I'm Stuck

"Dad, I'm stuck!", drew my attention to the left on the playground as I was pushing my squealing daughter on the swings.  My mother's instinct to attend to the needs of a child and tendency to be nosey, even if it is just visual, drew me in the direction of what I heard.  My eyes found the little boy that I heard perched on top of a large jungle gym made out of a maze of ropes and pulleys anchored to large wooden poles.  He looked like a cricket with a baseball cap sitting on top of the world's largest ball of twine. 

His father called out to him from across the playground as he started walking toward him.  "Just start climbing down, son."  Even as the words came out, the little boy started shifting back and forth on his perch, holding on for dear life.

"I can't.  I'm stuck."  My heart rate picked up as I watched him.  The more his father yelled out to him to just come down the more he seemed to dig his feet into the ropes he was standing on.  It was as if he was frozen in place.  His father stood at the bottom, looking up and him and shading his eyes from the son as he tried to coach his son down from the top of the jungle gym.

"Just put your foot over there and grasp on to that rope and climb down!"

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. You got up there and now you can get yourself back down."

"I can't."

"Son, why can't you?"

"I'm scared."

Isn't that it with most things we are paralyzed by?  I don't know how many times we remain stuck in the same place, same relationships, same job, same situations.   When the pace of my heart quickened as I listened to the little boy tell his dad that he was stuck, I wasn't worried about his safety.  My body was remembering what that kind of anxiety feels like and responded.  It was familiar. 

I remember one relationship I was in that made me miserable.  I lamented to my friends often about how unhappy this person made me.  I didn't see any hope for a happy future with him.  Despite the tension of misery followed by gifts and promises to be better from now on, nothing changed.  I knew it was not going to but I continued to play the game.  On more than five occasions, friends told me to end the relationship.  Just leave him.  I couldn't.  I had reasons, I had excuses.  We shared a house, we shared bills.  What about our friends?  What about the dog?  No, our lives were too intertwined.  It wasn't that though.  None of the reasons were valid.  I wasn't imprisoned by this situation.  I was afraid to change it. 

Fear of change seems to be something most people suffer from.  I am no different.  Change equals new and feels scary.  I know.  I am learning too but I feel as though my life has changed so much in the last two years that maybe I am just getting desensitized to it.  Maybe it just takes climbing the jungle gyms of life enough times to know that we can do it without falling.  Hands and feet could slip.  Maybe our baseball cap falls to the ground as we make your way up or down but we can pick it up later.   We see other people climbing on the same jungle gym too, they seem okay but when it comes to us we can envision cataclysmic disaster in an instant.  In an effort to avoid calamity we don't move.  I know I've made mistakes, big ones too but I'm still here to tell you about them.  Funny thing is, the more we fall down, the better we get at climbing. 

The Pretty Girl

"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain...." Proverbs 31:30

All I ever wanted, every summer of my high school years, was to return to school in the fall thin, pretty and cooler than I was last year.  I would watch MTV videos and flip through Seventeen magazine or the occasional Cosmo and pour over the fashions that were overwhelmingly adorable on girls built like surfboards.  I was a little more, as the current term is, curvy.  I would be less politically correct to say that I was pudgy.  As if that weren't enough, I had a wonderful case of acne that sent me crying into my room on many occasions.  It probably would have served me better to be a wallflower in those times but my exuberant personality didn't allow for that.  Instead, I became an eccentric metal chick.  I was proud of my leopard skin jeans, cowboy boots with spurs and lion mane of jet black hair.  If I couldn't be the homecoming queen, I'd still stand out.  I was voted Class Individualist in my senior year.  A title I was proud of. 

My rotund physique disappeared some time later along with the acne but the self-esteem didn't improve.  I always wanted attention from boys but when I did finally win some I felt awkward and under confident.  I wished I could be more like some of my friends. They seemed to have a new guy every other week.  Me?  I was the funny girl that all the boys seemed to think of more like a kid sister. Don't get me wrong, it had it's perks.  For one, I was heavy into the music scene in Boston.  I was on guest lists without any strings attached and I wasn't referred to as a groupie.  I was one of the cool girls but not one of the pretty ones you ask out on dates.  I tried to learn to accept my lot. 

I have been looking back at all of this over the last few days because now I am what I always wanted to be and to be honest, it isn't what I thought it would be. I am an attractive woman, especially for a person near 40.  My looks have come into their own and I dress for my age with a unique flair. I am comfortable with me.  What rubs me the wrong way is that seems to be what people notice about me first.  I am also a very intelligent person.  My mind overflows with ideas and creativity, literally every day.  It pours out of me.  If there is any one word that people use to describe their experience with me, it's inspiring.  I am humbled by that title.  I don't do anything to achieve it other than share the life the God has given me with other people.  I am more than just a pretty face.  When I was younger, that is all that I wanted to be.  It's funny how I've been given what I always longed for in my naive years and God has shown me that it isn't the be all, end all of everything.  Certainly my beauty is a gift but I love the other gifts so much more.  The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence and to be sure, it still has weeds and needs to be mowed. 

Alone Isn't Lonely

I have the unique experience of seeing both sides of a fence.  When I was in my late twenties, I longed for a mate.  I tired of dating and the start-and-stop interruptions in my life.  I opined for a steady constant.  Someone who would be there through thick and thin and love me like no one else, no matter what.  I wanted someone to make me feel good about myself.  I would hear of engagements and sigh in my season of life.  Would it ever happen for me?  I wanted to see what it would be like when "the two shall become one".

It did.  I met a smiley, talkative and handsome man.  He paid more attention to me than anyone I could remember.  He told me on our first date that I was beautiful and then he added, "I bet you hear that all the time.", I laughed and blushed.  Six months later, we were engaged.  I was so happy. I wanted everyone to have what I had.  I would pray for my friends by name, asking God to give them the same wonderful gift He gave me.  We both looked forward to our wedding and all the trappings that a match made in heaven should have.  Could life actually be any better than this?

I suppose it could, but the fairy tale failed for yet another couple.  We didn't complete each other even though we had each other at 'Hello', literally.  The fantasy of him filling in all the holes of my insecurities was a delusion of grandeur.  He didn't cure them, he exposed them unwittingly.  Every time he failed to meet my unspoken expectations I raled at his insensitivity.  He was selfish.  Me?  Well, he just didn't appreciate me enough. 

I was sold a bill of goods like so many women before me.  Hollywood loves to paint an image of our other half being able to anticipate and meet every need almost with telepathic intuition.  Flowers show up at the end of disasterous day at work, complete with take-out and a candlelit dining room.  How ever did he know? 

He doesn't.  No person should ever be subject to being your sole source of happiness.  The expectation is, for all intent and purpose, emotional abuse. Granted, I am looking in the rearview mirror but that also gives me incredible wisdom to warn those before it's too late to avoid the potholes.  It's no one's job to make me happy.  I either am or I am not.  You'd be amazed at how easy a happy life can be.  It's as easy as making your mind up to be.  It is as simple as staying focused on being grateful.  It is as merciful as being as quick to forgive as you'd like to be forgiven.  It's that elementary and it's doable.  It takes deliberate practice.  Just like any start of a new routine.  You need to give it time and consistency before it becomes habit but it is worth sticking with for your sanity and the health of your relationship.  If you have issues in your life that stand in the way of peace, get help.  Don't look to your poor spouse to be the salve for your wounds.  That's God's job. Never elevate anyone in your life to the status of God. You'll always be sorely disappointed. 

I have had a great opportunity, with my husband's passing, to look over my own shortcomings with soul searching and prayer.  I wanted to make no provision to fall into the same patterns I've had before in letting someone else determine my state of mind, good, bad or otherwise.  They were, at times, hard to look at. I had to come to terms with some emotional patterns in my life that caused pain in my relationships with others.  One of them was anger.  I became frustrated with people easily and anger always followed.  I would feel justified in my emotional response because they should know better.  In all of this, I seldom was able to effectively or proactively communicate what my needs were in the first place.  I would sour when they weren't met. This was true especially of my relationship with my husband. 

Great peace came when I realized that in my making amends with behaviors past and asking God to bind my broken ways that I felt a tranquility and ease with people that I hadn't before.  As I sought recovery from my old ways, healing came.  The patterns slowed and then stopped.  I was able to state what I needed and see what the response would be instead of silently and anxiously awaiting outcomes.  I was less anxious with others so I didn't stress as readily.  More patience came.  The more I could articulate, the more I could relax. 

Something else happened.  I didn't feel lonely.  I wasn't in any hurry to find another.  I felt whole on my own so I didn't have the need to go chasing after my next relationship.  There was no need to meet.  Sure, I do feel a little solitary sometimes but I am not feeling like I am missing out on any great thing like I did before.  I know it will happen again and when it does I suspect that I'll be in a much better place to say, "Hello".  The holes are filling in. 

As Sick As Your Secrets

Secrets, secrets, dirty little secrets.  Some are big, some are small, all are toxic.  The secrets I am talking about are the ones about you, not the ones you heard about someone else. That's a monologue for another time.  This is the stuff about you that you would rather no one know.  I've had those.  It started off as self-preservation under the disguise of "it's nobody's business".  It wasn't anyone's business. It was mine.  I had a certain image to maintain.  Doesn't everyone? 

My thoughts then moved to "no one would be better off knowing".  Who would it help anyway if people knew this about me?  So they'd know something I wasn't proud of, or they'd know something about my past, would it serve the relationship?   I was sure it wouldn't.

The final ring of Hell was in "no one can know this about me".  They'd lose respect for me. Maybe they wouldn't be my friend any more.  Maybe this was a professional secret and I'd lose my job or some clients.  People would form opinions about me that weren't true.  I couldn't stand to think about that.  I would daydream about having to constantly defend who I really was if people would know this "thing" about me.  No, everyone would be better if they just didn't know, including me.

Keeping secrets taught me to hide in shame about who I was and what was true about me.  Keeping secrets means I need to lie or to omit things about me so others can maintain the impression I want to give them. One that usually isn't true.

When I want to keep secrets I have downgraded my personal value in favor of another person.  I tell myself that I am not good enough the way that I am. I tell myself that the person in my life that I am hiding things from wouldn't find me worthwhile or better still, they are not trustworthy.  Is that really what I want to show my friends and family, that they can't be trusted with loving me? 

In the times where I have shared deep secrets, aside from one, I was given nothing but acceptance in return and lamenting that I hadn't allowed them to share in my burden.  Friends want to feel needed and useful. I know I do. By not sharing what was going on with me or the things I have experienced, I demonstrated that our friendship couldn't be useful in times of trouble. That hurts to hear. 

When we are in hiding from the truth, it corrodes like battery acid on our well-being.  Secrets never heal, only the truth does.  To come out in the open is to unlock a cell in solitary confinement.  Most of all, we get to be free of  the shackles of shame. 

Accidentally On Purpose

I sat across a tiny table in a bustling Starbucks with a friend of mine one evening as we critiqued each other’s writing submissions for our Writer’s Group. As there were but two of us, the comments on the samples were brief and the conversations about all things personal and heavy filled our time.

The genesis of my introduction to Sheila would seem to be as ordinary as any other to the untrained mind. Wanting to be part of a group of people who called themselves writers so I could feel more of the part was exciting to me. I perused MeetUp.com with high hopes. I wanted a group that would feel close and friendly, like getting together with study partners in college from your favorite class. Living in the suburbs of Boston, I tried to steer away from the stuffiness of the Ivy Leaguers of Cambridge. I thought I’d found my ideal group and eagerly punched my information into the screen marked ‘Tell Us About Yourself”. I did. I told them I was a Christian writer working on my first book. No response. Well, they are busy I supposed. Maybe they didn’t get my email. I told them about myself again. Once more, I heard the hollow silence of no reply. I had told them the one thing they didn’t want to hear. I was a Christian and I was working on my first book.

After I shook loose the shackles of ‘Not Good Enough’ I searched again for another group, coming to Greater Boston Writers Group. I was a little hesitant on my first meeting to tell them about myself. I feared rejection. Too late to back out now, I told another set of blank faces that I was a Christian writing her first book and I had no idea in the world what I was doing from the perspective of knowing anything about the Publishing world. They decided I would be okay. I could stay.

After review of my second chapter one night, Sheila took offense to my references to God. She thought maybe my convictions would offend the masses. I told her it would stay. I stood my ground, not looking up from my copy of the chapter and everyone else got the hint and no one ever brought up the God thing again.

The months went on, sometimes my chapters would make the time constraints for review and sometimes they wouldn’t, but Sheila started to chat me up one night about God and why I could be so honest in my writing about myself because in some cases in my book, I am the villain and sometimes the hero. She wondered why I would choose to bleed on the pages so readily. We had a nice long conversation in the pouring rain outside our coffee shop meeting place, an offbeat hipster little joint outside Harvard Square. She then told me that life was an accident. I didn’t rebut. I decided to see where that would go.

The group has all but fallen apart, the leader took some time off from the meetings and everyone else that went seems to be on his vacation schedule, save Sheila and me. The first time we arrived to find ourselves the only attendees, we relaxed and she got into her critique of my chapter submission. We had an epic conversation about God and who He was in her life, what she thought He was and what she was learning from reading about my experiences with Him. I mostly just listened and interjected when I had a real-life experience I could share.

The last time we met, it was just my friend and I. We decided to meet closer to home since we live in adjacent towns. It was an easy commute for us and we had lots of time. I think we talked about the writing for 15 minutes, God got about an hour and a half. Instead of life being an accident we marveled at how beautifully God weaves the seemingly insignificant details of our lives into a beautiful tapestry of wonderful blessings.

Since our first meeting, Sheila has worked through some misgivings about God. I got to share my faith and do what I want to do for the rest of my life, to tell everyone about my God experience. We have both gained a very meaningful and intimate friendship. I’d like to thank the first writing group for not taking a chance on a Christian working on her first of six books.