What to do When You Need a Hard Family Reset
Sometimes we need a hard family reset...
Some people unexpectedly leave a lasting impression on our lives. One of those people for me was an old supervisor who taught me about pressing life's reset button - a practice I'm only now realizing how much I need.
The first time I met her I knew she possessed a magic I needed in my life.
Just a few years later, I got my chance and found myself working for her, learning more than I thought possible - an adventure that started when I walked into her office and saw a giant red and black button on her desk with the letters R-E-S-E-T scrawled on top.She caught me staring at it, picked it up, and said, "This is important. While working with me, you'll quickly discover that I make mistakes and you'll make them too, but here's the thing - we get to press the reset button as many times as we need to. It won't be easy and you won't be perfect. Neither will I. But we'll always have this reset button, and we can start over again whenever we need to. Okay?"
Most people would love to hear a new boss tell them that, but I was mortified.
"Me - make mistakes and need to start over? I don't think so," I wanted to say. (I was quite the perfectionist back then - before I knew better.) But as it turns out, she was right. I did make mistakes. I was out of my league, working a job that was way too advanced for my experience and training. But, true to her word, when she or I messed up, we got to reset and start over with each other. I learned so much about grace during that season, and now, all these years later, I still think about that reset button, and I still have to press it in my mind and in my family from time to time.
In fact, I had to use it this week for a hard family reset after making some serious mistakes.
It started a few weeks ago when I realized how horribly I had over-committed myself and felt like I couldn't do a thing about it. Instead of asking for help, I started letting stress make me into a frazzled person - wife, mom, friend, everything. Then, last weekend, my little guy asked me for a one-on-one several days in a row before I realized that he wasn't asking for a trip to the ice cream shop; he seriously needed to talk to me. But I was too busy to listen, too frazzled from the craziness of my schedule to see the need written all over his face. Thankfully, he was persistent, and just one hour at a donut shop with him woke me up to my family's need for a hard reset.
As it turns out, school, work, family travel, friendships, and making a big change like we are right now can be pretty stressful for every family member - not just the parents dealing with the logistics, but the kids who love those parents too.
During that one-on-one while staring into his big brown eyes, I breathed deeply for the first time in weeks, forgot about everything else, and leaned into his amazing talent for telling stories. Then, I did the same thing with his brother the next day and got to sneak away with the hubs a few days after that. I refused to let mom-guilt (or any other type of guilt) take over, and we started moving forward together.
I admitted my mistakes, apologized, and pressed my family's hard reset button and started making changes.
I realized that I had to give myself some grace or things would get much worse for all of us very quickly. So, we took a few days off from work and school, played some games, went hiking in our favorite national park, started packing for our big move, made a plan for some things I was procrastinating (like a master's thesis due in 74 days!), and started making things right again. And I thought about that old boss and how she taught me that grace is a requirement and perfection is a myth - one of those unicorns that actually does not exist - and yet, it can hold tremendous power over us if we let it.
I'm not finished changing yet, but I'm so thankful for a family and friends who give me permission to press our reset button often, because striving for perfection doesn't work out nearly as well as grace - and it doesn't build nearly as much togetherness either.
If you need that permission in your own family, consider it granted today.
And this weekend, if you need to,
take a mental health day away from the norm,
go for a hike with someone you love,
read a good novel just because you want to,
get yourself to a really nice coffee shop,
eat the best pizza you can find,
treat yourself to a fancy haircut,
play a few family board games,
watch a movie marathon together
Do whatever a hard family reset looks like for you and your family, and I hope you find your own family togetherness dreams coming into view.
How do you reset things for your family when things go sideways?
Come on over to the email group and join the discussion - I'd love to know!