Finding the Beauty

Wow! I read some of my blogs this morning and they are particularly angry and negative. Granted I write better with passion and rage. And often writing is my therapy, but good grief, that was too much. Maybe it is time to turn things around. See I am at this great new phase in my life where I am starting to care less about appearances, and care more about who I am. Who I want to be, and who I need to be. And that person is NOT negative and down. I want to be that person who finds the beauty in life and that is the direction I am heading. I got up early this morning (well late actually at 7 AM) and went on a 3 mile jog. It was overcast and drizzling, but beautiful nonetheless. Most days I would have only seen the gloom and thought it better to lie in bed a little longer. I decided instead this morning that I need to start placing my focus and my energies on the positive aspects of my life. No matter how small, the positive always exists, even when intertwined with the most negative of situations. So as I walked in the misty rain this morning I sought out beauty in my surroundings, and beauty in my life. And I was not disappointed. I am very fortunate to live in such a beautiful area. Though you will often hear me say Danville is a cesspool, I am lucky enough to live out in the county where I can walk down my road and see all the beauty of nature. Not only that, I am healthy enough to get up and actually feel like pushing my body to go that extra mile. There was a time a few years back when walking to the couch was something I didn't feel like doing. How ungrateful of me to complain about so many extenuating circumstances of life, when I have my health and the ability to enjoy all of the beautiful surroundings I have been blessed with. I take these small things for granted and it is a shame. Today I will let my focus remain on the beauty of nature. I feel closer to God when I am alone in the woods or by the ocean. I feel at peace with myself, and who I truly am, when I have the clarity of mind to lay aside the stresses of everyday life and take a moment to dwell on something lasting and real. I think we all get so caught up in the drama of survival that we forget how to live. Life should be more than schedules and obligations, work and bills, finances and stresses. Life should take those things that we have to do, and counter weigh them with the things we want to do! Talking with a close friend, spending a lazy evening with our spouse, playing with our children, feeling our grandkids hug our necks and say they love us. And take time for you. Time to take a walk and revisit the beauty of nature. A quiet morning on the deck with a cup of coffee and a good book. So today, take time for you. Take time for the ones you love, and take time to appreciate al of the things that truly matter!

Finding me.

So, yesterday I had a very uncomfortable conversation that left me questioning a number of things. I think right now, with all that is happening in this crazy world, there are many uncomfortable conversations taking place. Often when things around us look all wrong, the first place we have to look is inward to define who we are, and what we truly believe. Defining these things are often hard for me. I have spent the largest portion of my life trying to live in all black or white. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Grey, neutral, and ok have not been part of the equation. At least not in my mind. When I spent years as a Christian I had to attempt to be one of those super Christians who appeared to have it all together. Looking back I see I was full of judgment and pride. You know the type of people I am talking about. I hid it better than some, but inwardly I had these very feelings. When I was bad, I was all bad. I might as well have tattooed my forehead with "I am going to find a faster route to hell and I'm proud of it". I couldn't fall from my pedestal of grace without declaring God was a villain and I was going to take a stand. I always had to be on one side or another. I had to be all in. And I guess we can compare this to the Biblical term of being hot or cold. Well, that is one thing in the Bible I have gotten right. But I believe even in this I have taken it to an extreme. I have come to learn that I can sin and God does not have to be outside of my life. And in no way am I justifying intentional sin, I am just saying, it isn't one or the other. I have learned there is absolutely no such thing as a person who has it all right, or all wrong. We don't live in a black and white world. I believe even the most heinous individual has good inside of them. We are all equal and have the same capacity for good or evil. Now the last thing I want to do is make this a religious post, but this type of thinking has been a large part of my life, so it is important to show the background for my line of thinking. I like my life organized into simple answers, clearly defined boundaries, and a sense of right and wrong. Conservatives want to harp on liberals and try to put them down, but I learned recently that a conservatives point of view is really no different. Overall, especially in business and politics it appears the end justifies the means. I had someone say yesterday (I had a number of interesting conversations) that people buy what they want in politics. I wonder at the end of the day if the deeper pockets always win. People buy what they want when it comes to political issues. Conservatives as well a liberals. People think the outcome out ways the path. This theory gave me pause to think deeply yesterday, and after having to finally shut my mind down with wine, I slept on it, and determined my view. Or at least I refined it a little more. I do believe we need to put our money where our heart is (not where our mouth is because those are often two totally different places). I don't think there is a problem with supporting a cause, but I believe when the outcome is decided through personal gain it is wrong. I hate politics. And I don't want to accept it as ok. I hate politics in the church, politics in the workplace, and politics in friendships. I don't want my relationships, my status at a job, or my place in a religious institution to be based on how well I play the game, and what I can do for you. IT ISN'T REAL! This is a viewpoint I do not want to change. But this is how our world functions. I see it at my job. I unfortunately see it at my husbands, and I fear it is a part of everyday life for most people. It is prevalent in the church. People match up with friends who can get them somewhere or provide something for them. I don't want this to be me. So what does that mean? That I quit my job, denounce religion, and become a hermit? No, it means I function in a screwed up society by living what I believe. I need to focus harder on that. Ethics and equal standards no longer exist. People truly believe it is o.k. to justify the means if the end is a positive product. Is it ok for me be believe cooking the books in a company is ok, if in the end they can acquire a bigger gain? Is it ok to believe our laws are just and fair if they have been established by payoffs? Is it ok to believe it doesn't really matter how management presents itself or follows basic ethical guidelines as long as at the end of the day their numbers are good and their area functions in spite of them. Is it just being neutral and on middle ground to feel this way? I thought about this deeply as well, and the answer for me is NO. Luckily though these kind of issues fall outside of my scope of concern. My issue isn't right or wrong on this on my part, my issue is keeping my eyes on my actions and responsibilities. I need to make sure my practices are ethical, and what others do is not my business. This is my conclusion. I feel for those who are walking through the negative effects, but let's be honest here, been there, done that, got the T shirt. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it life? Yes. Do we have a choice in the matter? Yes. Keep moving forward or find a new path. My fear is a new path may lead to the same end. So maybe my path should be my only real concern. Keeping it swept and clear of this type of debris. You know another issue I am tackling on a personal level is that I am a rebel. I have yet to fully define who I am and what I believe and I always feel I need to define what box I fit in. My husband couldn't have spoken a more liberating truth to me, than when he said last night that boxes don't really exist. I use my rebellious spirit to rage against things I perceive as wrong, and build my own boxes while crying out against them. That was so deep I had to shut my brain down to let it sink it. I think I have to care about every single thing and I carry a lot of unnecessary weight. I need to learn to lay it down. I need to care about what I do, what I have the power to change, and forget about the rest. This is where I want to be. This is my new goal. So, what have I learned about myself? I need to lay down stuff that I don't own. I need to fix the things I do own! I need to quit trying to force myself into the church box, the work box, the what people expect of me box and learn to live out who I am. On an even more personal note, I also need to learn to identify who I am outside of my relationships and titles. I have always defined myself by my husband, my children, my job, my beliefs. But under all of this wrapping I need to know who I am. I am just getting to the stage of my life where I want to dig down deep and discover these things. It is scary and messy, and frustrating, but at times very rewarding. Who I am, and who I want to be are two separate people. But what I want is this. To be real. To be truthful. To work hard and love harder. To NOT be fake. If it isn't real, it doesn't count. Those things alone are enough............. for now.

About brokenness: A letter to my children.

Writing is my therapy, and right now that is something that is much needed in my life. Or at least at this moment. I prefer to try to live day to day, moment to moment without dwelling on my feelings or circumstances that have just passed by. I actually had to wait a day to write this too keep it from being too dark and depressing. Brokenness is something I believe we all deal with at some time in our life, and in all honesty, probably over and over again to different degrees. Brokenness is something that always takes me back before it propels me forward. I see that same problem in my friends and family who have walked through hurtful and emotionally trying situations. Then every time a new pain presents itself we go back to where we feel our pain began. The important thing, is to not allow those thoughts and memories to justify bad choices or to deepen the pain of our current experience. So seeing that there are others around me who are hurting and falling into this trap, let me just say I know a thing or two about where you are, and what you may be experiencing. I am going to write a few things here that may be offensive to some, so please know that is not at all my intent. Also, let me state that I am truly aware that what my perspective of my past situations were, and what your perspective was may not line up at all (and yet they may both be absolute truth). We see the world and the effects of our actions through our eyes alone. We see our motives, our feelings, our hope for the effects, but those around us view those same things not through our minds, but theirs. One thing did for good, may seem entirely wrong to someone else. So let me go back here, to when I was young. My life started out GREAT. I had a nice little family that I know loved me. My grandparents lived right downstairs and I could see them all the time. There were problems, but as a child I was pretty much unaware. My Nanny was an alcoholic (and I even remember pouring her "totties"), but I didn't know the effects of that in my own mother's life. All I knew was those drinks I made her tasted awful, and that she loved me. Let me add here for my dear Nanny's sake that she totally laid down the drink when she was a little older. Yet the effects lingered on in the lives of her children, and eventually her grandchildren and so forth. I guess this is part of my belief of how sin is generational. I think not only do we often have the same genetic makeup that allows us to be more susceptible to one thing or another, but I also believe the negative effects of having lived with these issues are carried through us, into the lives of those around us. So going from this happy portion of my childhood, things deteriorated quickly. My parents fought so damn much my sister and I actually thought we wanted them to split up. The effects of all the fighting and tears were a heavy emotional pain a child really cannot understand or describe. I still can't. But so many people suffered the same, and so many of you suffered worse. I will not go into great detail here, other than to say my dad eventually left (which honestly left us more broken), and things did not get better, but worse. My parents did what they had to do, each to survive the pain in their lives. And though I used to carry both the blame and the consequences on my own back, I now know it was neither my fault, or did they want to hurt me. But, being young, I did not understand this and I used the circumstances of my childhood to justify my choices as a teenager and early adult. And though the feelings of utter inadequacy and being of no value prompted my choices, I still did have a choice. A choice that I was emotionally and mentally unable to make at that time. I could not see beyond my pain and beyond my perceived lack of value to anyone in my life. My next choice was a marriage I still have nightmares about. But let me not lie here, I still have nightmares about my childhood as well. I carried my lack of value into the next section of my life and had it amplified by a husband who called me a worthless bitch and a cum sucking whore more often than he called me by own name. And once again I allowed those things to define who I was, and I allowed the pain and the brokenness in my own life to be a part of the lives of my children. Looking back on those early days (before I completely lost my mind), my children were my entire world. I wonder if they know how deeply they were loved. I wonder if they know they were the only light I saw. I wonder if they realize how hard I tried to make their lives as happy as I could and how I would have given anything to make their lives better. I wish I had been stronger, and I wish I had made changes early on that would have offered them a different life. I know that some of my children experienced some horrific things (things that I am just finding our about now that they are adults). And I know I played a role in those things through the choices I made. And this knowledge makes me understand that the things I endured as a child were no more intentional than the things my children endured. And I can guarantee you that the things my mother and father had to face were not intentional either. And while we are on this subject we may as well add that my children's biological father had a childhood that probably made most of ours look like a fairy tale. I know I was shell shocked when I found out how he lived and what he had been through. So there is that side of my children's story as well. Moving on, it took my entire life collapsing and exploding before I was able to set my mind free and move up. I literally had to loose everything that meant anything to me (and that one thing was my children), to make a change that would take our lives on a different course. If things hadn't played out in the horrific manner that they did at that time I think at this point in my life I would be one of the washed up shells of a person you would picture walking down a lonely street or hanging out at a seedy bar. I don't just think that is who I would be, I know it is. But thank God it is not. You see, I had escape hatches strategically placed throughout my life. I had people who loved me, and I was so wrapped up in my own self I could see none of these things. It took getting stripped of everything for me to fight. I don't want any of the generations following me to allow this to happen to them. You know we are all survivors! Look at where we are, and where we could be. Look at all the positive things that we have in our lives, and the love that we still have for one another. It is time to let go of the pain! Every time it crops back up in my life I try to focus on how far I have come and what the positive effects of the struggle are now. Sometimes I get tired of hearing how strong I am, because I am NOT. That is just how you perceive me because that is the image I chose to wear. Right now, that garment is thin and way too often my pain is shining through. There are days I still cling to the thought that my parents don't love and I am a failure to my children, and there are days I embrace the fact that I am loved by my parents and my family, and that I am forgiven of my past failures. I want to live in the later. To my children. I know you hurt. I know every hard circumstance in life that comes along and causes you pain takes you back to years and years of things that weren't fair. But unfortunately that is life for most everyone. Please don't let these things define you. Please make your choices based on your future and not on your past! Please do not let these things influence your lives to the point that your children pay the price like we all have for the past 3 generations. And know, that I love you with all of my heart, and no matter what I will always be here for you. No matter what you do, or where you go, or how far away you may feel, I love you as much as the day I first held you in my arms. Nothing will change that! EVER.