoulder, sympathetic ear, and confidante. This group, not in any way happy to hear of a settlement with that dirtbag of an Ex. Didn’t your lawyer fight for you? How could this happen? You were so mistreated during your marriage. This is not right. This is not fair. You need to change this. Back in the safety of life where the delusions and denial are all accepted part of the norm, weary litigant is wondering what happened and fully forgets the earlier pleas to his/her lawyer, “I juuuuust want this DONE.

It must be the lawyers fault. That lawyer didn’t do enough, didn’t care enough, didn’t know enough, was afraid, unprepared, liked the other side better than you.....the list is long.

When I was in middle school I had a typing teacher (It was in olden days when there were typewriters that didn’t even plug in) who saw it as his platform to teach life lessons. His theory and philosophy of that class was that everything, every single thing, event, incident, outcome, in your life is a result of your choice. With that, he gave us a contract and told us to pick our grade for his class. If we abided by the terms of the contract we would receive the grade we selected. That lecture stayed with me, I took it to heart and believed it. It was much like what my grandmother was trying to teach me everyday. Somehow I got it.

I have learned that a whole bunch of people wandering around in the world never got this lecture. Our collective ability to accept responsibility for our circumstances is abysmally low.

How about this one: It’s not my fault, I voted for that other guy.

In taking the temperature of our society, we can not escape the fact that we re-elected a leader, whose mantra has been, “it is the other guys fault”. Those who did not support this lemming like rush to the fiscal cliff, have now as their mantra, “I did not vote for THAT guy”. Really? Your one vote? You did NOT support this result, so you are off the hook? What effort did you put forth for YOUR guy?

The process worked. We all got the result from the last Presidential election that we deserved. The result that we collectively earned. Before you go raving off, just let that sink in for a moment.

A leader reflects some level of collective identity, and this one (Our current Commander in Chief), at his foundation, is that of non-responsibility. I can’t tell if the personna of the leader of the free world is the beginning or the end of this attitude, but you can not deny it certainly is the culmination, a social mirror of sorts, that we are all looking into. Denial permeates all of this behavior, ‘it is not my fault’ is the battle cry. With denial, usually comes delusion, and the ‘Kumbayah’, if we all hold hands and wear Birkenstocks and give out more free stuff we will all be as one, like the “Give the world a Coke” commercials from my childhood.

How pathetic. We are not The Great Generation. If they were here with us, and if those few who still are, were cognizant of these things, they would be ashamed of us. I know my Grandmothers would be. Nothing is easy. Nothing is free. I am in charge of myself. These were their attitudes, their battle cry.

My paternal grandmother told me of times when she was picking cotton, she took her four children with her to help, and the baby was swaddled to her chest while she worked and minded the children. She would be shocked and appalled to hear some of the stories I hear of young mothers who refuse to work because they have a baby. I wonder why these mothers have come to the place they believe it is okay to live with their parents, and not work while they collect a check from the father or the government. In no way does in occur to some of these girls that they are not meeting their moral obligations as a parent.

If my maternal grandmother were here, she certainly would have mastered that art of extreme couponing, because she was the Queen of the Blue Chip stamp. Well into my adult hood she would remind me of the critical things she purchased for my life with the strategizing of her blue chip stamps. She got my first high chair at the Blue Chip stamp store. She collected Christmas glasses from Arby’s, and went there often enough on the holidays to get me 12 of those glasses. (I use them proudly every Christmas) She reminded me daily that on the reservation where she grew up, her bathroom was outside the home as there was no running water and running water is something you should never take for granted. Everything had consequences, and no one had the right to complain about their circumstances, but everyone had the right to go out and do something about it.

Our societal ills are not going to be cured or even treated with the proliferation of platform, or policies, or any more dogma. We have to start looking at the problem as a personal one. As long as you are pointing a finger, you are the problem. We each have our own cross to bear, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Being American does not entitle you to anything except an opportunity to become something. Being an investor, like being a gambler, only entitles you to profit if your numbers come up right. Being a spouse does not entitle you to support for life, guarantee insulation from financial risk or emotional pain, you are entitled to share in the gains and the losses. Being a litigant entitles you to a trial, to a determination, from another human being in a black robe of whether you are wrong or right, and you might be found to be wrong. In which case, you have the right to bear the costs of being wrong, and paying for services that you contracted for. You have the right to parent a child, if you desire to and are able. You have an obligation to support that child.

What we control in our world is our response, to everything. The greatest thinkers on the planet have learned, experienced and taught this. Nelson Mandela, DeePak Chopra, Viktor Frankl, have all promoted or espoused some form of this. You can choose joy over misery. You can find peace and pleasure in the fact that the sun came up today, or you can choose aggravation over a flat tire, traffic jam or some other inconvenience. The seed of opportunity always exists, to choose a response that edifies you and multiplies positive energy in your surroundings, or you can kill it by fostering negativity and feeding an attitude of lack.

No rights are absolute. No privileges are limitless. No one owes you anything. We have become so enamored with our blessings and confused them with entitlements, we have forgotten about what we are obligated to. We should start applying the simple philosophy of Viktor Frankl to our lives, which is that the only thing you can control in the world is your response to your surroundings. Own your choices, think carefully about what our obligations are. To not make matters worse? To not bring harm or cause misery to others? To take care of ourselves? If we choose our responses carefully, then the outcome is no one’s “fault”, it just is.

Technology vs. Brenda McCune

The past few weeks have been an extraordinary cacophony of technical malfunctions in my environment. The heater at home, the cordless phones, then the phone line, home computer, office server, copier, cell phone issues, television ....the list is long and the incidents bizarre.

The battle rages on in the case of Technology vs. Brenda McCune. Lost my phone at court today. When I found it after about an hour of searching, I called my office, intent on rattling off a very ambitious list of “to-do’s” to my assistant, because my afternoon that had miraculously cleared up once my trial got continued. I called my office and discovered that the office phones are out again. The fax, email, internet, and calling out, all worked, all day, just fine. Calling IN to the office, though, not happening. I had been wondering why it seemed so quiet earlier when I was there.

Step 11...... “Praying only for God’s will and the power to carry it out”. If you do this daily, and I do, and you believe it, and I do, then what could you possibly have to be distressed about. It is all for the good and part of the plan. Really, God? The phones are out....again? Who am I to wonder why. Trial is not happening? Well alright, I learned a long time ago, we can only do so much to control the schedule of others. There is frequently one of the multiple players, two parties, two or more attorneys, one or more experts, one or more witnesses, any of whom can become unavailable and the whole hearing thing is derailed and re-set, continued or trailed. When you think about it, with all these individuals and their schedules it is a miracle we ever get hearing done. What we call a mishap, malfunction, accident, in any area of our life, is really just another thing. A moment in a day in a life, where God is in control. He’s got this. I can let it go.

I realized that in the one hour or so that I was, not in trial, but searching for my cell phone by wandering around the court house, I had an opportunity to do what I don’t do often enough. Chat with a favorite clerk and court reporter, catch up with one of my favorite lawyers in the hallway, meet and greet the Sheriffs at the front door security, (the guys who wand me many mornings, check out my shoes every day, we practically have an intimate relationship anyway, we should at least be on a first name basis) then chatted up some of the workers over at Bella’s Café.

None of this wasted time. Do I really need to spend another evening till 9pm in my office staring at a computer and shuffling papers around? I bet the world will not stop spinning on its axis if I don’t spend this evening in my office “fixing” things. Perhaps on this Thursday afternoon, the malfunctioning phones are telling me to take a breather. Maybe the most important thing that I have to do today is to visit a dear friend who just became a Grandmother. The pictures of a new grandbaby on Facebook can not compare to the way a new Grandma’s face lights up when she tells you about him. Maybe the most important thing I have to do this evening is to keep my dinner date with a girlfriend who I adore and respect, and laugh and commiserate and be validated by her. Maybe I just need to sit down and pet my dogs or chat with a nice stranger at the gas station.

What is the greatest commandment? To love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. If I love God I will listen to him and observe his lead, accept and trust the circumstances beyond my control. If I love my neighbor, I will take time to look at his face, know his name and stop long enough to hear.

Technology has not been at war with me this past month. Technology has been at war with me my whole life. As our multitasking, multi-platform, user friendly tools, increase and become even more user focused and demographically driven, the intrusion into real communication and the seduction to ever more doing, can eclipse real connection and exchange.

The world will not stop spinning on its axis, but sometimes, we as humans must.