February 19, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

Thoughts at large:


“Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” For some reason this quote keeps playing through my mind. I have a few things floating through my brain of late. Most of them deal with money.

When I was a little girl my Dad would often have me deal with bill collectors. He knew the time they generally called and if I was at home, he’d make me answer the phone. He told me that if I told them that he was there, he’d beat me. He sat there blowing smoke in my face and had a threatening look on his face. The bill collector seemed to know that Dad was near and started threatening me.

It was awful. This left a lasting impression on me and both husbands soon learned that I never wanted bill collectors calling me. I became anal about money, I wonder why? All these years later….I’m not even angry or hurt anymore. At this point in my life, I’m even grateful that Dad did that.

I’m grateful because, I started putting money aside out of my check. When I started at the bank, I started putting a little aside in a 401K account. The bank went through a merger early on in my career and at that point I decided that if something like that happened again, I’d like to not worry and retire.

When I married Junior we sought the advice of a financial advisor. We put the money he suggested into our 401k. The last few months I worked I upped my deductions. We were faithful in setting this money aside. Along with Junior’s pension and what we put away, we are doing well. We are not rich, we are good. This money needs to last us, the rest of our lives.

I have people in my life that seem to think I am rich. They seem to think that I need to give, loan whatever to them as they want. I am also learning that giving money does not always help people out. Some people are your friend as long as you give to them. If you don’t give to them all of a sudden, they step out of your life.

Again, I find that some people can’t seem to handle money, won’t save etc. They expect me to bail them out with each passing of the wind proposition that comes along. They are angry if I won’t loan them money.

To me a real emergency is like we had as kids, Dad had polio, Grandma and Grandpa walked out on us – that is a real emergency. To buy a car, fix on your house, and take a vacation or such is not an emergency. The car for instance, there is mass transit. I took a bus to work for many years.

Another thought playing through my mind is one I had years ago. I saw a pendulum on a clock swinging back and forth. Sometimes the pendulum swung real far one way before it settled in the middle. This picture was one I focused on a lot as I went through counseling.

As I grew in counseling I began to assert myself. I remember seeing abuse victims who got out of their abuse and were very hard people. I did not want to be that way. I wanted to be lovable, not mean and cranky.

As I began to implement what I learned, I found myself facing a variety of new situations. First I had people tell me I was selfish. These people were vested in my dysfunction and did not want me to change. They were angry when I said I did not like something or I did not want to do that or even if I said “no.” I also found myself over asserting. I had to try being assertive on before I could find the middle ground. As I grew I learned to not be so harsh.

As I go through counseling again, I am learning to be assertive again. As I went through grieving recently, I had people tell me that I told too much on Facebook. I wanted my friends to pray for a family member and I told a brief description of the illness. I like to know a little bit when I pray and so I gave information as generally as I could. I quit asking for prayers, because I did not want to offend.

As I continued on in counseling, I found myself confronting people instead of avoiding them. I had someone in my life get upset when we visited certain people. I’d had enough and made a phone call. I confronted this person in a way I had not confronted someone in a long while.

When the family member died, I put my feelings on Facebook. In brackets I said I had to do this. I was confronting people there as well. As I confronted this person about who visited us. I found myself startled at what was coming out of me. Junior was even proud of me. As I talked on the phone the one time, he was in the kitchen clapping his hands. That felt nice too. Experience teaches me that I will go a little overboard before I swing back to the middle again.
Realizing that I am hyper has been a moment as well. I find that Junior gets frustrated with me sometimes. As I grasped that I am hyper, I realized some of the things I was doing was to compensate for my need to change constantly. For instance, I often ask how long something will take. When I know that something should last for so many hours, then I begin to find things to fill my time so I won’t bother him. I am starting to figure out that some of my asking is so I won’t be bugging him constantly.

So I grow, I learn again things I learned a long time ago and I am liking “me” once more. I am who God is creating me to be and I am finding comfort in that.


May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet