Friday, October 28, 2011
Greetings My Friend,
I’ve just read the book of Hosea. This is one of those books that I tend to forget about until I read it each year. In this book I begin to feel God’s pain as His people have rejected Him yet again. I also see what a marriage relationship should be like. People often talk about the wrath of God in the Old Testament and yes there was a lot of wrath. I also see God’s tenderness and His trying to reach out to His people to guide them. I see my role as a parent not unlike God’s teaching us to be what He created us to be. This little book to me is packed with so many of life’s lessons.
God instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute. Hosea married Gomer who was indeed a prostitute. Through this relationship God revealed His discouragement in His people. After a while Gomer went back to her old ways. Each child she bore was named and I hear God’s deep sadness at their names. Gomer finally was fully enmeshed again in her life of prostitution and eventually was sold into slavery….I think she sold herself…..not sure there. Anyway God instructed Hosea to buy her out of slavery. He did and then he instructed Gomer to not have any lovers but him and for her to stay true to him. WOW! That was an act of love to someone who proved so disloyal to him. He did what God told him to but still.
So as I look at my life I see that God has always loved me, even when I was a rebellious teenager. When I went to the altar the first time I was a nervous wreck. My stomach was real upset and I was dizzy. I wound up fainting and had to be carried out. It made a great funny story and we all told it for years. As I began my faith journey I started to realize that God was talking to me on that day so many years ago. I did not know how to “hear” God at that point.
When Junior married me we went to Ohio and got married at the Justice of the Peace. He said if I fainted….he was leaving me because it was a sign to him the marriage was not a good choice. Thank goodness I didn’t faint….I had a ride home anyway. I was a little leery though when he haggled with the minister for the cost of the wedding price. She was a woman minister and he felt he shouldn’t have to pay the full price. It took me a while to catch on to his humor. When I told him to pay the lady he did. We are very content in this relationship. I feel like we are a team. I feel like no one understands me as well as Junior does. I trust him with my life.
As I said I also see my role as a parent and how I have tried to reach my kids and frankly they don’t always respond to the things I try to teach them. Every parent has those moments. For me as I became a parent I found times where I began to see the struggle my parents had with me. In time I’m sure my kids will on some level understand. I also see God reaching down to teach and we go along in our own merry way until life hurts so much we have nowhere to turn but to God. For me I can see moments in my past where I see that God was reaching down to me and I was not paying attention.
As a teenager I wanted to be Christian and I wanted to have fun. Fun meant doing things like smoking pot, drinking and becoming sexually active before marriage. The more I go on in life I find that sin is fun for a season and then the consequences tend to weigh heavily on me. Drinking comes to mind. There were a few drunks that were fun beyond belief. The next day the hangover didn’t feel real good. If I had kept on I could have become an alcoholic and ruined my body, my life, my family’s life etc. Drugs…the same could have happened.
Sex that is one of those subjects I wish I could talk to young people about. God created sex and it can be fun. It is best to look at how God created us to be in a sexual relationship. Adam and Eve were the first married couple. They were faithful to each other and each other only. They did not play the field. As the Old Testament unfolds I find that men had several wives. When Jacob married Rebecca his father in law gave Jacob Leah her older sister to him. Jacob then worked to get Rebecca as his second wife. That relationship was a constant struggle. The girls competed with each other all the time. Leah wasn’t Jacob’s favorite in fact she felt his dislike of her.
As I go along in life I find that free sex comes with a price. For me I was never sure if I was liked for who I was inside or for my looks. I played around with not eating. I got down to 95lbs. I wanted to be bulimic except I hate vomiting. I thought on it long and hard though. I thought about taking laxatives as well.
To me the sexually transmitted diseases that abound are another sign that free sex isn’t such a great plan as well. HIV/aids are scary and will totally devastate the body. Herpes and the like are rough as well. So I see that we should be careful as to who we hand our bodies over to. I also believe that a courtship stage is important. In Divorce Recovery I learned that we should not date for two years after you are divorced. Then it is important to begin dating with friends in a group setting. Next it is important to date for a year and then be engaged for a year. Junior and I did not follow all of these guidelines. We realized that we were heating up fast and when we married we made a commitment to go to marriage retreats. We also stayed in counseling for a couple of years.
As I close I’d like to ask, are you listening to God? Do you hear His voice? Prayer is important and reading the Bible as well. God will talk to you if you listen. “Be still and know that I am God,” is a huge understatement to me. Me I am fidgety, my mind goes a mile a minute….still I am learning to quiet myself and to listen and when I do…..it is awesome. I begin to hear God and my life moves from pain to wholeness….. Have you ever felt God hug you? It is awesome!
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Friday, October 21, 2011
October 22, 2011
Greetings My Friend,
For many years I went on mission trips. I got to meet people from different walks of life. Many times these people were the ones that fell through the cracks of society. They lived in quiet desperation. They didn’t have enough money to get the help they needed to make their home livable by the general population standards. Some didn’t have the skills to interact with society. Some were abused and fell through the help cracks. I truly got to see the desperation in their eyes.
For me the hardest mission trip was the year I was divorced. That year we went to help paint the shelter for women who were abused. In that place I met women who were struggling to break away from an abuser’s grip. They were beside themselves in overcoming the fear they had been living with. I guess I felt them way down deep in my being. I felt many times during that week that I should have been a woman in that community. I never went to a domestic abuse shelter. I should have, I would have gotten the strength to walk away, the support I would have needed to care for my children. My family kept sending me back saying that I was annoying and probably deserved the abuse. The problem is I was more than likely annoying because I kept trying to not aggravate the man. As the years have gone on I find that no matter what I did….I did not deserve to be beat. So if I ran around on my husband…and I didn’t he had no right to beat me. If I messed up dinner, he had no right to beat me. This has been hard for me to learn. I don’t deserve to get hit because I’m annoying.
I had a fear of walking into another relationship like the one I left. It was a huge fear. If I had to live through what I did the first time around….I didn’t want to be married again. My counselor taught me that “healthy finds healthy” so I worked extra hard at getting healthy.
When I met Junior one of the first questions I had was did he need to hit women. He said that if I aggravated him that much to hit me, he would walk out the door and never come back. He did not want to be with a woman that aggravated him that much. In his own way Junior comforted me. I knew he would not hit me even if I was annoying.
I keep playing with another phrase….”until you have walked a mile in my shoes” I feel that in my own life a whole lot. People don’t understand. When I hear comments like “I would never,” I feel frustrated. You don’t know until you are in the middle of something and don’t know how to get out….so I’d never….well you just don’t know.
I met a precious friend here in VA. This woman has made me giggle when I would have rather curled up in bed and not enter into a day. She has accepted me as I am and even found me funny and fun to be with. She has wanted to make our friendship like family. She wants to spend holidays with me and we even cook a holiday meal.
This woman is very intelligent. She is witty and funny. We share the sting of abuse. It is not a constant conversation but from time to time when life flares up around us we will help the other through painful moments. We understand on a level that other people don’t. Because she has been willing to listen more than one time, I’ve been able to process and then move on.
This woman was in a car accident many years ago. The car accident has messed her back up real bad and she has lived on assistance for most of her adult life. She had a son outside of marriage. She moved in with her mother to raise this son. When Mom died the woman inherited the house and she continues to live there. This house and a vehicle is all this woman owns in the world. Her son is now an adult and finding a job out here is difficult at best. Making ends meet and keeping the house in good repair have been difficult at best. Bouts of deep dark depression have consumed her as well. She is playing a constant game of how to make her very meager income stretch far enough. It is a constant rob Peter to pay Paul way of life for her.
As I have learned how desperate her struggle to sustain herself and her son I have felt a deep tug in my heart. I want to go buy all new things for her, help her clean up her home and yard and make life over for her. I can’t…we can’t begin to afford to bring her back to a more comfortable life. I can help here and there. As we were moving her refrigerator died. We had an old dorm sized refrigerator that we were keeping water and pop in on our porch. She wanted to buy it from us so we asked for $25. This is now her refrigerator. She wanted to pay for the refrigerator. It made her happy to buy her own.
Part of my struggle is that here in the US there are people who are living below poverty level. Their homes are more like 3rd world homes. This woman and her son are in that category. She said that things kept falling apart and life kept going downhill and this is the best she can do. We can sit in judgment or we can begin to open our hearts to these people. This woman is not a drunk or drug addict. She suffers with deep depression. The more she can’t get life in order the deeper her depression can go. People in the community make fun of her. In fact as I was befriending her, I had people tell me I should not befriend her. They could not give me a reason other than she wasn’t liked. This friend has accepted me as I am. She allows me to be me. We are funny together. We are like toddlers. We talk side by side both at the same time and neither one hears what the other is saying. She needs a friend. I want to be her friend. She has been a friend to me.
I don’t have a happy ending to her story. I am trying to find out what the church can do. I am trying to help her and be her friend. Sometimes that is the most important gift we can give to someone, friendship. God took me where I was at and loved me. In that love I find I can move out of struggles and face life. Because God loved me first I am now able to love as I am loved. So I reach out to this woman and love her.
Who has God placed in your life to love? Are they weird? Maybe there is a lesson?
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
Greetings My Friend,
For many years I went on mission trips. I got to meet people from different walks of life. Many times these people were the ones that fell through the cracks of society. They lived in quiet desperation. They didn’t have enough money to get the help they needed to make their home livable by the general population standards. Some didn’t have the skills to interact with society. Some were abused and fell through the help cracks. I truly got to see the desperation in their eyes.
For me the hardest mission trip was the year I was divorced. That year we went to help paint the shelter for women who were abused. In that place I met women who were struggling to break away from an abuser’s grip. They were beside themselves in overcoming the fear they had been living with. I guess I felt them way down deep in my being. I felt many times during that week that I should have been a woman in that community. I never went to a domestic abuse shelter. I should have, I would have gotten the strength to walk away, the support I would have needed to care for my children. My family kept sending me back saying that I was annoying and probably deserved the abuse. The problem is I was more than likely annoying because I kept trying to not aggravate the man. As the years have gone on I find that no matter what I did….I did not deserve to be beat. So if I ran around on my husband…and I didn’t he had no right to beat me. If I messed up dinner, he had no right to beat me. This has been hard for me to learn. I don’t deserve to get hit because I’m annoying.
I had a fear of walking into another relationship like the one I left. It was a huge fear. If I had to live through what I did the first time around….I didn’t want to be married again. My counselor taught me that “healthy finds healthy” so I worked extra hard at getting healthy.
When I met Junior one of the first questions I had was did he need to hit women. He said that if I aggravated him that much to hit me, he would walk out the door and never come back. He did not want to be with a woman that aggravated him that much. In his own way Junior comforted me. I knew he would not hit me even if I was annoying.
I keep playing with another phrase….”until you have walked a mile in my shoes” I feel that in my own life a whole lot. People don’t understand. When I hear comments like “I would never,” I feel frustrated. You don’t know until you are in the middle of something and don’t know how to get out….so I’d never….well you just don’t know.
I met a precious friend here in VA. This woman has made me giggle when I would have rather curled up in bed and not enter into a day. She has accepted me as I am and even found me funny and fun to be with. She has wanted to make our friendship like family. She wants to spend holidays with me and we even cook a holiday meal.
This woman is very intelligent. She is witty and funny. We share the sting of abuse. It is not a constant conversation but from time to time when life flares up around us we will help the other through painful moments. We understand on a level that other people don’t. Because she has been willing to listen more than one time, I’ve been able to process and then move on.
This woman was in a car accident many years ago. The car accident has messed her back up real bad and she has lived on assistance for most of her adult life. She had a son outside of marriage. She moved in with her mother to raise this son. When Mom died the woman inherited the house and she continues to live there. This house and a vehicle is all this woman owns in the world. Her son is now an adult and finding a job out here is difficult at best. Making ends meet and keeping the house in good repair have been difficult at best. Bouts of deep dark depression have consumed her as well. She is playing a constant game of how to make her very meager income stretch far enough. It is a constant rob Peter to pay Paul way of life for her.
As I have learned how desperate her struggle to sustain herself and her son I have felt a deep tug in my heart. I want to go buy all new things for her, help her clean up her home and yard and make life over for her. I can’t…we can’t begin to afford to bring her back to a more comfortable life. I can help here and there. As we were moving her refrigerator died. We had an old dorm sized refrigerator that we were keeping water and pop in on our porch. She wanted to buy it from us so we asked for $25. This is now her refrigerator. She wanted to pay for the refrigerator. It made her happy to buy her own.
Part of my struggle is that here in the US there are people who are living below poverty level. Their homes are more like 3rd world homes. This woman and her son are in that category. She said that things kept falling apart and life kept going downhill and this is the best she can do. We can sit in judgment or we can begin to open our hearts to these people. This woman is not a drunk or drug addict. She suffers with deep depression. The more she can’t get life in order the deeper her depression can go. People in the community make fun of her. In fact as I was befriending her, I had people tell me I should not befriend her. They could not give me a reason other than she wasn’t liked. This friend has accepted me as I am. She allows me to be me. We are funny together. We are like toddlers. We talk side by side both at the same time and neither one hears what the other is saying. She needs a friend. I want to be her friend. She has been a friend to me.
I don’t have a happy ending to her story. I am trying to find out what the church can do. I am trying to help her and be her friend. Sometimes that is the most important gift we can give to someone, friendship. God took me where I was at and loved me. In that love I find I can move out of struggles and face life. Because God loved me first I am now able to love as I am loved. So I reach out to this woman and love her.
Who has God placed in your life to love? Are they weird? Maybe there is a lesson?
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
Friday, October 14, 2011
October 15, 2011
Greetings My Friend,
“Make a plan, work the plan” keeps rolling through my thoughts. As I learn how to come back to health I use this phrase to get myself motivated and moving regarding housework. It helps me a ton. I like phrases like that to help me do life in general.
Another favorite is regarding men and women in the romance department. It is “men are microwave ovens and women are crock pots.” As I learned this phrase I began to understand the dynamics between a man and a woman in the romance area of life. Men are quick to heat up romantically and women tend to need time to build into that moment. I also like the phrase, “sex starts in the kitchen.” Boy that one was amazing when I heard it. It lines up with women and crock pots to me. A woman is so global in her thinking that she needs to feel loved and wanted before she gets into bedroom romance situations.
Then there is the book title I love, “Men are waffles and women are spaghetti.” Once I wrapped my brain around this thought I felt a light bulb go off in my head. For years I had thought that men and women were the same except they each had different equipment. We aren’t! We are about as different as day and night!
I heard a speaker one time describe that women tend to spider web. Again this was one of those eye opening moments for me. We women have a tendency to start off on one topic bounce to another that has no relation to what was said. We go off on that tangent several more times before coming back to the original thought. To us somehow it all ties together.
When Junior heard this at a seminar we attended he got very adept at going through a spider web conversation when giving an example to someone else. I remember the first few times he was telling it I found myself intrigued. I got all caught up in each of the different topics. I was disappointed when I found out that there was no real connection other than he learned how to go all around the block and back home again. I am a woman and I definitely spider web.
I remember when my son was young I wanted to have a son who was strong and yet sensitive. Actually I think he is. He definitely is all boy/man. I remember having a Scooter character doll for him. The head and feet were plastic, the body was stuffed. It was soft and I thought that if he had something soft he would then begin to become tender with the women in his life. The men in my life had always been rough even rough with me, the women in their lives. I wanted my son to be able to relate tenderly with women. I quickly learned that boys are rough.
The more my health comes back the less sleep I need. I really would like to sleep 7-8 hours at night. When I do sleep that long I wake up refreshed and ready to go. I also am waking up earlier which is great. Many days I get up FB a little and then head out for my walk. We have a killer hill in the road that has taken me some time to get used to. I am walking it now without being out of breath. There are days now when I don’t sleep 7-8 hours I function quite well. There for a while I would find myself nodding off all day long, now though I have days where I wake up early and other than a short morning nap…I am good to go for the day.
Make a plan work the plan comes back to me. The Janet that used to stay focused on projects lost it as I struggled through depression, arthritis pain and hypoglycemia. As I come back though the make a plan work the plan helps me to accomplish tasks. It helps me have that sense of accomplishment.
Junior has put up the shower doors in our bathroom. I love it. J and I went shopping to buy the bathroom curtains and rugs. It was about the happiest moment I had with getting the room together and a sense of a finished room in the house. The washing machine will move to the laundry room Junior has built for us and I want to paint a cabinet to put in the bathroom.
The porch has lattice up on one side. One side is being screened in a work still in progress. The laundry room is well on the way of being completed. He installed the floor. We bought a wood floor that snaps together and it looks awesome. The laundry room needs walls put up a light fixture put in and of course the washing machine moved into it. Slowly but steadily our new home takes shape.
The bedroom is next to being finished. The walls are paneled and two closets are roughed in. The closets need skin on them and an organizer built in/installed. Soon three rooms will be finished. I was talking to M on the phone recently. She came out in March and saw where we were with the remodeling. She had not seen the walls to the laundry room up yet. That helped me realize how far we had come in the last several months.
I think once more about how God blesses us. He led us to move. I would have rather stayed in MI grown old and do Fl. in the winter for a week or all winter. I am glad we listened and moved. It has been hard at times but more often than not it has been a wonderful new journey. Hardly a day goes by where I am not in awe of where we live. For me it is like being up north in MI or on vacation year round. The beauty is astounding. I feel peacefulness out here. We have made some wonderful new friends. The painfulness of my life has left me and I find joy again. The remodeling is hard. It is a journey too in the end though I’m grateful for this new experience.
As I end this I’d like to ask have you ever noticed the gifts God gives you. When you open your heat to see…it is amazing.
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
Greetings My Friend,
“Make a plan, work the plan” keeps rolling through my thoughts. As I learn how to come back to health I use this phrase to get myself motivated and moving regarding housework. It helps me a ton. I like phrases like that to help me do life in general.
Another favorite is regarding men and women in the romance department. It is “men are microwave ovens and women are crock pots.” As I learned this phrase I began to understand the dynamics between a man and a woman in the romance area of life. Men are quick to heat up romantically and women tend to need time to build into that moment. I also like the phrase, “sex starts in the kitchen.” Boy that one was amazing when I heard it. It lines up with women and crock pots to me. A woman is so global in her thinking that she needs to feel loved and wanted before she gets into bedroom romance situations.
Then there is the book title I love, “Men are waffles and women are spaghetti.” Once I wrapped my brain around this thought I felt a light bulb go off in my head. For years I had thought that men and women were the same except they each had different equipment. We aren’t! We are about as different as day and night!
I heard a speaker one time describe that women tend to spider web. Again this was one of those eye opening moments for me. We women have a tendency to start off on one topic bounce to another that has no relation to what was said. We go off on that tangent several more times before coming back to the original thought. To us somehow it all ties together.
When Junior heard this at a seminar we attended he got very adept at going through a spider web conversation when giving an example to someone else. I remember the first few times he was telling it I found myself intrigued. I got all caught up in each of the different topics. I was disappointed when I found out that there was no real connection other than he learned how to go all around the block and back home again. I am a woman and I definitely spider web.
I remember when my son was young I wanted to have a son who was strong and yet sensitive. Actually I think he is. He definitely is all boy/man. I remember having a Scooter character doll for him. The head and feet were plastic, the body was stuffed. It was soft and I thought that if he had something soft he would then begin to become tender with the women in his life. The men in my life had always been rough even rough with me, the women in their lives. I wanted my son to be able to relate tenderly with women. I quickly learned that boys are rough.
The more my health comes back the less sleep I need. I really would like to sleep 7-8 hours at night. When I do sleep that long I wake up refreshed and ready to go. I also am waking up earlier which is great. Many days I get up FB a little and then head out for my walk. We have a killer hill in the road that has taken me some time to get used to. I am walking it now without being out of breath. There are days now when I don’t sleep 7-8 hours I function quite well. There for a while I would find myself nodding off all day long, now though I have days where I wake up early and other than a short morning nap…I am good to go for the day.
Make a plan work the plan comes back to me. The Janet that used to stay focused on projects lost it as I struggled through depression, arthritis pain and hypoglycemia. As I come back though the make a plan work the plan helps me to accomplish tasks. It helps me have that sense of accomplishment.
Junior has put up the shower doors in our bathroom. I love it. J and I went shopping to buy the bathroom curtains and rugs. It was about the happiest moment I had with getting the room together and a sense of a finished room in the house. The washing machine will move to the laundry room Junior has built for us and I want to paint a cabinet to put in the bathroom.
The porch has lattice up on one side. One side is being screened in a work still in progress. The laundry room is well on the way of being completed. He installed the floor. We bought a wood floor that snaps together and it looks awesome. The laundry room needs walls put up a light fixture put in and of course the washing machine moved into it. Slowly but steadily our new home takes shape.
The bedroom is next to being finished. The walls are paneled and two closets are roughed in. The closets need skin on them and an organizer built in/installed. Soon three rooms will be finished. I was talking to M on the phone recently. She came out in March and saw where we were with the remodeling. She had not seen the walls to the laundry room up yet. That helped me realize how far we had come in the last several months.
I think once more about how God blesses us. He led us to move. I would have rather stayed in MI grown old and do Fl. in the winter for a week or all winter. I am glad we listened and moved. It has been hard at times but more often than not it has been a wonderful new journey. Hardly a day goes by where I am not in awe of where we live. For me it is like being up north in MI or on vacation year round. The beauty is astounding. I feel peacefulness out here. We have made some wonderful new friends. The painfulness of my life has left me and I find joy again. The remodeling is hard. It is a journey too in the end though I’m grateful for this new experience.
As I end this I’d like to ask have you ever noticed the gifts God gives you. When you open your heat to see…it is amazing.
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
Friday, October 7, 2011
October 8, 2011
Greetings My Friend,
Don’t tell on me. Sometimes I like to go back to my favorite childhood cereals and eat them. I love Sugar Pops and Cocoa Krispy’s. For the most part I eat healthier cereals like oatmeal, Special K etc. Once in a while it seems to be fun to eat what I enjoyed in the past. Then on occasion I eat old favorites in the candy department like $100,000.00 candy bars and Milk Duds. Sometimes I don’t know if I really taste these things in the now – it is a memory for me.
I remember as I was becoming an adult thinking things were definitely not right with my home situation. Of course I understood Dad’s polio and our family learning to adjust our way of life. Beyond that there was still a lot of dysfunction. I remember not liking it a whole bunch. Somewhere along the way I seemed to come up with this phrase and I believe I repeated it even as my children were coming of age. For me it helped to move through life. The phrase was something like “We spend our childhoods enduring the junk and the rest of our lives overcoming our childhood.”
On one level I knew my parents did what they could with all the junk of polio and little income. On another level I just didn’t get it and to be honest a whole bunch of life hurt. My family did anger. That is the way we processed life. You get mad and then in mad you respond to what is happening.
One of the things I enjoy doing is watching family dynamics through the generations in my family. It seems to be a hobby for me. My Dad’s father was a very angry man. His anger displayed itself often on his family in his abuse. I have focused a lot on the physical abuse of anger – another thing I know deep down. I know the anger and that this type of anger often is also rough on the emotional wellbeing of those who are near. I know it and yet I’m not as aware of the emotional devastation it can cause.
I also know that words tend to hurt more than a broken bone in anger. Many of the hurts from my past are the words not the bruises. I tend to recall the words more often than the beatings. Still I find myself reliving the physical moments and the fear that raged through me. I guess I tend to combine both the words and the abuse in my mind’s eye.
Anyway recently I’ve been in contact with people within my family and I hear of anger from some of them. There is a huge unforgiving attitude that seems to play along with the anger. There is a “what is right is right” type of thinking and if you aren’t doing what is perceived as right the anger seems to manifest itself even more.
As I talk to a cousin on my Dad’s side I am learning a lot about my family dynamics. I met this cousin a little over a year ago. Dad walked away from his family. He didn’t want a thing to do with anyone in the family. From what I learn from my Cousin Dad’s reaction was not uncalled for. Grandpa was an absolute tyrant. From what I am learning my Uncle tried to stay close to our Grandparents. Grandpa continued to wreak havoc on my Uncle and his family. He swindled my Uncle out of property etc. Like I said Grandpa wasn’t a nice man. Finally my Uncle walked away as Dad did. Dad was 14 and my Uncle was married and had children before he gave up and walked away.
I know for me it has taken a life time to let go of being angry at the drop of a hat. I believe I’ve let it go finally. I also believe it has been because I’ve asked Jesus for help. I just don’t get as worked up like I once did. As the saying goes “Life is too short to let anger get in the way.”
So at this stage of life I find that eating cereal from my childhood is a way of remembering those good moments not the anger that ruled my life. It is a way of putting a smile on my face. It is a way of being a child in my mind’s eye, a child that had happy moments.
I loved to do cartwheels. I just remembered that. See when you take your mind there it will search for those happy moments not the sad or scary moments. I would cartwheel all around the front yard all summer long. Oh I remember Mom and Dad’s ashtrays. They had colored glass ashtrays and I’d take a clean one outside and walk around looking through it. It was fun seeing the trees and what have you with a green or yellow tint to them.
Long gone are the days of reliving the moments that were painful. Do I relive them? Yes I do, just not as often or as long. Now more often than not I like to take my mind to those happier moments. As I see my granddaughter on FB with all her young self-stuff I find that sometimes I remember back to when. She is a texting addict. I then begin to remember we had a princess phone with a long cord on it. We’d squirrel ourselves in a room with the door closed so no one could hear our conversation.
As I read the Bible I sometimes hear God say “to the third or fourth generation.” As I read that more often than not I am starting to realize when we let a dysfunction/sin into our lives it will display itself in the generations and often grow worse. When a family member begins to take the sin to God and ask for help then I start to see a healing within the family/community. Counseling has taught me that the first step to healing is to admit there is a problem and then you are able to be open to learn how to resolve the problem. For me counseling has helped but Jesus is the way I tend to understand and to let go. I need both Jesus and counseling.
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
Greetings My Friend,
Don’t tell on me. Sometimes I like to go back to my favorite childhood cereals and eat them. I love Sugar Pops and Cocoa Krispy’s. For the most part I eat healthier cereals like oatmeal, Special K etc. Once in a while it seems to be fun to eat what I enjoyed in the past. Then on occasion I eat old favorites in the candy department like $100,000.00 candy bars and Milk Duds. Sometimes I don’t know if I really taste these things in the now – it is a memory for me.
I remember as I was becoming an adult thinking things were definitely not right with my home situation. Of course I understood Dad’s polio and our family learning to adjust our way of life. Beyond that there was still a lot of dysfunction. I remember not liking it a whole bunch. Somewhere along the way I seemed to come up with this phrase and I believe I repeated it even as my children were coming of age. For me it helped to move through life. The phrase was something like “We spend our childhoods enduring the junk and the rest of our lives overcoming our childhood.”
On one level I knew my parents did what they could with all the junk of polio and little income. On another level I just didn’t get it and to be honest a whole bunch of life hurt. My family did anger. That is the way we processed life. You get mad and then in mad you respond to what is happening.
One of the things I enjoy doing is watching family dynamics through the generations in my family. It seems to be a hobby for me. My Dad’s father was a very angry man. His anger displayed itself often on his family in his abuse. I have focused a lot on the physical abuse of anger – another thing I know deep down. I know the anger and that this type of anger often is also rough on the emotional wellbeing of those who are near. I know it and yet I’m not as aware of the emotional devastation it can cause.
I also know that words tend to hurt more than a broken bone in anger. Many of the hurts from my past are the words not the bruises. I tend to recall the words more often than the beatings. Still I find myself reliving the physical moments and the fear that raged through me. I guess I tend to combine both the words and the abuse in my mind’s eye.
Anyway recently I’ve been in contact with people within my family and I hear of anger from some of them. There is a huge unforgiving attitude that seems to play along with the anger. There is a “what is right is right” type of thinking and if you aren’t doing what is perceived as right the anger seems to manifest itself even more.
As I talk to a cousin on my Dad’s side I am learning a lot about my family dynamics. I met this cousin a little over a year ago. Dad walked away from his family. He didn’t want a thing to do with anyone in the family. From what I learn from my Cousin Dad’s reaction was not uncalled for. Grandpa was an absolute tyrant. From what I am learning my Uncle tried to stay close to our Grandparents. Grandpa continued to wreak havoc on my Uncle and his family. He swindled my Uncle out of property etc. Like I said Grandpa wasn’t a nice man. Finally my Uncle walked away as Dad did. Dad was 14 and my Uncle was married and had children before he gave up and walked away.
I know for me it has taken a life time to let go of being angry at the drop of a hat. I believe I’ve let it go finally. I also believe it has been because I’ve asked Jesus for help. I just don’t get as worked up like I once did. As the saying goes “Life is too short to let anger get in the way.”
So at this stage of life I find that eating cereal from my childhood is a way of remembering those good moments not the anger that ruled my life. It is a way of putting a smile on my face. It is a way of being a child in my mind’s eye, a child that had happy moments.
I loved to do cartwheels. I just remembered that. See when you take your mind there it will search for those happy moments not the sad or scary moments. I would cartwheel all around the front yard all summer long. Oh I remember Mom and Dad’s ashtrays. They had colored glass ashtrays and I’d take a clean one outside and walk around looking through it. It was fun seeing the trees and what have you with a green or yellow tint to them.
Long gone are the days of reliving the moments that were painful. Do I relive them? Yes I do, just not as often or as long. Now more often than not I like to take my mind to those happier moments. As I see my granddaughter on FB with all her young self-stuff I find that sometimes I remember back to when. She is a texting addict. I then begin to remember we had a princess phone with a long cord on it. We’d squirrel ourselves in a room with the door closed so no one could hear our conversation.
As I read the Bible I sometimes hear God say “to the third or fourth generation.” As I read that more often than not I am starting to realize when we let a dysfunction/sin into our lives it will display itself in the generations and often grow worse. When a family member begins to take the sin to God and ask for help then I start to see a healing within the family/community. Counseling has taught me that the first step to healing is to admit there is a problem and then you are able to be open to learn how to resolve the problem. For me counseling has helped but Jesus is the way I tend to understand and to let go. I need both Jesus and counseling.
May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.
Love
Janet
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