Family ~ The Individual and a Centered Life

For the past several weeks, we have been, on the surface, talking about addiction recovery.  In reality, we have been talking about getting to know ourselves better, getting to know Jesus Christ better, and understanding better our relationship to Him.  Any discussion of the family must, therefore begin with the individual.  We cannot have a healthy relationship with anyone else until we have a healthy understanding of ourselves.

In his book, The Divine Center [1], Dr. Stephen R. Covey wrote that we need to center our lives in Jesus Christ.  If we will do so, we will not only strengthen ourselves, we will strengthen our marriages, families, and all of the other relationships that we share.  Wrote he, "If we truly receive the Lord we draw our ego strength from our relationship with him and from his definition and lofty estimation of us rather than from other people's treatment and fickle opinions of us." (p.192)

 

You may or may not be familiar with the term ego strength used in this context.  We misunderstand the word ego as meaning conceited, self-centered, even narcissistic.  Ego as used in psychology means our sense of selfness, to coin a word.  It is the means by which I know that I am an individual separate and distinct from all other individuals.  Ego strength as Dr. Covey used the word means that I will have a strong sense of self if my definition and understanding of myself comes from the Lord and not from other people.  "Divinely centered people savor life," wrote Covey. "Because their security comes from within instead of from without, they have no need to categorize and stereotype everything and everybody in life to give them a sense of certainty and predictability." (p. 293)



 

Tomorrow, we will discuss how one's ego develops as we look at the work of the Father of Developmental Psychology, Dr. Erik Erikson.  As we learn about how each of us developed our sense of selfness, we can then move outward from ourselves into healthy and fulfilling relationships with others: spouse, children, family, friends, and beyond.

 

[1] Bookcraft, 1982

Text © 2012 Gebara Education

Picture of sunrise from www.freebigpictures.com

Pictures of Dr. Covey from multiple sources on the web