Aroma Therapy
One of my favorite memories as a child was roast for lunch after Sunday morning church. Upon arriving home from church on Sunday we were met with the most delicious, mouth-watering, and savory aroma off all time. Roast. I would walk into the house after church, and it surprised me in the most pleasant and wonderful way every time. Oh yeah, roast!
I never saw the preparation my mother did each Sunday morning. I was still asleep or in the shower while mom got out the roasting pan and cut onions, carrots, and potatoes. She even made mashed potatoes. I did not see her planning earlier in the week to make sure all the elements of the roast feast were in place. I did not go to Rainbow grocery store and see her select just the right roast for the Sunday meal. I did not see any of the labor that went into making that aroma possible. I have no memory of any of the preparations.
What I cannot forget is the aroma.
Furthermore, growing up in Minnesota added to the delight. In the cold winter months when the drive to and from church was not long enough to get the car warm in the below zero air, we just stayed cold and bundled up going from one place to another. However, when we arrived home, we would all hurry from the car into the house to get warm. On Sundays, we piled the house to fell the rush of warmth at the same time as that first whiff of the roast aroma. It felt like the roast itself warmed our frigid skin.
I smiled at the aroma of roast. In the midst of the aroma of roast, it is almost impossible to be down, sad, grumpy, and out of sorts. The aroma is re-orienting, re-directing, and the most inviting distraction to whatever it was I was worried about, but somehow now can’t recall. The power of a delightful and delicious aroma is difficult to overestimate. But it is not the power of force; instead, it is the power of irresistible invitation. My mother could have worked all day long telling me to be happy or to smile or get over it, but instead she made roast and the happiness and the smiling took care of itself.
When it comes to relationships, whether the relationship is intimate like marriage, functional like work, social like neighbors, spiritual like church, or some meaningful interplay of two or more of these, the power of roast can tell us something. We accomplish something substantial when we go through the effort to create a delightful and delicious relational aroma.
We all have desired outcomes for our relationships, no matter the kind of relationship. We all want healthy, safe, trusting, meaningful, and effective relationships. We want to be a good relationship partner in intimate, work, social, and other relationships. We also want partners who are good partners. Sometimes when it feels like the partner is not holding up their end, it can be tempting to get that partner to do their part by force. And there may be times when that is appropriate. However, the reality is that you have very limited ability to force much in another person before they feel coerced, manipulated, and objectified.
Instead, working on yourself to be an inviting and delicious aroma (context) for the other person may be what inspires the very best in that other person. Being a good relational aroma inspires connection rather than resistance. Being a good relational aroma puts the sense of goodness and safety everywhere. A good relational aroma builds the anticipation that something good is going to happen while also relieving other people of the fear or anxiety about something bad that might happen.
Good relational aroma takes work – on yourself. Just like the Sunday morning roast didn’t just magically happen Sunday at noon, you cannot be a good relational aroma in an instant. There is prep work. There is planning. There are aspects to the work that have no aroma at all – and some parts of it can bring tears like cutting onions. The relational and spiritual discipline it takes to be an inviting and delicious aroma in your relationships requires behind the scene work.
But it’s worth it. The effort worth that delightful, delicious, and irresistible aroma. Can you smell it? Yum.