Leading like a sinner with my wife!

I have a problem. It's one that I have kind of known about, and kind of not known about. It revolves around my absentmindedness that will often plague me while driving and for that matter when I am doing anything while I am also thinking. I have ruined a Formica counter top while focusing intensely on a computer game, by leaving a wallpaper steamer to heat up and forgetting it, I remember driving to a location by myself, only to find my mind lost at the moment I should make a turn, so that I missed the turn and once I turned around to come back to that location where I needed to turn, I found that I again got lost in thought right before I should remember to turn and passed it a second time, only this time in the other direction. I did this three times in a row while driving by myself. I often loose my train of thought in the morning and will forget to check my calender and thus miss meetings that I have scheduled.

Now the real problem with this issue is how I treat my wife as she works to get around this limitation. Sometimes I appreciate her help. Sometimes I feel as if she is treating me like I am in kindergarten and I get angry. Sometimes I sense that she is walking on egg shells in trying to find a way to help me and not cause me to become angry. Other times, I sense she gets angry with me for once again not remembering and then I get angry with her for getting angry at me over my weakness.

I was talking about this issue with my friend and he pointed out to me that of course I was like the absent minded professor. That I was in fact just like the stereotypical absent minded guy, maybe not as bad as the stereotype, but that everyone knew that I got lost in my thoughts and would forget about time. So I began to work out this thought. First, that I have this weakness with time, particularly when I engage in thinking. Now I am really smart, it is a gift that I have and so I shouldn't be so embarrassed that it has a back side weakness. The second thought I had was that I was completely responsible for this source of conflict between myself and my wife.

That second thought was harsh for me to accept. I couldn't be so completely responsible for an area where my wife and I consistently had conflict, could I? That was the question I was asking myself and I didn't like the answer. So leading like a sinner would give me opportunity to recognize this area of weakness in my life to my wife. In doing this I could begin to know the benefit of owning it, the weakness that is. Owning this issue didn't mean I wasn't a good person, it simply meant in this area, my wife and many others simply exceeded me in ability. I have lots of things that fall into that category.

So armed with my conclusion, that this would be an opportunity to "Lead Like a Sinner", I began to plot how and when I would tell my wife. As I began to lay this plan out, I found that I didn't want to. My pride got in the way, I wanted some of my reactions to be because my wife was being unfair in her treatment of me. But I resolved to go forward with the great confession.

I decided to tell my wife that I felt 99% responsible for all of the conflicts that we have had in this area. I was now going to ask her to help me remember, I was going to try to accept her reminders as needed and things to help me, rather than indictments that I was bad again. I was going to work on having her to never again feel like she needed to walk on egg shells in order to keep me from getting mad. As I did, she had a first reaction that I wasn't planning on. She admitted that sometimes she would get angry with me, assign ill motive to my actions and that she would try to not have that be her response towards me as well.

By my leading with my sin, she responded by leading with what sometimes was hers. Now I don't think this would not have happened if I had tried to only come half way, to own only 50% of the problem. I think it happened because I owned completely what was honestly completely my problem. Sure sometimes she would respond with anger, but that was only a result of my responses of anger to her reminders. That only came because I put her in the spot of trying to walk on egg shells in dealing with my inconsistent responses. As we talked about the issue, it was a touching emotionally close moment we shared. I felt she heard me, I felt she forgave me and I felt she loved me. I think she felt that I loved her as well.

In conclusion, the result of leading like a sinner and owning our problems is that we will bring our teams closer together, we will enable our team members to own their own problems and we will help all members to grow. That's what happened for my wife and I. As she told me how she would try to respond to my absent mindedness, I was able to ask her to think of my strengths as she was helping me with my weaknesses. She was able to see my fear about what she thought about me when I would have moments of forgetfulness, and maybe a little of why I would respond with anger. I am able to more clearly see my problem and how completely it had caused all of our conflicts. Hopefully, with the help of others and my wife, I will get better at switch hitting, of being more mindful of the time when I am in the middle of one of my deep thought moments. But until then, I am going to welcome the help of others.

It was a good week!