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Possessed pigs.

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Jesus wasn’t always appreciated for healing people. He healed two people who were possessed by demons, and the townspeople begged him to leave the town.

In Matthew 8:28-34 (NRSV) we read that –
“28 When he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs coming out of the tombs met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way. 29 Suddenly they shouted, “What have you to do with us, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” 30 Now a large herd of swine was feeding at some distance from them. 31 The demons begged him, “If you cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” 32 And he said to them, “Go!” So they came out and entered the swine; and suddenly, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the water. 33 The swineherds ran off, and on going into the town, they told the whole story about what had happened to the demoniacs. 34 Then the whole town came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighborhood.”

I always find it interesting that the people who recognize Jesus as the Son of God are always the possessed ones. Everybody else had to figure it out the hard way, if they figured it out at all. Many times Jesus tells those who recognize him to not tell anybody. He wants to keep a low profile.

But there is no hiding when you kill off a bunch of pigs.

Sure, these two people were possessed. They weren’t just a problem to themselves, they were a problem to others. They were “so fierce that no one could pass that way.” When he cast out the demons and they went into the nearby herd of pigs, the people went back to being normal. The pigs were not. The pigs drowned themselves.

I can see how this would be a problem. The town had probably already written off these two people who were possessed. They were just the crazy folk who stand at the edge of town and yell at people. This happens sometimes.

But pigs, now, that’s starting to get into money. They were being raised for sale. When the whole herd jumps off a cliff, that is a lot of money jumping off a cliff too. Sure the townspeople were ticked off.

Forget that two members of their town were now restored to sanity.

Forget that a miracle just occurred.

How often do we do this today? How often do we get our priorities mixed up? How often do we see how things affect us and forget to see the big picture?

Lots.

People are meant to be loved, and things are meant to be used.
All too often we get that backwards.

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.

“Be perfect…”

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The word “perfect” in Greek is “teleios”, which is phonetically spelled (tel’-i-os). According to Strong’s Concordance it means “(a) complete in all its parts, (b) full grown, of full age”, in the sense of having reached its end, complete, mature, and adult.

I was at a meeting at a friend’s house and a lady brought forth the concept that the word is related to “telescope”. She understood for this word to mean that “perfect” isn’t an end, but a continuum. With her idea, the seed, the sapling, and the tree are all the same. They are perfect. She related it to when Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Jesus says this at the end of the section with the Beatitudes, and where he tells us to be kind to everybody, not just the nice people.

Now, her translation of the word isn’t accurate as far as I can determine, but I still like the idea, so I’m going to go with it. I think her understanding of it is far more helpful when we are trying to have patience with ourselves.

With her translation, Jesus isn’t talking about perfect in the way we think of the word perfect. How can we possibly be perfect like God is perfect? That is impossible. That is completely against human nature. We are fallible. We make mistakes. Making mistakes is part of the package deal for mortality.

God sees us on a continuum. We are not stopped in time with God. We are past and future and present all at the same time. Remember, God is the alpha and omega all at once. God is, was, and shall be.

There is a book called “Trout are Made of Trees”. It is a children’s biology book. The concept is that trees rot and fall into the water. Bugs eat the rotted trees. Trout eat the bugs. Thus, trout are made of trees. Subsequently, if we eat the trout, we are eating the bugs that ate the trees, so we too are made of trees (and bugs, and trout…) There is no beginning or end.

Thich Nhat Hahn says in “Living Buddha, Living Christ” that when we look at a flower, we are actually looking at time. We are looking at all the time it took for it to develop, and all the elements required to create it. We are looking at the sun and the rain that it took to grow the flower. It is simply those elements combining in that way at that moment that we name “flower”.

It isn’t a flower, really. It is elements, and time, and our perception.

We humans only see things as they are right now. How amazing it would be to see past and future at the same time, but I suspect it would be overwhelming. I just don’t think we are wired that way. I think it would short out our fuses. It is like trying to run a 110 appliance on a 220 outlet. It just can’t handle that input.

How much of that limitation is physical and how much of that is societal? How much of that is because that is how we are taught to see? We can imagine, however. Our Zen friends try to see this way. They slow time by meditating and by intensely focusing on the moment right in front of them.

We are perfect. We are made up of all that has come before us, and all that we will ever be. Where we are now is perfect. Who we are now is perfect. It may not seem like it, but try to see it with God’s perspective.

God knows our past and still loves us. God knows our future. God is in charge, and God is perfect. The prophet Jeremiah tells us “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

We are who we are today because of our struggles. We will be who we are tomorrow and a year from now because of what we overcame today.

Be perfect, knowing that you already are.

The escape artist.

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It was a very hard time when my Mom was sick. There were a lot of very difficult things that needed to be done, and only me to do them. I was in my early twenties and my family and friends had bailed on me.

I wasn’t prepared for any of this. My Mom wasn’t supposed to die at 53. I didn’t know how to deal with chest tubes or administering medicine every four hours for months at at a time. Just because I’m a daughter doesn’t mean I’m a competent caregiver.

So I separated myself. I believe it is called dissociation. I was there, sort of. I did all the stuff that had to be done, but I didn’t think about it. My mind wasn’t there. It was too hard to deal with but I couldn’t run away from it like my brother and father did. So I ran away in my mind. It was kind of being like an escape artist, like Houdini. I smoked a little pot to take the edge off. Years later when I had the time I went a little crazy because I’d not had the ability or time to grieve. There is nothing like learning how to deal with grief like being in a mental hospital.

There isn’t any training for this. It is hard enough to watch your mother die. It is hard to be a caregiver for someone who is dying. It is impossible when the dying person is your Mom.

It is very intimate caring for someone who is dying. It is very intimate to be with them in the middle of the night when they start freaking out about all the things they haven’t done, or about the afterlife. It is very intimate dealing with bodily fluids and pain.

In a way it was my gift to her. She gave birth to me. I helped her die. There is a strange balance here.

She didn’t die well. She had spent most of her life avoiding thinking about the future or anything really important. She didn’t plan ahead. She had no retirement fund. She didn’t take care of her health. She never got any education past high school. As for her soul, she ended up getting her religious education from me.

It is very weird being your mother’s teacher. I had read quite a bit about religious matters in the previous years, and had returned to church at 20. It was the same church where she was married, but hadn’t gone to since. The minister I found for her was from the Episcopal student ministry I was part of. He didn’t know much about how to prepare someone for death, so I got to do it. Something was better than nothing. At one point I gave her a copy of Stephen Mitchell’s “The Gospel According to Jesus.” The priest thought it was watered down. He didn’t approve of that translation. He wanted her to read the Bible. I pointed out that she didn’t have time to read the original. Sometimes you aren’t able to eat big meals, and all you can handle is baby food. This was the Gospel in a distilled version, just the words of Jesus. Easy to digest. Baby food. It got the point across in a way she could handle.

But there was nobody there to train me. There was nobody around to tell me how to deal with the heaviness of my Mom dying and the heaviness of dealing with the strangeness of dealing with the very real and very gross nature of dealing with someone who is terminally ill. I prayed a lot. God helped.

One “friend” wrote to me to tell me how sad she was that my mother was dying. Her advice to me was to “let Jesus into my heart”. I can’t stand Christians sometimes, and I am Christian. I was really angry when I read that letter. She didn’t know that I’d gotten confirmed years earlier. She didn’t know that I went to church every week on my own. She didn’t know that I’d helped create the Episcopal student ministry. She didn’t know because she didn’t ask. She’d been a friend in high school but we’d grown apart. She assumed that the answer to my problem was Jesus, not knowing that I was already a Christian. She would have taught me more about Jesus if she had shown up and helped. “Letting Jesus into my heart” didn’t get the laundry done or the groceries bought. “Letting Jesus into my heart” didn’t help when my Mom needed more pain medicine or a Valium at four in the morning.

Houdini died from being punched in the stomach. He had a trick that he did where you could punch him in the stomach as hard as you wanted and he wouldn’t be hurt. The deal was that he had to prepare for it first. He had to know it was coming. The person who punched him the last time didn’t know about that and just hit him.

We are like this. We need time to prepare for heavy things. We can handle quite a bit if we have some warning and training. But when we get blindsided, we can get really hurt.

This experience didn’t kill me, but it did teach me a lot. It taught me about my own strength. It taught me that there were a lot of people I couldn’t depend on. It made me grow up fast, a little faster than I was ready for.

Thoughts about yoga.

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Yoga is like learning how to drive your body. Yes, I stole this from Dharma from the show “Dharma and Greg”. It is still true. We take our bodies for granted, but they require skill to learn how to use. Consider that your body is a biosuit for your soul. Look at a professional dancer or martial artist. They can do things normal people can’t. It is because of training. Yoga is training for the average person to be able to do amazing things.

Yoga unkinks your body and your mind. Sure, you are stretching your muscles and tendons. But somehow your brain gets stretched too. Things seem to flow better. Stresses are easier to deal with.

Yoga is like acupuncture for your whole body. It makes the energy flow.

Yoga is like getting a full-body massage, but nobody has to touch you and you don’t have to get naked.

Doing yoga daily is like taking a multivitamin for your soul. I enjoy it when we set an intention at the beginning of practice. It is where you make a prayer, or a goal. What do you want to focus on, mentally, physically, or spiritually? What area in you or in the world needs love and light and growth? That is where you place your intention. That way, the entire practice is a prayer.

Yoga teaches you acceptance. This is acceptance not only of where you are, but who you are. It is about learning to work with what is, instead of what you’d like it to be. It is important not to compare how you are doing with other people in the room. The practice is your practice, not theirs. They are different, and that is OK. There will be things that they can do easily, and that are hard for you. There will be things that you can do easily, and is hard for them. There will be things that were easy for you last week, but are hard today. Every day is different, just like every person is different.

It is yoga practice, not yoga perfect.

Yoga teaches balance in body and mind. Sure, you may learn finally how to do Warrior three, or Eagle without having to stand next to something to grab onto for support. But there is something subtle about yoga that it teaches balance to your mind too. It realigns things. I don’t know how it works, but that is OK. I don’t know how electricity works, but I still take advantage of it.

The hardest thing about yoga is showing up. You say you want to, but you’ve just never made it to a class. Or you’ve gone for years and it has gotten boring and you think that you’ll take some time off. A week becomes a month becomes a year.

Yoga teaches discipline, but not a rigid sort. It isn’t “do this, this way”. There is a lot of flexibility. You certainly don’t make up all the poses – you are learning things that have been done this way for thousands of years. But, you are submitting to this practice, this path. Somehow you find yourself there, and you’ve learned a lot by aligning yourself with it.

Yoga strengthens and tones. There will be muscles you’ve never seen before. It is amazing and beautiful and inspiring to see these muscles develop. Forearms? Abs? Gotcha. They will look stunning. So will everything else.

It is weightlifting, but the only weight is you. No equipment to misplace, and completely portable.

Glass (half full? half empty?)

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The glass isn’t half empty, or half full. It is half a glass of water. Simple. See? No “positive” or “negative” spin. It just is, with no definition or judgment.

See how we are shaped to think in certain ways when we are given only certain choices? Our language frames us. We are shaped by it. When you are asked to decide whether the glass is half empty or half full, you aren’t actually being given a choice. It looks like it. But really, the smartest thing you can do is to step back from the question and wonder why the person is trying to get you to decide either way. Whoever is asking you wants to define you. Are you an optimist, or a pessimist?

In reality, the glass is half full and half empty at the same time. You can look at it however you want, and it has nothing to do with your perspective. There is only half a glass of water. Defining it as half-full or half-empty does nothing for the amount of water.

Sure, you can get excited that you have some water to drink, or you can get sad that you don’t have a full glass of water to drink. Or, far healthier for your head, you can just notice that there is half a glass of water. It isn’t full, and it isn’t empty. It is right in the middle.

A lot of our problems come from a need to define something as good or bad. Often we define it in relation to ourselves – does it benefit me, or harm me? Often we define it in relation to our experience at the moment. We don’t have the full picture, so we decide something is bad at the time, when later we think it is good, or vice versa. Situations change. We change.

But sometimes the issue is that we are tricked. We are asked to define something that doesn’t need defining. Someone points out something for us to notice, and by omission we don’t notice everything else. It is a pretty powerful trick. Look over here, meanwhile the real action is going over somewhere else.

If you ask a child if she wants to wear the blue jumper or the red jumper, you’ve deftly sidestepped the issue of maybe she doesn’t want to wear a jumper at all. Maybe she wants to wear a sarong or a sweater. And maybe she doesn’t want to get dressed to go out right now and wants to stay in her pajamas.

Be wary of how you are being directed and channeled. See what is there.

The Black Hole of Crazy

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Sometimes I feel the best thing I can do is just to not get drawn into other people’s black holes of crazy. Crazy/angry/upset people have an energy about them that is like its own gravity. It is easy to get swept up and swept away. It is easy to get lost.

I remember a time when a manager was arguing with me over the best way to handle a bad situation. The program that we used at work had gone down and there was a way to check people out in the meantime. It was the way I’d been trained, and it worked, and I’d used it for over a decade. It turns out there was another way to do it that had been policy for years. She wanted me to learn it right then. Right in the middle of a bad situation is not the time to learn a new procedure. It is a great time to stick with a known good.

She got very upset with me that I refused to try the new procedure right then. Part of her anger came from the fact that my boss should have taught us this, and she can’t stand my boss. Part of her anger came from the fact that she is supposed to be in charge and she really isn’t. You can be a manager in name only.

I was getting drawn into her anger and her argument. I was feeling that anger, that tension. This used to be common for me. I’d get that deer in the headlights look when someone would argue or yell, and lose myself in the mix.

I hate feeling like that. I’ve prayed about it, I’ve read books on nonviolent conflict resolution, and I’ve studied yoga. But it is hard to be objective about what is going on when you are sucked into it.

Until I did.

Somehow at that moment I was able to step outside of my feelings and observe them. I didn’t like how I felt. I didn’t like having an argument about something that didn’t need to be argued about right then. Or ever, really. There is very little in life that needs to be yelled. Building on fire? Yell. Policy change? Don’t yell. Easy.

In the middle of that getting-worse situation, I looked at her and said “we aren’t arguing about this right now.”

And somehow, we weren’t. It stopped. The black hole of crazy lost all of its power. It stopped sucking, in more ways than one. The situation got handled and it was OK.

I was stunned. I was surprised that I was able to be objective in that crazy moment. I was surprised that simply saying that we weren’t going to argue meant that we didn’t.

And I’m thankful for this new learning, that it takes two to argue. By my intentional action, peace happened. By my presence and calm, the issue was fixed.

Peace can start within, with one person.

It took a long time for me to get to the space where I could be objective about my feelings and then act accordingly. It took a long time to get where my feelings weren’t driving the bus. It took a long time to get where my “monkey mind” wasn’t winning. I’m glad to know it is possible. It takes a lot of practice to keep this awareness going, but I see the results. Calm me means calm people around me. My awareness is healing.

I want more of this. I want more people to be aware of this. If we are all aware of the tricks our minds and bodies play on us, then we are all going to do a lot better. We don’t have to get drawn into the black hole of crazy that comes from other people, or from within.

By staying calm, we keep the peace.

Salamander art

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I said that I wanted to draw every day and that is not happening. I’m not making time for it on a regular basis, and when I do make the time (not enough, but something) I feel that I’m not doing my best. I make up color tests, rather than sketching something that is there. Or I do the praying-in-color thing, where I doodle and pray at the same time. It helps me realize something or get something out. It is something, but not what I wanted. It isn’t my best work. It is something. Currently I’m reassessing my drawing. There is only so much time in the day, and I wonder when I can shoehorn everything in.
Life is about choices. And it is about deciding what you are going to focus on. And it is also about admitting defeat or trudging on.
I’m glad I got over the objection that I wanted unlimited time to do this. I have a clock in my craft room that I look at, and I’ve not run late yet. I’d rather be able to spend as much time as I want, but I’ve learned that if I don’t have a time limit, I tend to not even get started. It makes no sense, but it is that way it is.
Praying or crafting is a little like swimming. I stop being part of time, of the “real” world, and I connect with the endless. I leave the known of the dry land and I enter another world, where the normal rules don’t apply. It is hard to want to come back, and it is hard to make that switch when I must come back because I have to go to work. Sometimes I resent having to go to work, because of the time it takes out of my week. I like my job – I’m grateful to have a job that I can do well, and it has health insurance and a pension. It is hard to be an adult sometimes.
Then I remember the salamander again. It is dual natured. It needs water to survive. It has to be near water. It was born in water, breathing it. It evolves, and then it can breathe air, but never fully is able to leave the water. It can’t breathe water again after a certain point, but it needs to be near water – it needs to feel the water on its skin on a regular basis or it will shrivel up and die.
I’ve heard that the Torah is the same as water. The Word of God is water. Jesus tells us that he is living water.
Funny how I got that salamander tattoo a long time ago, and it is my touchstone now. It is pulling me back to myself.
It is a reminder of then, and a reminder of a promise, and it is a way-marker and a milestone. It shows then and future at the same time. Like all good messengers from God, it has many layers of meaning, and it is always true. I just can’t interpret it all yet. But it helps. It helps me remember, and pull myself back in.
Funny how this tattoo, this symbol of a salamander, refers to opposites – to fire and to water. Funny how it is a tiny creature, yet has such a mythology around it.
I’m learning how to be creative and have a full-time job at the same time. I’m learning how to be the salamander – to be in and with and near and part of art and work, at the same time. I’m learning to not separate the parts of who I am into pieces, but integrate them into a whole.

(updated 1-18-18)

Getting hit by lightning. Or not.

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While walking to my car on the way to work this morning, I noticed that the sky was very dark and heavy with storm clouds. The air was sticky with humidity. I had the distinct impression that a storm could happen at any moment, and that there could be lightning. Just ahead to my right, about four feet away I looked at the driveway. I had an impression that there was a lot of energy there, like lightning could strike. It felt then as if there was a strike, right there, too close for comfort.

This is hard to explain. It is as if I saw a lightning strike with my mind’s eye. I didn’t see the lightning, either real or imagined. I felt that it was simply there, beyond my normal perception.

What would I do if there was a lightning strike that close to me? Probably freak out. I seem to remember that you are supposed to drop to the ground but don’t drop flat. Just crouch down, so you aren’t tall anymore. Lightning looks for tall things. Lightning tries to bridge the gap and make a connection.

I stopped for a moment. Was I predicting a hit? Nothing happened. I kept going and went on to my car.

I was reminded at the time of the tale of Balaam’s donkey. It tried to warn him of danger ahead.

I’m reminded now of the tale of Moses and the burning bush.

A lot of crazy-sounding things happened in the Bible, to otherwise everyday people. But somehow we downplay such experiences today if a person says they are having a similar experience. We tend to think that the person is making it up, or needs to be locked up.

A little later on at work, I had the distinct impression that there was a man sitting in the chair just ahead of the area where I was working. It was approximately the same position from me when I was at home and I felt the lightning strike.

Weird. Is it a ghost? TheHoly Spirit? Again, I paused. Anybody there? What would I do if it was a manifestation of God, a messenger? Not a lot of training around for that.

Yet we are of a faith that tells us that God is seeking us. That God wants to connect with us.

God is that lightning bolt, wanting to make that connection.

In the Old Testament, people usually threw themselves down to the ground when a messenger from God appeared before them. Whether in fear or in humility, who knows? But whatever the reason, they made themselves smaller. Perhaps they didn’t want to be hit.

But I’m standing. I’m standing before God, saying here I am. Use me. Send me. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, but I know that you are in control. It doesn’t make sense. But here I am.

I remember that every time I’ve needed a tool, a supply, it has been when I was unprepared. I was a good Girl Scout. I’ve got a first aid kit. I have phone numbers of community services. But every time that something big has happened, I happen to not have my kit or my phone.

So every time I pray, and God provides what is needed.

Perhaps that is what God is reminding me of.

I’m debating taking some classes. I’m thinking some classes about how to perform life-event ceremonies would be helpful. You know, weddings, funerals, the like. People need ceremonies and rituals to mark changes, to say “this has happened”. It is like how the Israelites were forever putting stones on top of each other in the desert to indicate that something amazing happened there. They’d mark that spot so when they came back to it they would remember. Ceremonies are like that, but for time. They mark not a place, but a transition from one time to another. Marriage, birth, graduation, a death – we have ceremonies for these things. I’ve looked online and the classes are long and expensive. It might not work out with my work schedule.

Maybe God is saying stop worrying about this. You don’t need a certificate to do this. Remember every time you needed to have something with you, it wasn’t there? Relax, and pray. Just like with the disciples, the Holy Spirit will give you the words.

But maybe God is telling me something like Noah. Build an ark. Get prepared.

So now I’m waiting for the third instance. I’m waiting for another sign. When I have them all together I’ll have enough data to go on. Maybe. That is what I’m telling myself. Sometimes the path for following God isn’t clear. It is like stepping from one pool of light, to one small stone, to another pool of light that just appeared right then when you stepped on that stone. Sometimes you just stand there and no light appears, and you just go forward anyway.

Meanwhile, this all sounds crazy. But I don’t feel crazy, and both times I was I knew it. And I get solace from the fact that there are a lot of crazy-sounding stories in the Bible.

Just look at Elijah and Isaiah and Daniel and Jonah. Look at Abraham and Jacob. Crazy stories. You’d have to be crazy to think that God is talking to you, right? Yet we have a book that is full of these stories. We have a faith built on these stories.

You’d have to be crazy to think that God isn’t talking to you.

Kay and Jane – on saying no.

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There were two ladies, Kay and Jane. Kay had been working on a project most of the day at a large table. This table was rarely used during the day. It was primarily used in the morning and in the evening. Jane had seen Kay working on this project all day, and had seen how involved it was. There were many pieces of paper and many folders to sort them into. As the evening came, it came to be the time when Jane would normally use that table. There were other tables that could be used, but they didn’t have quite as much surface area. Kay asked Jane if it was OK if she used one of those other tables for her (Jane’s) project.

Jane said OK. She took her project over to another table and did it. It took 20 minutes.

Then she complained to Brenda, afterwards. “If I wasn’t so tired, I would have told her no, move!”

But she didn’t. She held the resentment in.

Important to this story is that Kay and Jane have had extreme difficulty talking to each other for many years. Jane is Kay’s supervisor, but feels that Kay does whatever she wants. In a way this is true. Kay doesn’t ask for permission to do a new project – she tells Jane she is going to do.

Also, both were raised in abusive homes where they were not taught about proper boundaries.

So who is in the wrong? Kay for not seeing that Jane would want to use that large table that she was working at? Kay could have finished her project earlier, or moved it.

Or Jane? Jane could have said, “No, that is a problem and I’d rather use that table”. Or Jane could have noticed an hour earlier how long and involved this project was and advised Kay that she would like to use that table at 7.

It was a big project, certainly. It was very involved, and would have wasted a lot of time to move.

My take? Jane was in the wrong. Kay asked if it was OK, and Jane agreed. It is immature to acquiesce to something that you aren’t willing to acquiesce to. You have to stand up for yourself – because honestly nobody else is going to. Also, the other tables were certainly usable. They weren’t ideal, but they weren’t terrible either. It was more of an inconvenience to Kay to move than for Jane to move.

The funny/sad part is that even if Kay had not asked Jane if it was OK for her to stay where she was and for Jane to use another table, Jane would have been upset. Jane is like that. And she would have complained to Brenda, who has no control over the situation. Venting to a third party never fixes the problem, and only brings the third party into your own personal mess.

I once read a great story about two guys who were trying to figure out what they were going to do that weekend. Bob asked Frank if he wanted to go fishing. Frank didn’t really want to go fishing, but thought that Bob wanted to go, so he said OK. Turns out that Bob didn’t want to fish either, he thought Frank did. So they both went fishing, and they both were miserable. It would have been great if they both had been honest. They could have had a really good time together if they hadn’t spent so much time trying to second-guess what each other wants.

I had a friend who stopped by my work one day. I asked her if she wanted to go to a frozen yogurt place for a little bit as I was about to get off of work. She said no, and said we’d need to arrange something later. A coworker thought this was very rude. It isn’t. She had other plans then that I didn’t know about. She was about to go out to supper with her husband. Also, she didn’t like to eat frozen yogurt right before a meal – both things that I didn’t know. She was taking her needs into consideration.

I’d rather her say no than say yes and feel resentful.

To agree to something just to make somebody else happy isn’t honest. If your agreeing to it harms you or is an inconvenience to you, then you have to speak up. If two people are involved in a situation, both people’s needs have to be met. Sometimes a compromise is involved. Sometimes neither party will get her way and nothing happens at all.

It is difficult to say no. We are taught to be people-pleasers. We are taught to keep the peace. But it is very important that we don’t become doormats.
Better to say no and feel guilty than to say yes and feel resentful.

It helps to analyze why you feel guilty to say no. Were you taught this by your parents or teachers? Were you taught that to speak your mind was bad? Were you taught that to stand up for yourself is bad? Perhaps they taught you this way because their parents or teachers taught them the same thing. Perhaps they feel a need to control others they feel are lesser than them.

Be a good little girl, and finish your meal.
(But you are full)

Don’t talk back.
(But what they are asking you to do is wrong)

Don’t marry this guy, he’s not the same race as you.
(But we love each other)

Don’t be friends with her, she’s lower class.
(But the upper class girls are rude.)

Awaken.
Awaken.
Awaken.