Meryl's Truths and Mine

 

 

Well said.

I might add:

I have no time for those who cannot extend grace to others; who judge without true insight. I value truth, honesty, and kindness above all in my relationships. Generosity of spirit, as well as resources.

I refuse to pretend that the wrong words and hurtful actions of others have no lasting impact on my spirit. I seek to do no harm, by God's grace and with his guidance, and to endeavor to live in this truth and grace. When I fall short, I will confess and mend my ways; seeking his forgiveness and yours.

Those who make no attempt to humbly right their wrongs and to accept imperfection in themselves and others exhaust me. Gossip and slander are devastating. Pretending otherwise is ingenuous and intolerable. We can be forgiven our trespasses, but still are expected to acknowledge our own as well as to forgive those who trespass against us.

 

 

 

 

 

MAYA ANGELOU

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
(Thanks, Mary Schmich, for sharing these words in today's Chicago Tribune.)

Too true.

I've been on the receiving end--left feeling devalued and ashamed, unnecessarily--and, please forgive me dear Lord, I've been on the giving end when I should have been ashamed and didn't own it until much later. Sometimes too late.

I trust that some of my words and actions have fallen on the right side of how I've made others feel, I know I've had my share of warm, fuzzy, appreciative, life-giving feelings imparted from others.

WHAT I DO DIFFERENTLY NOW

In January 1995 I reflected on what changes I had made from 1994 and prior, I would never have remember all this if Í hadn't been blogging and looking through my recovery journal.

• 10:00 - 10:30pm bedtime
• walk AM and PM; 4 miles/day
• cleaned up relationships
• healthy prioritizing; knowing what's "deeply important
• less hurried
• back in college
• keen awareness of personal goals
• no longer shopping for entertainment
• no more excessive sleeping
• no dieting--awareness of healthy eating habits and exercise
• realize the importance of "beauty & solitude" in my daily life
• prioritizing times for personal grown--study and reading
• managing family finances--trust myself with all the money because shopping is no longer entertainment, i.e. escape
• keen awareness of important relationships to my life--the need for valuing and nurturing
• long-term financial management goals set in place, with short-term disciplines
• I don't give pieces of myself away indiscriminately
• I no longer need to please everyone
• realization that my job is not hard, but is worthy and fits my life right now
• content with current house until college costs and empty nest motivate the change--and the choice will be a factor of the current finances and needs of that time
• stepped-up savings and debt reduction to afford JE's college and also prepare for the next stage of our married life
• not seeking to fill the empty places in my life with activity, travel, people, noise
• awareness of separateness from parents lives and dysfunction
• no longer feel the need to "fix" everything, i.e. control

PRINCIPLE-CENTERED LIVING

The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.
7 Habits by Stephen Covey

I quoted that excerpt in my healing journal on August 9, 1994. That was the summer I began to see things as they ARE instead of what I was told they should BE.

By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.

The reason 7 Habits resonated so, so deeply with me is that I got it! My center was my salvation and relationship with Jesus Christ. I have known since I was small that He is my center. Talk about timeless, unchanging...

Correct principles function with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength.

HAPPINESS: The fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

HABIT: The intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire.

STORIES I DON'T REMEMBER

Colby College

Home on this earth is being all levels of our awareness or consciousness in our own unique fashion.

We have a choice.

We can remove the blocks (blinders) to realizing our Higher Power by:

• experiencing (living in the NOW)
• remembering
• forgiving
• surrendering
  Whitfield, pg. 137

Writing this blog has opened up my mind and hopefully my heart to what came before. The writing classes I took 1994 - 1998 cracked the vault a bit, but there is still much hidden and not remembered. The key word is "choice." I have choices. I am not a victim, I choose my reality. I write my own story; create my own reality. Living in the now is a very beautiful thing. I thought it would be too scary, but it is energizing and freeing.

I will tell a story that I don't like to think about, because it is laced with fleeing and quitting. I was a good student in high school and would have been a better student had I not worked at night instead of studying. I did study, but usually the minimum. I was tired. I still made the honor roll and got A's and B's. I could have been a high honor roll student. No one noticed or encouraged. Although, it would have been unacceptable to fail or even be mediocre.

My counselor in high school called me down and offered me the opportunity to go to a fine college--Colby College--on a scholarship. She was an alumnus and she would lead me through the process. I didn't know any better. I shied away thinking I should go to a Christian college. So... I looked for one I could afford and settled on Lincoln Christian College in Lincoln, IL. It was still more than I could afford, but they had a Kroger store and I knew I could work there.

It was unacceptable in the culture we lived in--upper class church and upper class school [lower class neighborhood!] that I not go to college. My friends that mattered at the time were going to college.

There were no college visits. No parental support offered or expected. I just packed up on the appointed day and my boyfriend [future husband] drove the one-hour trip to drop me off. This was orientation week--lots of meetings and doctrinal brainwashing. It didn't take very many days for me to realize that my view and the college's on eternal security and God's grace were WAY different.

One morning the President of the college spoke to the incoming freshmen. He said that his door was open, and we were to come to him with any concerns or questions. So, I headed to his door that afternoon. It wasn't open. He didn't see me, but another executive did. I voiced my concerns and quickly surmised that I wouldn't change their stand on these or any other issues. This was the Church of Christ, after all. How could they be wrong? I was a Presbyterian and eternally secure in my knowledge of my Lord preparing a place for me in heaven where I would without a doubt go when I died. No matter how many sins I commit in this life--I am forgiven. I only need to confess my sins and I am forgiven. That is the way of the cross.

I called home and said come and get me. So, that weekend Dad and CA drove down to retrieve me. I was forlorn. I had failed. Would I have to go to the brand new junior college and be humiliated? I cried and I prayed. CA was gentle and kind. He took me to see The Sound of Music. Later that afternoon I heard him talking to NC and they both said that they wouldn't have given up; they would have stuck it out at least for a semester at that college. I was furious at CA and told him so. I would tolerate no disloyalty. We both learned something through that experience. I was learning to trust, but this was a bit of a set-back. In the 42 years of our relationship he has never betrayed my trust--maybe little things--but CA I trust with my whole heart.

Two days after arriving back from this misadventure, my Christian college of first choice called to say they had an opening and I was off to Bible college. I had a fun roommate and lots of friends. The classes were absolutely challenging and the competition unbelievably tough. These Christian kids were SMART. I was just an hour from CA's college and we liked that. But, ultimately I wasn't cut out for a Christian college. I wanted more academics and I had no money. I left at the semester, got a full-time job and went to the junior college part-time until getting married after CA's junior year in college. It was the Viet Nam era and CA faced either the Navy or the draft. We wanted to have one full year together before he entered the military for an uncertain future. He was 21 and I just barely 20 on the day we married.

For years I felt shame in running away from school #1 and not sticking it out at school #2. During counseling 27 years later I realized that I did the best I could. I was so busy getting my basic needs met... I was so very young and on my own with no financial resources... Where were my parents in all this? I remember mom wanting me to stay at the Bible College #2 and offering to get a job to support me. I didn't believe or trust her. She was incapable and I knew it.

FORGIVENESS, PART 2

I just remembered... hearing a story of Corrie ten Boome--The Hiding Place. Years after World War II ended and the Nazi death camps were emptied out and the detainees had begun to seek some measure of healing--not forgetting--she was speaking in a church. A man approached that she immediately recognized as having been a particularly cruel camp guard and her heart was filled with hatred and rage. Then God spoke to her and said forgive him. As she said the words, she realized that in forgiving him, God had forgiven her and her heart was changed forever.

I need to practice forgiveness because God in his grace has forgiven me.

FORGIVENESS

God forgive me, it has taken me years to forgive my mother. Perhaps it took a couple bouts of situational depression and post-menopausal anxiety to lead me to forgiveness. I have forgiven her. I don't deny she could have done better. I don't agree with NC that she did the best she could. But, mental illness was such a conundrum in the 50s and 60s. Electro-shock treatment and talk therapy. It's such a blessing to live in this age of SSRIs and Ativan and stronger stuff I never want to know about.

And, now we accept mental illness as an illness--treatable, and we seem to be able to give grace to those who suffer. Everyone in this culture is over-stimulated, over-worked, under-loved, under-appreciated. Medication helps, it doesn't cure.

"Why can't she forgive her? Maybe in part, she thinks, because her mother's way of getting old, this retreat into ... senility, is only the exaggeration of that earlier retreat into depression or despair or whatever it was that denied responsibility or the importance of her connection to Lottie and Cameron."
For Love
by Sue Miller

"Yes my childhood may have been somewhat bad, but my parents did the best they could..." (detachment)
Whitfield, again