About Kay Wyma

Kay is a mother of 5, three of which fall into the tween/teen category. She’s a recovering enabler, procrastinator, controller, grammar hacker and is calendar challenged (among other things).

Why Was Kay Wyma Reluctant to Write Her First Book?

“My kids at that point, the oldest was a teenager, I was nervous quite frankly. I loved MOPS, which was a wonderful ministry for moms of young children. They have people come in and tell you this is going to happen, this is regular, this is normal and here are red flags and I needed that for my teenagers as I sat at the cusp of that. That’s when I started a blog.

Great people gave us advice and along the road is how Cleaning House came out because I got frustrated with my kids one day when I felt like they were looking at me to do everything for them and they were like looking to the state to serve them. I realized I was the state and I was grooming socialism and I don’t even believe in socialism and that was that. I thought it would be funny if I blogged about that. Then I had a couple of publishers that wanted to publish a book from it and so that’s why I just didn’t really expect it. I didn’t know that I was a writer. I enjoy it though.”

The Difference Between Kay Wyma and Her Kids

“Such a great question. Because I did grow up comfortably. At the same time my dad was very clear to tell us that though we may be comfortable today, that’s not something to expect. So there was very much a mantra of hard work. We weren’t allowed to just skate by. If you’re going to do a job, you should do it well. I don’t think he was afraid of failure either, to let us fall. I don’t think people were really as afraid of that even then as they are now. There’s certainly wasn’t a trend to bubblewrap your children either. We would leave the house in the morning and come back at night.”

What Did Kay Wyma Unintentionally Give Her Kids?

“I love that you brought that up because the term “better,” “I want my kids to have it better,”  that phrase really started after the Great Depression and people didn’t have the opportunity to have an education and so when they were working so hard it really was to give their kids the opportunity to be educated so they could “have it better” than they did. I think we’ve inserted in that “have it better,” somehow in our minds we have decided that it means financial success. That is what “better” is.

On the other side of that “kind of better,” “Oh if I pave the road” which they’ve changed the term from helicopter parenting to snowplow parenting because it’s just not hovering. People are getting in the trenches and doing the work for their children. It’s like “See also college applications,” you know. I have a kid that is eighteen sitting at that cusp right now knowing full well that his peers have been to advisors on how to do their college application even to the point of writing their essays for them. All these grooming techniques that we use rather than just letting them live and you kind of sit there and want to say, “Well who says that’s how you have to do that?”

The Pressure Universities Are Putting on Young Children

“Yeah, it’s a lot of pressure on a little kid and on a parent as if that’s what makes them. In the process and what I saw in our house, that I started apologizing fast. I would never…no one I know would have considered me a helicopter person, because I am entirely too flaky. I’m unorganized and I just can’t keep up with anything, but when I started putting, legitimately putting these household tasks on their plate, I realized what I was doing to them when I didn’t put it on their plate because when you don’t do it, even though I might be saying to them, “You can do anything you put your mind to. I really believe in you.”

When I don’t believe in them and when I don’t put the task on their plate; they hear the loud implied message which I’m convinced is all they hear anyway, “You can’t do it, or I can do it better,” which really is not what I think. It floored me how I was not equipping and training them. Even through Scripture I loved the verse, train up a child in the way they should go. As they get old they won’t depart from it. In my mind somehow I made that Scripture, ‘Oh, ok if we read Scripture to them and if they learn it then they’re good to go.’

I sort of forgot about the training aspect that involves showing them how to do something and then standing off at the side while they try, then getting out of the way so they do it themselves and really how all encompassing that is. That really is a gift, but it sure does take your breath away and it is countercultural.”

The Keyword of Kay Wyma’s New Book

“Yeah. It’s a big word. When the publisher, they were very nice to come back and say, “We’d love for you to write something else,” and I quickly reminded them, “I’m not a writer,” and they were like, “No, we want something.” We talked about what the topic is where I’ve had such wonderful opportunities to speak different places. I told them in the room wherever I am for sure the biggest issue is this competitiveness. It’s just bizarre, especially in parenting. Competitive parenting!

Who came up with that? It’s like an olympic sport. Then I was saying, “At the core of all that is comparison.” I mean that’s really what it is. We just cannot stop comparing ourselves to each other, pretty much from the minute we get up and that was like, “Yeah, yeah, do that.” Boy, did that open up a can of worms. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I’m not joking. It has been a really challenging road to embark on this topic.”

How Does Kay Wyma Instill Contentment in Herself and Her Kids?

“The answer to that topic: I can do all things through Christ who lives in me, which is exactly what you said. That seems like a term that is so heady. How do you really tap into that? How does that work? Because for me that’s where I’d go, “Oh, that sounds so lovely.” How does that work? You go back to where the gentleman or whoever was surrounding Him and said, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?” He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love others as you love yourself and later I loved you.

It’s like therein lies the secret sauce, “Love others.” Well, if you really are loving God and you are loving others, than your eyes are not on yourself. The entitlement issue. What’s wrong with the entitlement issue? Narcissism, for sure because it’s me. Me me me me me! The same with comparison, whether you’re comparing yourself thinking you’re better than somebody or you’re comparing yourself because you’re not as good which is really where I think people fit, you know?

On the short end of the stick of comparison, either way your eyes are on yourself and I feel the Lord is saying, “ Do you want to know the secret sauce of life?” Keep your eyes off of yourself. I’m telling you this because I love you. I love you! I want you to be happy and your happiness is really found in me so look at me. As I started peeling back the layers on this thing, which really you think you’re looking at one, and you just slightly peel it back and there’s a thousand more.”

Taking it All Back to The Beginning

“It was hard to not go back to the garden because that’s where it started. Comparison was the tool that was used for the fall. You’ve got something because you’re fine. They don’t even realize they have no clothes on. They’re content! Perfect provision even with the tree standing there that was out of bounds. You can’t touch that! Until someone comes and says, ‘By the way that thing over there. It has everything you need. You aren’t complete, but you would be if you had that.’

There goes the comparison and their eyes start to look at them. I don’t have something that I should have and they go for it and I feel like that’s been our problem from that point on. The part that surprises me is how pervasive it is even in my own mind. I can get up in the morning and simply open my drawer and see a pair of pants I might have worn before I had that fifth child, but still I have never worn since that date, and somehow decide I should be in those pants.

I’m sort of a lust of myself because I’m not that; I’m not wearing those like I should be wearing those and therein it’s got me. There goes the trap and all of a sudden I see lots of my imperfections which really is just me thinking about me. I just don’t think there’s any contentment in that.”

How Can We Be Content in All Things?

“One is gratitude. Where am I looking? Like right now I’m holding a pair of readers because I can no longer see and I think about those lenses…it’s like what lenses am I looking through when I look at life? Am I looking through these lenses of what I expect? Because expectations play a major role in this whole comparison thing. There’s the theory of the U shaped curve of life is a theory that really stands across societal norms.

It doesn’t hit any socioeconomic sphere, like it’s just a part of life. Every region of the world which says that, “At a certain point in life like …you have the beginning of life and you have the end of life and you start out in life fairly content and happy, and then in about your twenties to thirties it starts to dip down and it stays and it continues to go lower in your thirties and forties, and fifties and then it goes back up in the sixties, seventies, and eighties and they don’t know why.

Except in that major dip down the load of unmet expectations; you have this idea of the way things are supposed to be and its expectations on yourself; you know this is how I’m supposed to be and there’s a measuring mark on the line either I’m there which really never happens, or I’m above or below. No matter where you are, you have this mark that you think you’re supposed to reach and whoever said that? It could vary in whatever region of the world you live or socioeconomic sphere that you’re in.”

The Unreachable Standard

“It’s different for everybody, yet we seem to think that there’s a measuring line that we’re supposed to hit, but as soon as you hit it, it moves and therein lies this odd game that we do trying to measure up. One of the first things I think we need to do is really figure out what our expectations are; what lenses we’re looking through. As a believer am I looking through God’s expectations for me or from what the world has defined for me?

I think that’s a big part of the equation and I think gratitude is enormous; to be able to focus not on what I don’t have, but what I do have. I tell my kids that all the time especially like when I hear words like, “Not fair” entered the picture. Can we for a minute look at the good stuff that is going on? Which may be where Paul sat, with his eyes on Jesus being able to say, “I’m good because I trust Him and I trust His provision. Can I see the provision in the midst of what I would see as lacking and I think a lot of our contentment comes along the lines of kind of a reboot of sorts.”

The Danger of Social Media

“It is and I think it is actually hard for us to relate to. We can feel it a little bit. It’s the likes, the shares. There are so many opportunities to compare yourself that you wonder why the weight of depression is so high. It’s really at an all time high and the United States suicide is at an epidemic rate, you know, staggering. The CDC says, “That doesn’t even touch the trend to self harm. Why are people so unhappy? Does social media play a role? It’s hard to think that it wouldn’t because again it allows me to pretty much think about myself all day, every day.

I could easily go a whole day without a break from myself, which is not going to lead us to a place of contentment. There’s an interesting, since you like reading, there’s an interesting article study that was done by some Harvard guys, I think Gerr is the name of who did it. Because right now one of the very popular topics is mindfulness which people take to yoga, because it’s this concept of where your mind is; filling your mind and what you’re thinking.

They did a study on our propensity, human beings do have wandering thoughts. Forty nine point six percent of our day is spent with our thoughts wandering and it could be in all kinds of capacities but when our thoughts wander we tend to not be happy, which is the results that they came up with and our minds tend to wander when we’re on the computer, when we’re in conversation, and when we wander we’re going towards all these things that we think we should have or we think we should be doing. Someone’s talking to us. How do I compare with them? The concept of mindfulness is so powerful and compelling. If I’m on my mind looking at Facebook, it’s hard to peruse through that and come out unscathed.”

How Kay Wyma Finds Freedom From Comparison

“I think a big part is a mental reboot. Another thing is to be able to see the people that are around you rather than see them as a competitor, but actually see them beyond the moment. There’s the idea of something called the glimpse where you see these things and in the moment you instantly compare yourself for all this kind of stuff, probably going down a road that I don’t compare favorably into all of this rather than seeing the people. I think we see these people and don’t realize that they are people with a lot of other things going on in their life.

The idea, if you can take comparison and pick out an r and an i out of that word and switch n and s and an i, you can go from comparison to compassion. To me, how do we get pass this? A lot less us and a lot more others. If I can be comfortable in myself, in my own skin to be able to look at something besides me, I can see these people around me who are dying in the midst of it too because they are bumping up against all this stuff and they equally are unhappy and discontent trying and searching to find the thing which leads back to our kids, you know.

If you’re in the business world, can you really walk into a business meeting and trade business cards and be comfortable that you’re a vice president instead of a senior vice president? Or CEO? Or maybe think that the other people at that table might be comparing themselves to everyone else and meet them in the middle of that offer some encouragement?”

Lessons Kay Wyma Learns From Her Kids

“I got doses of it from my kids. Lessons that I really learn from this are from my children; just finding contentment and number one: actually genuinely being happy for someone else; letting someone else’s grade be ok. One of my daughters plays volleyball and she was given the role of setter on their team which grieved her because she’s mediocre athletic, you know just athleticism. She’s a great volleyball player because she has good hands and so her coach put her as setter. Well the setter has to touch the ball every single point. The setter never wins the point.

The setter is setting somebody else up to win and when she got in that car that day and was upset about it for so many reasons including the fact that she would never win a point, it dawned on her how happy she is when she wins a point and that her entire essence of being on that team would be to set up people to win points and it filled her tank. I watched it fill her tank and then I watched her fill everyone else’s tank and there goes the counterintuitive nature of what our Lord tells us. “Do this so it will go well for you.” By the way it may not look like you not winning the point is actually what’s going to offer the most satisfaction, but it does.”

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