For my friends that were worried, things are better now.
Life Goes On
2 days later, I’m being spoken to again.
Not that he feels talkative towards me, but “life goes on I guess”.
Gee. Don’t hurt yourself.
I don’t feel much talkative towards him either frankly.
I don’t foresee an apology,
I foresee the expectation of an apology from me.
(Speaking of unrealistic expectations…)
Uh, yeah… that ain’t happening.
I can apologize for losing my temper and getting mildly hysterical. I could possibly have stayed calm.
I can apologize for yelling and for cussing, because I’m not proud of that.
But I will not apologize for who I am!
I will not apologize for not living up to his expectations.
I gave up my expectations years ago because he was NEVER going to live up to them.
I am not supposed to bring up his past behavior because he has changed.
Because he’s apologized for being a jerk and I’ve forgiven him.
Ok sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s now fair for him to judge me because I downgraded my own behavior to mesh with his previous behavior.
Ex-smoker syndrome. Angry ex-smoker syndrome.
“i’m not a jerk slacker anymore, so you can’t sit around.”
…. wait, what?
Happy 6th Anniversary to me.
Never Good Enough
That’s me. I should change my name: Ms. Never Good Enough.
You’ll note that the possible variations include Ms. Never Enough and Ms. Enough,
but never ever Ms. Good Enough.
Why am I never good enough? I don’t know, maybe you can tell me.
- Other people’s unrealistic expectations? maybe.
- My effort never reaching my ability to fulfill reasonable expectations? maybe.
- An actual lack of ability to fulfill reasonable expectations? maybe.
Daily I am judged and found wanting. Daily I am condemned for my lack of consistency. If I put forth my very best effort one day, then every other day I should be able to also put forth that same consistent effort.
Dear reader, what does this teach us? Never excel. Be mediocre in all things. You will be judged daily, and therefore must never stand out as exceptional, for that will become the new judgement criteria. Never allow yourself to care.
Also, never stand up for yourself, never fight back, never justify, never complain. Because, if you feel that way about being judged and found wanting, you might as well leave and go somewhere else. Leave everything behind and start new somewhere else. Find someone new to judge you and find you wanting. There will always be someone more than happy to take on that role.
You will have to leave part of your heart behind, but I’m pretty sure they are growing new organs nowadays in labs. Just sign up for your nifty new heart now, get on that waiting list, there is probably going to be a run on them. God knows we break each others hearts enough to warrant a vast and urgent need for them.
Just remember for next time… Don’t try. Don’t give your heart away. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t care.
Yours truly, Ms. Never G. Enough
I’m Sensing A Theme Here
I get a weekly devotional from Max Lucado’s email ministry UpWords. This is an excerpt from his book “No Wonder They Call Him the Savior”. I know lots of nice cynical Christians don’t like Mr. Max Lucado much, but I do. I find his words to be comforting, funny, easy to understand for the Christian newbie, and they flow together nicely.
This week’s devotional is on….. Guess!……. No, really, Guess!
Anger! Hidden Anger! Forgiveness!
Boy, when God wants to make sure you get a message He really knows how to cover all the bases. Anyway, i thought it was worth reading, and it is certainly on the same topic I’ve posted about and been thinking alot about recently.
Here is part of it:
They Don’t Know What They Are Doing by Max Lucado
Anger. It’s a peculiar yet predictable emotion. It begins as a drop of water. An irritant. A frustration. Nothing big, just an aggravation. Someone gets your parking place. Someone pulls in front of you on the freeway. A waitress is slow and you are in a hurry. The toast burns. Drops of water. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Yet, get enough of these seemingly innocent drops of anger and before long you’ve got a bucket full of rage. Walking revenge. Blind bitterness. Unharnessed hatred. We trust no one and bare our teeth at anyone who gets near. We become walking time bombs that, given just the right tension and fear, could explode.
Yet, what do we do? We can’t deny that our anger exists. How do we harness it? A good option is found in Luke 23:34. Here, Jesus speaks about the mob that killed him. “‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’”
(Several paragraphs on how we are all angry and confused omitted here for brevity)
Now, I know that doesn’t justify anything. That doesn’t justify hit-and-run drivers or kiddie-porn peddlers or heroin dealers. But it does help explain why they do the miserable things they do.
My point is this: Uncontrolled anger won’t better our world, but sympathetic understanding will. Once we see the world and ourselves for what we are, we can help. Once we understand ourselves we begin to operate not from a posture of anger but of compassion and concern. We look at the world not with bitter frowns but with extended hands. We realize that the lights are out and a lot of people are stumbling in the darkness. So we light candles.
Getting Past My Past
To all of my former “Perpetrators of Injustice“:
You don’t owe me anything anymore.
Your debt to me, known or unbeknownst to you, is forgiven. It’s removed from the books.
I have to move on you see, and all this baggage is weighing me down. These memory stubs have got to go. I let the sun go down on my anger a long time ago, and the darkness buried it deep inside me, until it hardened into these lumps of coal. Now it’s time to dig them up and toss them out. I know, I’ve chipped away at them before, but that’s just not enough for me anymore. I yearn to be free, free of these heavy encumbrances that hold me to the ground, hunched over with the world on my shoulders.
I have come to the conclusion that all injustices happen for one of two reasons:
1) YOU DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER, BECAUSE NO ONE EVER TAUGHT YOU; or,
2) YOU SUFFER FROM SPIRITUAL / MENTAL SICKNESS AND ARE UNABLE TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
Your spirit is out of balance! It’s okay, mine is too. I understand. You’re not apologetic? Well, I guess I just don’t care, see reason #2 above.
And, both of these reasons boil down to one fairly familiar statement:
“FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!“
Unexpected Forgiveness
I’ve decided that I can forgive someone I’ve been holding a grudge against for 6 years. In that time I’ve done bible studies on forgiveness, taken classes discussing forgiveness, worked on forgiving everyone for everything I was resentful for EXCEPT this one person; I couldn’t forgive her for what she did to me and the way that she did it.
But, thanks to Dr. Brunner, who encouraged my class to do Step Four of the 12-Step programs, I have figured out how to forgive her. I read through Chapter Five of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which covers Step Four (confusing yes?) and this sentence stood out to me in Bold Neon colors: “We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too.”
Well…. so, that means I can view her as a person who is spiritually sick? Someone whose actions toward me are no reflection on me. Her choices about how to treat me could be based on a spiritual sickness. Can I see her as spiritually sick? Yes, I can. I think she is fatally ill if that’s how we’re going to describe her. But, that’s her problem, not mine. I don’t have to forget what happened, I don’t have to reconcile or accept her behavior, but I can let it go. The power that she’s been holding over me for 6 years can float away into the ether. It’s not there anymore. I feel sorry for her instead. What a sad, sick woman, who needs to be in control to feel okay, who fires people for made up reasons, who shames them by escorting them out of the building. I still dislike her, but I don’t have to be bitter and resentful anymore, and that releases a spiritual sickness of my own.
Convergence
I expect great things, and I expect nothing.
Poised at the edge, on the cusp, sharp like broken glass,
arms spread wide to the heavens,
I wait for the most important communication of my life.
I wait for something tangible, a keepsake,
I wait for a passing breeze with God’s whisper,
I wait, perhaps, in vain.
Like a lotus, I persevere to see the sun.
To grieve before someone dies…
To grieve before someone dies is unseemly I guess. They say you go through all these stages with grief, but I find myself in several stages at once. I cry alot, mostly by myself in the car, or in bed at night before I fall to sleep. I’m angry a lot, just thinking about the ongoing deterioration of my mother’s mind and the difficulty of dealing with her because she forgets or denies she even has a problem. Also she’s begun to say the things she never used to say, the self-edited mental dialog that goes on inside her is seeping through. My mom, the kindest person I know, who taught me to be kind (and it’s generally agreed by others that my kindness is my most outstanding or notable attribute), who always lived by what she preached: “If you don’t have anything nice to say to or about someone, don’t say anything at all”, is now coming out with some real eyebrow-raisers. (I myself live by the same rule, but tend to think along the lines of “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, come sit by me.”) In any case, it’s further demonstration of her dementia, and freshly reminds me that the mother I know and love has died. There is now this similar, but oh-so-different in significant ways, person to contend with, and I’m supposed to love her the same as my mother, but she’s not my mother. I feel like I’m supposed to “suck it up” and carry on as though there is no change. But I’m so sad, and so fearful of what is to come. (“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” ~ C. S. Lewis) I feel fragile, as though I’d like to be wrapped in bubble wrap and insulated from the world.
What if one day you woke up and everyone in your life was different? They looked the same, they sounded the same, they had the same experiences with you, but they weren’t familiar to you somehow. Your spouse, your best friend, your child, your co-workers, your neighbor. You know something isn’t right, but don’t know why. Have they been abducted and replaced by aliens? Are you in the twilight zone? The X-files? This is your life, but somehow it’s been turned upside down. Nobody else sees a problem. Everyone denies what you can clearly sense. What then?
What then? What now?
We watched a lot of movies / tv series this holiday season. I’ve already forgotten half of them. However, in an effort to remember these kinds of things, here is a partial list:
- The Tin Man – Sci-Fi channel re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz. I loved it. It wasn’t GOOD, but I loved it anyway. Just my kind of thing!
- Alien vs. Predator – I have no idea how I ended up watching this movie, but I did watch while I played my game on my laptop and actually enjoyed it for the camp factor. Predator totally kicks Alien’s ass by the way.
- The Road to Wellville – a strange, disturbing, smart satire that I didn’t really like in pretty much any way, but I suppose I’m kind of glad to have seen it.
- The Baron of Munchausen – a strange, strange movie that I thoroughly disliked the first time I saw it because I was so confused, and this time halfway enjoyed. Go figure.
- The Kingdom of Heaven – great stuff there. Liam Neeson, Orlando Bloom, medieval sword fighting, what’s not to like? Well, the enormous amount of blood gushing about wasn’t very likable, but otherwise, quite enjoyable.
- Jericho – tv series that is apparently returning to the airwaves in February. Kind of good, kind of bad. Scenario is great. Nuclear bombs have wiped out several major cities in the US, including of course the government seats. Let’s see what happens in one small town (Jericho) far enough outside the blast zone to have survived. And, who is responsible for the nuclear strikes? China? Russia? Iran? Korea? USA? Time will tell.
- X-Files – first season. Gotta love the x-files don’t ya know? I mean, if you are a fan of the paranormal anyhow.
- Fracture – not impressed
- Firefly – TV Series. Haven’t yet seen the movie. LOVE IT! I would describe it as: Outlaws in Space. Fun, fun, fun. Great dialogue!
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Silently Surviving 