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Will post for food…

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I read a story lately about a lady who was in dire straits. She posted on a local Facebook page saying that she needed help and didn’t know what to do.

She said that she really needed help. She was a single mom and had two little girls, one 7 and one nearly 2. She said that she was about to be evicted because she hadn’t paid her rent, she didn’t have any food, and she didn’t have winter clothes for the girls. She said she was starting a job on Monday but wouldn’t be paid until two weeks later.

Plenty of things don’t sound right about this.

Apartments don’t kick you out for nonpayment of rent for the first month. They usually wait at least two months. So this has been going on for a while.

If she has custody of the children, she should be getting child support. She didn’t mention anything about this. Perhaps she is a widow. Again, no mention.

No food? No winter clothes? Did she just wake up from a coma and notice that something might need to be done? How has she survived this long with this basic inability to plan ahead?

And why is she asking for help from strangers? Why isn’t she asking family or friends? I have a suspicion she already has asked them before and they are tired of rescuing her.

I know that as Christians we are not supposed to question those who ask for help. We are not supposed to judge their worthiness. But there has to be some accountability going on. Otherwise we should all quit our jobs and start begging. Wait – that won’t work. Then who would give us money if they too didn’t have a job?

I remember seeing a guy on the side of the road with a sign saying that he needed a new roof. When I needed a new roof I got a second mortgage. I had asked my family if I could get a loan from them, having never asked before, and I got quickly turned down. So I had to figure out another way. Standing on the side of the road with a cardboard sign never occurred to me as something that was OK. It still doesn’t seem OK.

At what point is helping someone not helping at all? At what point is helping someone just encouraging them to keep needing help?

I’m reminded of the phrase –“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life.”

At what point do we have to show “tough love” and make people have to be responsible for their own lives?

Showing up late.

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Don’t show up at a store minutes before they close. They have been open for hours, waiting for you. Your money isn’t worth waiting another ten minutes. If they stay open another ten minutes for you, then what if another person comes during that time? Then that is another ten minutes.

They want to go home. They have their own lives to tend to. They have children to pick up from babysitters or daycare. They have groceries that need to be bought and dinner that needs to be cooked.

I’m grateful that I now work in a place where when close at 8, it means 8. I’ve worked a lot of retail and a lot of late nights because of it. There is no staying late at the library. Well, there is staying late if you are the person in charge and somebody has neglected to pick up their children. Then you have to wait for the parent to come. If the parent takes longer than 30 minutes, then the police are called and the child goes with them. That is thoughtless of the parent. Thoughtless is another word for rude.

It is rude to show up at a shop at the last minute. It is assuming that your needs are more important than their needs. Sure, this may be a small business and it relies on your money to survive. But they shouldn’t be made to feel like they are groveling for your money. If you really wanted to help them out, show up when they are open. To show up at the last minute and not be through when the closing time is to insist that you are more important than they are.

You aren’t.

Now, they aren’t more important than you either. There has to be a balance. This has to be an equal relationship. It is as if you are dating a guy and he insists that you go to horror films and you hate horror films. But you are desperate to date him, so you keep going out with him to these films. So you keep feeling bad, and he keeps feeling good. A relationship is healthy only when both people are happy. To insist that they stay late for you, especially when they aren’t going to make a lot of money on the transaction, is only going to make you happy. It is going to make them miserable.

The customer isn’t always right.

I agree with businesses that close on time and kick people out. They have to draw the line somewhere. If they tick off a customer doing that, fine. A customer that does not respect the employee’s time isn’t the kind of customer that is desired.

Worse is the restaurant business. If the place says it closes at 9, that just means that they take the last people in at 9. They could then place their order and lounge around until 11. It is very common that they will not tip to make up the difference. You may think that the waitress and chefs are being paid for that time. They aren’t being paid much – and they too have places they want to go. They too have families they would like to see. They have a life outside of work, and they would like to get to it. If a restaurant closes at 9, be courteous and be done by 9. Don’t just get started then. They will resent you.

I have worked retail for many years of my life and I have repeatedly had nightmares with people coming in late, saying “But I just…” In these nightmares, the people won’t leave. We are trying to close the doors and more keep coming in. Then more people come in after them. Then we are stuck there for an hour or more. The bad part is that the nightmare isn’t far from reality.

Trust me, your money isn’t worth that. If you can’t be bothered to shop during regular hours, they don’t need your business. Businesses should not have to beg for your business. Part of being a good customer is respecting their time.

Plants and problems.

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Why do people insist on giving me plants? They give me live plants and I don’t know how to take care of them and they die. Then I feel bad.

But I shouldn’t. I didn’t ask for that responsibility. I didn’t want it.

It reminds me of when my parents died. People gave me azaleas as “living memorials” to them. I planted them in the back yard. Nobody had a clue that both parents would die so close together. So I got two azalea plants within two months, from different people.

I moved a few years later. Then I had a dilemma. Do I take the plants? I couldn’t, because I was moving into an apartment. So they might still be there in the yard, serving as a mute memorial to someone the new owners don’t even know.

My brother gave me a lily plant after our mom died. Well, he didn’t give it to me. He gave it to the house. I’d never planted a lily before so I asked a friend who was in the landscape business. It turns out that you don’t just plant lilies. You have to dig them up every fall and store the bulbs in a cool dark dry place over the winter and then replant them in the spring. I just spent a year watching my mother die. I wasn’t prepared to spend any more time watching a “living memorial” to her die.

I took it as yet another thoughtless thing from my brother. I took the plant out the front door, walked down to the ivy at the edge of the yard and pitched the plant. I said “good luck, lily”. I had nothing against the plant. The plant was beautiful. But I didn’t want to be responsible for its demise. Its survival was up to it and God at that point. It honestly had a better chance of surviving that way.

I was given a Christmas cactus as a gift for volunteering in a school. It died in short order. Those are supposed to be very hardy. I was recently given a miniature rose bush. I suspect it will shortly follow the cactus to the plant graveyard.

I get it. A living plant has more meaning than cut flowers. It will last longer and provide more joy over the years. But I just don’t know how to handle them. Either I water them too much or too little. Then I don’t know how to feed them. I pay attention to them for about a week and then I forget them.

I’m starting to think of everything the same way I think of plants. If someone gives me anything and I didn’t want it or ask for it, I am not obliged to take it. This applies to feelings, ideas, and ideologies. People try to give me their baggage all the time. Perhaps you know what I am talking about.

It is part of why I no longer watch TV.

I don’t want to be dragged down by someone else’s fear and pain. I can’t handle it. I don’t want it. I’m not tall enough for it. It is like I’m swimming in the ocean and someone comes along and they are drowning. They thrash about, and they grab me and start to pull me down. I can barely keep myself afloat on a normal day. When someone tries to unburden themselves on me and I’m not ready for it I start to go under along with them.

It reminds me of one time at work. There is a lady who constantly is complaining. She huffs and stomps around. She gossips. She never has anything good to say. I realized that she was dragging me down into her hole, and listening to her wasn’t helping her and was actually harming me. When I realized this, I prepared to stand up to her and braced myself for her reaction. So when she came up to me one day and asked if I minded hearing the latest gossip/complaint, I said that yes, I do mind. That no, I don’t want to hear it. That I was tired of it. She was stunned. She was angry. She said that she needed to vent. I said that I didn’t need to be the person she vented to.

She needs a therapist. She needs a friend. She needs a life outside of work so she can get a sense of perspective. I can’t provide these things. This is her journey.
The best thing I could do was say no, I can’t take this. I’m not the person for it.

I think there is a lot of healing in knowing what you can take and what you can’t take.

We want to be everything for everyone. We want to help them and heal them. But we aren’t trained and we aren’t able to all the time. I think the healthiest thing is to only take what you can handle, and that is only what you are ready for.

Question the questionnaire.

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Have you ever noticed when you go to a doctor’s office how many things they ask you on the forms? How much of this is just they are able to ask?

A form I filled out recently asked for my husband’s name, his social security number, and where he worked. I can see how this would be appropriate if I got my insurance through him, but I don’t. There was nothing on the form saying “only fill out if…”

I think a lot of it is that they ask because they can. We have been trained to trust doctors. We have been trained to follow their instructions without question. The receptionist is swept right up in that. She is part of the authority structure.

So when the receptionist asks for personal information, we tend to give it. Me, I question everything, everywhere.

“Why?” is a powerful tool. If you don’t get a good reason why they need the information, don’t give it. “Because” is not an answer. Understand that the person behind the desk is just a cog in the machine. She doesn’t make the rules. So don’t get upset with her. Even talking to her manager won’t help sometimes.

I’m one of those cogs. I understand. There are plenty of things that we are told to do that don’t make any sense. Sometimes administration even gives us scripts to follow to explain a particularly weird rule change. It would be better if they asked us beforehand if this is a good policy change, but they don’t. Ever. We find out about it just as it is about to roll out, or just as it hits the news.

But, sometimes the rules or the policy does make sense. Sometimes I am all about enforcing it because I agree with it. But I’m still all for people asking questions and not following blindly. It is best not to give away something that you don’t have to.

Are you my “friend”?

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I think we need a new definition of the word “friend”. Or perhaps we need different levels of “friend.” We use the word so loosely these days that it has no real meaning anymore.

One reason we need different levels of “friend” is when we are talking to one about another. I’ve recommended that one “friend” connect in a business relationship with another actual friend. But I don’t know the “friend” very well – and I don’t want the actual friend to think badly of me if the “friend” acts strangely. I can’t vouch for him. I’ve only met him once. I know people he knows, but I’ve not personally spent much time with him.

I think Facebook has blurred the lines of what “friend” means. There are plenty of people who I think of as friends who I only barely know. I only know about their lives virtually. With some people this is how I get to know them. I’ll meet them somewhere at some gathering and “friend” them. In reality I know nothing about them. My plan is to learn more about them, and them about me, in the safe near-anonymity of the cyber world.

I’m discovering that this causes a whole new set of problems for me because I’m still working on my boundaries.

Sometimes I’ll keep someone as a “friend” who only posts to complain or argue. Maybe I’ll move them to another page that I only look at every few days instead of every few hours. Then they will comment on my page only to complain or argue. Seems like that is all they do. This reminds me of the coworker who starts of every (rare) conversation with me to say “Now, I don’t mean to complain…” and then she complains. I need balance. I really can’t handle someone who only complains. This gets really old. I’m not paid to be a therapist.

Perhaps I’ll keep someone as a “friend” who never posts or never comments or even “likes” anything. Will they even notice that I’ve unfriended them? Plenty of people have a Facebook page and don’t really use it. Plenty of people lurk too. Perhaps I need to understand that they just aren’t that into me. Perhaps I need to not take it personally.

Maybe I keep some people around as “friends” because I think they may be useful some day. I think that I may need to contact her or him, so I’ll not “unfriend” just yet. Maybe I’m thinking of people like craft supplies.

Maybe I need to edit. I do this, but perhaps not as deeply as I should. I try to keep my “friends” list to under 200, when in reality I only really interact with a tenth of that, at most.

I care, sort of. I feel like I should care. They are “friends” after all, right?

Recently I unfriended two women that I thought I should get along with, but don’t. One I met in my old church. I’ve finally come to realize that she is just an unhappy person, and I don’t care to participate in her angry world. Another person was a girlfriend of a friend of mine. She was really interesting for a while. Then she started being threatening to me. Nothing big, and I suspect she thought she was being funny. Jokes aren’t funny if both people aren’t laughing.

Rather than tell them how I felt, I deleted them. If I really cared about the relationship I would have told them how I felt. But I didn’t really care. And that was a turning point. I realized that I didn’t owe them anything. I may never see them again. And I’m OK with that.

Would it be different if I did see them often? Maybe. It gets really awkward when people confront you for unfriending them. I’d think they should get the clue and not ask, or not take it so personally, but that is probably my desire to not be confrontational.

There is nothing saying you have to be friends with anybody, cyber or otherwise. Being a friend should be a choice, not an obligation.

I have to think of Facebook as like my home. Sure, they aren’t physically there. But they are inside my head, which is far more intimate. Why would I let someone rummage around in my home who doesn’t really respect or resonate with me?

So why would I let that person in my head?

For a while I’d keep my really conservative friends because I thought that I might have a positive influence on them. In fact, they ended up having a negative influence on me. I got more bitter and cynical. I felt really tense every time they would post something hateful. So I deleted them.

I’m getting more and more protective of my space. I’m just glad that I realized that my space also refers to the space in my head.

Dysfunctional as the new normal.

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(This was started several months ago, maybe June. I couldn’t post it then – I was still too close to it. I’ve added more today, on the occasion of a second called meeting. I’m sitting this one out.)

We are going to a called meeting. I’m writing this in the car on the way to a meeting that my parents in law have requested. My husband’s mother is dying slowly of pancreatic cancer. She is in her 70’s. She’s already lived longer with this disease than the doctors expected. She has already lived longer than my Mom, who died at 53.

I feel like we are going to a discussion about putting down the family pet.

It has been months since the last family meeting. There hasn’t been a lot of communication since Christmas, when we found out. That Christmas was more strained and fake than normal. We all pretended like everything was fine. It reminded me a lot of how my birth family acted at every holiday.

Pancreatic cancer takes a toll on you. It is debilitating. It has an over 90% death rate, mostly because it isn’t caught until it is very advanced. We don’t know. Perhaps there was a healing. Or perhaps they have finally woken up to the reality of the situation and realized they need to go into assisted living.

At Easter, my mother in law did all the cooking. My father in law sat. He directed traffic. This is a role reversal from when I met them ten years ago. She had to take on more of the chores since he got Parkinson’s. He seems to see getting Parkinson’s as an excuse to sit all the time. Sure, Parkinson’s is a degenerative nerve disease. But if you don’t exercise, Parkinson’s or no, you’ll deteriorate.

None of us have the time or patience or time off at work to go over there all the time and cook and clean and bathe them. Nor do we want to.

I sure wish I knew about all the mental and physical abuse that happened in this family before I suggested they move up here. I wouldn’t have suggested that they move closer. It seemed logical at the time. They were getting older. They kept taking turns needing help, what with cancer twice for him and a hip replacement for her. She freaked out when the water heater broke when her husband was out of town. One son had to drive 5 hours one way to deal with it. This is not the hallmark of adult behavior on her part.

They need help, certainly, but we aren’t the ones to give it. We don’t have the resources – mental, physical, emotional.

I didn’t know them before. Perhaps they have gotten more feeble with age. Perhaps they have always been dependent. Perhaps they have always been needy. Perhaps they have always been weak.

I want this to go well. I don’t know what to do. I want to be helpful. I want to be compassionate.

But I also want to say “I told you so.” I want to say “if only you had listened to me and gotten an apartment instead of a house, rented rather than bought, this would be easier.” I’m angry that they want our help but they don’t want to listen to what we are willing and able to provide. They want our help but they want it their way.

I want to say if you’d been nicer to your children, they wouldn’t be reluctant to help you. You reap what you sow.

This isn’t Christ-like at all. I don’t pretend it is. It is very human. Is it compassionate to enable someone in their stupidity?

This could go well. It could go terribly. Bracing for it usually makes it go worse. I’m trying to plan ahead and be realistic. I’m trying to be honest with myself.

Nothing digs up old family wounds like new family trauma. It is so easy to forget there is a problem until it comes back up again. Yep. That bone is still broken. Time to get it looked at by a professional, or amputate that limb. Time to get professional counseling or decide to walk away from it all.

Just because I married the son doesn’t mean I have to take care of his parents. There is nothing in the wedding vows about them. I’m not legally bound to them.

I’m angry at them because of all the damage they did to him. Sure, they were probably abused themselves. Dysfunctional is the new normal after all. Does this get them off the hook? Does this mean I have to take time off from work to take care of them? I spend enough time as it is picking up the pieces of their son’s shattered self esteem.

I’m angry that my father in law still thinks it is OK to talk badly about his son. He has never apologized for abusing his family. He has never changed, really. He’s just sneakier about his abuse.

I’m angry that my mother in law is dying and the only thing she wants to do is decorate her house. Scraping wallpaper, painting, and remodeling is the order of the day. From what I understand this is how she has always done things. Knowing she is terminally ill has not changed her, has not focused her. She has not done anything for her community or the world. I cannot imagine wasting life so wantonly. I’m frustrated that she has had more life than my Mom and still hasn’t done anything with it.

I’m angry that both of them have lived this long and they are still not grown up.

I’m not a counselor. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a minister. I know I can’t fix other people’s problems. I can only work on myself. I know that looking away from problems doesn’t make them go away. I know also that it is the better part of valor to know when you can’t do anything. Sometimes you have to admit defeat. I’ve tried to help them and they are still stuck, so I’m not what they need. They think I am, but the evidence proves otherwise.

I have chosen to walk away from this insanity. I can’t let someone else’s madness pull me into the water where I’ll drown. Codependency is deadly.

I’ve walked away for the same reason I no longer read the news. I’ve walked away from same reason I no longer watch television or eat junk food or drink sodas. I can’t allow this poison into me. I know what it does.

Now, a mark of a Christian is that they are supposed to be able to be bitten by a snake and not get sick. To me, it makes more sense to not even pick up that snake to start off with.

“The Prodigal Son”

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There is nothing like a will to bring out the true side of people. My brother was left out of our Dad’s will because he tried to kill Dad when he was 17. They never reconciled. There was nothing but mistrust and animosity after that.

It wasn’t great before that. They’d never had a good relationship. Ian blamed Dad for the fact that he didn’t have money to go to college. Dad’s story was that Ian begged him for the money so he could buy a car. Because of Ian’s lifelong habit of lying to benefit himself, I believe Dad’s side of the story.

Ian felt slighted most of his life. He probably feels this way now, but I no longer talk to him. He felt that everything bad happened to him, that everyone, (especially me) conspired against him. He felt that I was the wanted child and he was the accident. He didn’t realize that we both had a pretty unhealthy childhood, so neither one of us got the silver spoon. We both got the shaft instead.

He blamed me for his fourth wife leaving him. He blamed me for him getting a quarter of a million dollars in debt. He was always a victim, a bystander, a passive observer. Perhaps that is the reason for all of his failures – he never took the blame for anything.

We were still talking when our parents died. He’d been very abusive to me during that time, but I still wanted to have some sort of relationship with him. I suspect a lot of it has to do with Christian guilt, saying that I was supposed to love my brother. I didn’t understand yet that there has to be a measure of reciprocity. Love has to go both ways. It can’t all be take-take-take.

During that time he managed to guilt-trip me out of a Rembrandt etching we had of “The Prodigal Son” saying that it symbolized the relationship that he and Dad had. The irony did not escape me. They didn’t have a relationship.

Our grandmother had given the etching to the family. It sat over the mantle. The story was that Rembrandt created the etching, printed a limited number of prints, and then destroyed the plate with acid. So it was worth a lot of money. It wasn’t listed in the will, specifically, so I could do with it whatever I wanted. I was the executrix of the estate because I was the only person named in the will who was still alive. I was 25, handling a will on my own, getting pressured by my brother. He wanted me to sell the house (my home at that point) and give him half the money. He wanted me to give him half the insurance money too. He’d done nothing to earn it. He hadn’t visited and he hadn’t helped Mom and I while we were struggling with bills when she was sick. He hadn’t done anything at all except harass me to tell me that I wasn’t doing enough. Meanwhile he was doing nothing. So how did he think he was entitled to any of the estate, especially an etching of “The Prodigal Son”?

I gave the etching to him anyway, out of spite. I figured that eventually he’d wake up to the fact that the son has to return for the story to work, and he never returned. It was easier to give him that picture once I realized that. If I’d kept it I would be constantly reminded of him. If he had it, he would be constantly reminded of himself. That specific etching just bolsters his lies. It is right up there with the certificates he has framed of the classes he took when he was in the Air Force. He was only in for one year, then he got kicked out. But he still proudly displays those certificates. There is something deeply wrong going on with him, where his reality doesn’t mesh up with actual reality.

I wanted my brother to become a real human being. I still want him to. I finally realized that I couldn’t be part of that process though. It was like he wanted me to be an accessory to his insanity. I couldn’t participate in it. Talking to him was making me crazy because he was crazy. Getting into conversations with him was like getting in the car with a drunk behind the wheel. Everywhere we went in our conversations was wrong. I knew I had to get out for my own safety.

There aren’t any easy instructions on how to deal with an abusive family. All the Hallmark movies make us think that families are loving and brothers look out for their little sisters. All the mythology of family in American society tells us that everything is wonderful and everybody is happy. This is great when it is true, and it is harmful when it isn’t. All too often our reality doesn’t mesh up with what we are told we should be experiencing, and we feel pain. We feel like we are wrong, and not that the prepackaged image of “happy family” is wrong.

At the intersection of grief and anger.

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What is in the middle between grief and anger?

These are conflicting emotions. My spiritual director once asked me what I felt towards God, who took my parents. I’d never thought of it that way. I’d always just thought they made bad choices. They died early because they smoked and ate poorly.

But if I truly believe that God is in charge of everything, then I have to believe that they died when they did because it was the time that God had alloted for them to die. And then the next thought is that all the grief and ugliness of my childhood was meant by God to help me. Eckhart Tolle says that waking up to the truth is easier if you have a hard life. If it is easy, you don’t have to work on it. In the same way, God is said to put trials to us because God wants us to do better.

You push those you want to encourage. It may look like you are being difficult to them, but in reality you are putting a lot of effort into them because you want the best for them.

It is kind of a paradox.

So is this feeling. I was angry at my parents for making bad choices, and for abandoning me. Then I framed it in terms of God’s will. If this is all something from God, then I’m OK with it.

I’m no longer one who gets mad at God. I’m starting to understand that God’s perspective isn’t my perspective, that the things that look “bad” now are just part of the process. Rumi speaks to this in “The Guest House.” Everything is as it is, not good or bad. Grain has to be ground up and then baked to make bread. Grapes have to be pressed and then fermented for a long time to make wine.

The same is true for us. We are the grain and the grapes. We are raw,unprocessed. We are better when we are molded. Our hard experiences create us into who we are.

Once I remembered that God was in charge, I wasn’t angry or sad anymore. I was a bit of both, and then they cancelled out and I found myself somewhere in between.

I think we call that grace.

Kidnapping? Or just a tired kid?

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I was on my lunchtime walk today and heard a child screaming. I looked to my left and saw a skinny man in a dingy t-shirt hauling a young girl in pink to his car. Was she not ready to go home? (The playground was nearby) Was she tired? (It was around 1:30, a common time for kids to need a nap) Or was she being kidnapped?

I stopped walking the way I was headed and started walking towards them. I considered taking a picture of his car. It was beat up, ratty, faded blue. It was a cheap car. He suited it. He had stubble and a ball cap. He looked trashy. I started to regret that there was a stream between us so I had to walk the long way around. It made me take a little more time than I wanted.

When I got there he had already put her in her car seat in the back. I stopped on the passenger side, where I could see him and her, but not put me in a vulnerable position. He had rolled down the front passenger window to cool the car off. He hadn’t driven off quickly. She had stopped crying. I thought maybe I’m jumping the gun, but I’d rather be sure. She looked to be around 7. I asked in a sing-song voice “What’s the matter?” while looking at her. I wanted to seem non-confrontational, but obviously I am confronting him. I wanted to seem like a casual observer, an interested passerby.

He told me that she didn’t want to leave. “You know how little girls are. I had a little boy once and he was fine.” Notice he said “I had a little boy once.” He didn’t say “my son”. This really didn’t feel right all over again.

I looked her in the eyes, willing her to tell me that something was wrong, or everything was alright. Nothing. She gave me nothing.

He gave her a drink to sip on. Surely only a Dad would think to have a beverage for his kid, right? Nope. A smart kidnapper would do the same to keep the child quiet. So that didn’t help me figure this out.

I was going to have to push it a little. I looked at her and asked her – “Do you know each other?” I got nothing from her. I was a stranger. Don’t talk to strangers, you know. But I’m a small woman. I’m not threatening. But yes, I’m a stranger, and this is a strange interaction. I don’t blame her for not answering.

He got defensive. “She’s my daughter!” I pointed out that screaming like that sounds like she’s being kidnapped. I kept looking at her. Nothing. I wondered again what to do. I felt it out. I weighed everything I knew, everything I saw. I wasn’t getting that “push” feeling I get when I have to act.

I decided to let it go. His story could be true. By this point no other parent is running up. I’ve bought some time. He looks like a strict disciplinarian. She hasn’t indicated to me that anything is wrong. She also hasn’t indicated everything is right.

I backed off. I walked away. And then I stopped, looking at the car, looking at them. He drove away, slowly. She didn’t scream. She didn’t hit on the windows. I still felt like something was off, but I don’t think he was kidnapping her. I think he was her Dad, and that he was frustrated and tired and not sure how to deal with a child who is equally frustrated and tired.

I don’t know what I would have done if I’d actually thought he was kidnapping her. I could have called the police but I had no way of keeping him there until they came. Take pictures – of him, the car, the license plate? This would probably be my best option. That way I’d have something to give the cops.

I still don’t know for sure what happened. But I’m glad I stopped.

What causes what? On pain – mental and physical.

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Do we have physical pain because of psychological trauma, or do we feel psychological pain because of physical trauma? Are they really separate – and can we fix one with the other? Can we use physical manipulation to work out psychological issues? Can we use our minds and different ways of thinking to work out physical pain?

I get very angry after I eat chocolate. I know, weird, right? Most people feel really happy after they eat chocolate. But remember some medicines say that they may cause drowsiness or excitability. These are polar opposites. Chocolate is like that for me.

It took me years to figure out that there was a connection. Twenty minutes after eating more than like half a bar of chocolate I became the meanest person in the room. It was like PMS on steroids. Everything made me angry. Everything felt wrong. I was a huge pessimist, and everybody around me was stupid and worthless.

Somehow I managed to figure out the connection. I stopped eating chocolate – or if I had any it was just one piece.

Then one day I decided to do an experiment. Nobody was around for me to yell at. This seemed only fair.

I ate some chocolate, determined to feel whatever feeling it was going to present. I wanted to see it head on and not turn aside from it. This time it was different. I felt a physical pain in my shoulders. There was a tightness that had not been there before. I’m wondering if that was always there after eating chocolate, and because I was in pain, I got angry. Perhaps it has always caused that pain, and I didn’t notice it. Perhaps I felt bad because of that pain and it came out as irritable.

Pain makes people not themselves. Pain transforms people. Pain can also be a great teacher. It can let you know that something is wrong, or that you are resisting when you need to let go.

I’m trying to come to grips with my back pain. Sure, I’ve seen the x-ray. I have scoliosis. A disc slipped out of place because of it. But is this a symptom? Is there some emotional issue that is coming out? Mental pain tends to take the route of least resistance. I’m reading “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay, and some of it is quite intriguing. Some of it sounds like “blaming the victim” however, so I’m skeptical. She says that back problems are a sign of “repressed rage.”

And I thought I was doing well. I just recently got to the point that I could admit I was angry. There are a lot of things that I’m not happy about, things that I think should have gone differently in my past and things that I think should go differently now. I’ve dug down to the root and found grief. Somewhere on that journey the two cancelled each other out and I found some measure of calm. It all stems from not accepting what is. It stems from not accepting, period. Sometimes the biggest pain comes from fighting the situation.

Don’t we need to fight situations sometimes? Shouldn’t we get upset about certain things? Otherwise slavery would have continued. Otherwise women wouldn’t be allowed to vote. Otherwise all sorts of things that some people thought of as normal and other people thought of as wrong would have continued, unabated. Anger can be a force for change.

But there has to be more to this. “Repressed rage”? That sounds really harsh. Nobody wants to have rage. Rage is anger gone crazy. Rage is ugly. Rage is a sign of a lack of control. The Hulk has rage. All the super villains are filled to the brim with rage. It is their undoing.

How do you get rid of rage? No really, how? Sometimes I do things backwards, and what seems really simple to me is really hard for everybody else – and what seems really hard for me is really simple for everybody else. I got labeled “gifted” in second grade but that doesn’t mean that I know how to take care of a house or plan a week’s worth of meals. In many ways I’m very backwards. So I think I’m doing it right, and then my back flares up again. Maybe it just isn’t time for that part of the game yet. Maybe I am missing that puzzle piece.

Sometimes I feel like when I reach an impasse in my life, it is like I’m stuck in an adventure game.

Yes, I like that metaphor. I use it a lot. It works. Perhaps adventure games are modeled on life, instead of the other way around. Whatever. Work with me here.

I’ve been all over the first level inside the mansion, and I can’t get out to the garden to continue on with the rest of the game. Sometimes I can find a hint, and it refers to something I should have noticed four screens and twenty minutes ago. It was right there – the green heart! I needed it to put in the statue so I could get the code for the box that has the key to the garden. The green heart was in plain sight on the bookshelf. I didn’t notice it because I was distracted by something else on that screen.

So life is like that for me. I miss things that should be obvious, while figuring other things out that should be hard. Meanwhile I get stuck, wondering how to get out of the situation and go on with things.

There are a lot of things I have started doing in the morning to reduce stress. I think of them as taking a multi-vitamin for the day. I eat a healthy breakfast, I read the Daily Office, I do some light yoga, I write, and if I can, I draw. That is a lot of stuff to try to do in the morning. Somehow I can never manage to get up when the alarm goes off so I miss 30 minutes of that time. Just trying to shoehorn all that in along with checking email and Facebook just seems to be stress-inducing itself. So I’m trying to reassess what I do.

Exercise is good for burning things out too. I go to the Y and I exercise at least three times a week. I walk at lunch for 20 minutes. I write while I walk, and while I eat lunch. Perhaps I’m trying to do too much. Perhaps I need to spend some more time doing “non-productive” things and start reading more fluff and less technical stuff. Perhaps I need to stop having so many rules about what is safe and healthy to eat. But then I worry about that too, and I don’t want to backslide.

I know moderation is the key. Balance is important in everything. Walking the middle path, and not going to extremes, and all that.

The funny part is, I’ve been here before, with other things. This is the same story, but just with different characters. And I know that God has already given me everything I need to get to the next step. I feel that it is right in front of me and I just can’t see it. Sometimes I feel that life is just one series of pop quizzes from God after another.

My spiritual advisor says to “invite Jesus into it.” I’ve done that. He’s not answering the phone. Or he is, and it is just such a simple answer that I can’t believe it so I’m ignoring it. Kind of like the story of Naaman and the prophet Elisha (2 Kings, chapter 5 if you want to look it up). It sounds too easy, so it can’t be true.

Or I just want the quick fix, when really it is going to take a while.

Last night I was feeling really anxious about something, and instead of trying to jump right past it and get to the not-feeling-anxious feeling, I decided to stop and just look at it, and just see it as a feeling. Just see it, as it was, and not label it as “bad” but just as it is. Poof. It disappeared.

Maybe it is time to not run away from my pain and what very well might be rage. Maybe it is time to see it and accept it. Maybe it is time to sit down with Jesus and say “Here is my rage. What are we going to do about it?”

And maybe Jesus will hold it, and me, tenderly, and cry with me about it.