The Crack in the Floor Sunday, Aug 16 2009

The last couple of days were rough. It feels silly and stupid to write that in the past tense — the roughness only stopped about ten minutes ago when I left my bed and logged on. I didn’t expect that to make me feel better, but for some reason giving up on sleep and listening to some woe-is-us break-up music has soothed me.

Resentment and I have been slugging it out, toe-to-toe, and it’s been to the gym since the last time we squared off.

I know it’s no good, these thoughts of blame and anger directed at someone else. It’s chewing over rotten meat — all you’re left with is mold on your tongue. But it’s such a challenge to escape.

I try to keep an even keel. I remind myself of my own one-sidedness, recall my own persistant failure to love. I acknowledge that the way I feel now that we are no longer together must be very similar to they way my wife often felt while we were. I admit to all the time I was given to change and make better choices, choices that considered someone else’s feelings over my own. Now I don’t have that time anymore. Now it’s my feelings left in the dark.

It’s only fair.

But that doesn’t make it right.

And there’s the crack in the floor I fall into. Because whatever fed into it, the ripping apart of two people joined by vows is a betrayal. The fact that my daughter doesn’t live with me anymore, she visits; soap gets in her eyes during her bath and she cries for mommy — the simplest, most natural request of a child — and I have to tell her she’ll see mommy tomorrow, because mommy’s somewhere else.

You feel powerless and it’s natural to point fingers at someone else.

But that’s the lie. I feel powerless. But that’s only how I feel. And I’m learning to perceive through the illusion.

Anger is a threat response. Someone cuts you off on the freeway, you feel endangered, you yell in your car. Doesn’t make you any safer.

I’ve been wrestling with resentment and anger and bitterness. Somehow, tonight during the walk from my bedroom to the office, I stepped out of the ring. Somehow my soul recognized that everything that upsets me is a lie. And a lie only has power over you if you engage it. Fight or give in, you are subject to it either way. You win by not fighting.

So I didn’t come through as a husband. I’m a better man today then I was yesterday.

So I was betrayed. That’s a result of someone else’s choice to believe a lie. I don’t have to believe it too.

So my daughter got soap in her eyes. We rinsed it out. She went to sleep. In the morning she’ll wake up and see her mommy.

And that’s something to be grateful for.

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
- John W. Gardner

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Chronological Complex Wednesday, Oct 24 2007

So, I think I am going to have to abandon the idea that this blog is going to work on a chronological basis. I simply don’t have the time and there is so much happening so fast for me to get it all down. I get overwhelmed and ignore the thing, which is even worse.

Instead, I’m going to switch over to an idea-centric approach. This seems to be the way I write anyways. But since I’m committing to the idea of posting along the line of ideas, rather than “and then this happened,” I won’t feel like I’m failing to get everything posted.

This should also help with the problem that a lot of people, from what they read here, are going away with the impression that I’m really depressed. For the record, I’m not depressed. Depressed is when you feel bad more than you should. That’s not me.

You see, I’m really hurting.

But something would be definitely wrong if I wasn’t. I see this in some of the advice I get–that if she doesn’t love me like she should, I don’t have any obligation anymore, that I’m being unhealthy or unaccepting by pining away from someone who’s over me, that I should accept her choice and go find someone who will treat me better.

Well, I think the only way to take that advice is to take all the hurt and pain and pretend like just because its wrong it doesn’t matter. Sorry gents, can’t go with you on this one. It hurts precisely because it is wrong, and its wrong because it hurts. That’s the inverse proof of the golden rule guys.

I mean, seriously, this is the single worse act of rejection in my life. Let’s say–theoritacally, because I don’t believe this is in the cards and even if it is I don’t know if I could play the hand–I get married again and then that woman–let’s call her Suzanne (wow, two dashed parentheticals in one sentence [and then a parantheticalled wry observation {okay this has got to stop}])–let’s say Suzanne divorces me, is that going to be as bad as the first time around? No. It will be bad, but as they say: you always remember your first.

I mean, how many other relationships do you have in life where someone stands up in front of everyone who matters to them and takes a vow to stick with you for life? Any employers doing that? Friends? Family didn’t get an option.

You see, I am still under an obligation, because when the pastor asked me to make my vows, he looked at me, and he asked me, and not once did he say “As long as Christina keeps vows too.” Nope, didn’t happen. My vows were just that: my vows. Christina can do what she wants. I’m going to keep mine, because that’s who I choose to be.

Am I crazy? We’ll see… but I’m staking everything on the belief that when I married this woman, God made us one, and that no matter what happens, he won’t abandon us. Because I don’t believe God is trying to screw me over with impossible situations. I believe he is trying to save all of us and show us the true meaning of joy with impossible situations.

So no, my friends, there is nothing else that I will ever experience that will pack more personal rejection. The whole world could have turned its back on me; if Christina would have still held my hand, it would have been fine. I’m hurting. A LOT. But I should be, given the situation. The real question is what am I going to do with that pain? There is no not hurting, there is accepting and acknowledging, or ignoring and being made a puppet.

I can’t control the pain. But I can find the purpose.

I list all the pain and hurt in my life because that’s what I’m using this blog for. To use this situation to get out all the bad stuff I’ve tried my whole life to cover over, and to do it out in the open so it might help others to do the same. So I’m sorry if what I have written has given the wrong impression. I haven’t been able to post everything here, Sadly a lot of what I’ve left out is the good times. For instance, last Saturday was wonderful.

—————-
Now playing: Angels & Airwaves – The Gift
via FoxyTunes

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Dichotomy unpeeled–this blows my mind. Sunday, Oct 7 2007

I am two people. A dead man and a living one.

I have complete freedom from myself because myself is deserving of nothing–on my own I am as dust.

I have complete freedom in myself because Christ is in me and He is deserving of everything.

These things were revealed while meditating several days ago. I’ve been trying to discern the right path between two unmovable truths:

1. My repeated actions have completely disqualified me from any claim to my marriage to Christina based on my own merits, etc. I made promises and didn’t fulfill them. I habitually broke her trust. I did not honor her as unique and special. As a lifestyle, I sought to control and manipulate my circumstances and therefore her. I ignored her feelings unless they threatened me; then I would approach them as a problem to solve, something to appease so the conflict would go away, rather than someone to love and care for. I demanded authenticity from her life while my own was rife with hypocrisy, demanded she give while I was selfish to such a degree that I couldn’t even see it.

2. I love her, and if I am not pursuing her I am less then who I am. She is God’s embodiment of love to me, and I to her. While I may have warped the way the truth was expressed in our lives and marriage through all the things listed above, that doesn’t change the underlying, certain as the orbit of the stars and the moon, reality that she is my wife, my soulmate, my Beloved. God joined us together in marriage, and we are One.

The confusion comes when deciding what actions to take. How can I act on the second truth when the first is inescapable? These realities both ARE, they exist, yet they have completely opposite velocities. How can their co-existence be reconciled, especially when all I have available is my own limited place in time?

Dana spoke at Mosaic last week. She chose the moment when Moses stepped forward and told God that if He wanted to destroy Israel–who had just blown it with the golden calf–that God was going have to zap Moses first. In fact, he threw more down on the table than just his life–he put his soul at risk.

How does a man do that? I think it’s because Moses knew he was already dead.

I think Moses always remembered that when he had tried his hand at delivering the Israelites from Egypt despite all the learning of a prince all he was able to come up with was violence. Murder. And the Israelites, who were experts in recognizing coercion, called him on it. “Will you strike me dead as you did the Egyptian yesterday?”

I think Moses knew the only reason he was still alive was because of grace. The very law he was delivering to the people said “An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.” The punishment for murder was death. Moses had committed this crime. The very fact that he was still breathing at all meant he of all people understood the necessity for love and compassion and mercy rather than judgment.

Does this mean he got off the hook? No. It meant he understood that God had a complete right to do whatever He wanted with Moses life.

Same with me. Ive committed sins that God clearly considers to be capital offenses. It doesn’t matter the sin. What matters is that I’ve blown it. My own life is forfeit. Will I physically die? No. I’ll just keep living this slow death of trying: trying to be loving, trying to be creative, trying to be effective, trying to be a leader, a good son, a good father, a good brother, a good husband.

And I will continue to fail, and to fall. Further and further into a pit of futility. Because all of my trying will be an attempt to deny the truth that will not go away. That I am NOT a good anything. I am not good. I am selfish. I am a thief and a murderer, if not of material goods and lives then of souls and love. On my own, my ultimate contribution is dust and worms, a plague on all people. And the harder I try to deny it, the more I’ll prove it true.

But if I can admit all of these things…

Then I can place this wretched life where it belongs. On a cross. And Christ can come off of His. He hung on his unto death. His work was completed. Now He lives. And unlike me, He lived a life of submission and love. He never sinned against God or man. He created all things and redeemed them. He is worthy of everything. And He lives in me.

When I show someone love, I love Christ. When someone loves me, they love Christ. Therefore, I can reconcile any guilt or feelings of unworthiness I have about receiving anything good in my life because it is really being received through me to Him. True, I don’t deserve it. But deserving and merit and works are appeased by the body hanging on the Hill of the Skull. I live because God lives in me, and whatever good I receive, it comes by mercy, by the understanding that it is right for Him to receive goodness and love and affection and joy through me.

And so I can be free. Both truths are acknowledged. The ways of the universe are appeased. And we may all live in fellowship and joy.

Found this little bit of advice on how to actually put some of this into practice:

“After you find the specific hurt that you’ve been running from, the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to face it and then embrace it. Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this way. Cry if you can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look over your life and see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of you.

Find the evidence to prove that you are worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else you’ve been avoiding.

Remember, this isn’t true in reality. This is only true in the realm of thinking and emotion. But in this realm, worthless is very real, and this is the realm where the healing needs to take place. So put yourself in the hurt of feeling this way and look at your life and see all the evidence to prove that you really are this way.

The evidence will be there if you are willing to see it. It has to be. It wouldn’t keep showing up in your life if it wasn’t there. You don’t have to like it. You just have to tell the truth about it. Let it in.

Worthless is part of you. It’s also no big deal. You are also worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being human. So allow yourself to be human.

Allow yourself to feel all the hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever your issue is. Feel the hurt willingly like a child. Let it come and let it go.

The more you let in the fact that this is an aspect of you, the more impossible it is to run from it. When you can’t run from it, you can’t fight it. When you can’t fight it, the issue loses power and disappears.”

—————-
Now playing: Honey – Force Majeure
via FoxyTunes

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I’ve Found My Guiding Light Friday, Oct 5 2007

I’ve written about my frustration with not having a clear direction to stick to in the midst of the storm that has beset my relationship with my wife, Christina. Well, I think my North Star has finally poked its head out from behind the clouds. I came across this quote online:

“Why is it the party in the wrong always asks the innocent party to adjust themselves? Because that is what addicts do. If you really ‘got it,’ you wouldn’t be asking how to get yet another chance. You would be more concerned with apologizing and making amends for what you have put this person through.

Your outlook is still self-serving, a sign you haven’t defeated your addictions. Focus on yourself and curing your addictions.”

Wow. THAT really pulls the cover off the mystery box.

…coming about to a new heading.

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A Lily Among the Thorns Friday, Sep 28 2007

So Christina wanted to check her e-mail while she was over. This blog is my homepage, so she saw it and she asked what the Fleur De Lys at the top was. I told her it was French. She asked what it meant. I didn’t really know.

Turns out its been around a lot longer then the French, although it is most strongly associated with their monarchy. The symbol is a stylized flower. Good ol’ wikipedia tells us that its also associated with the Trinity and the Annunciation of the birth of Christ by the arcangel Gabriel.

There’s also a reference to Song of Songs, where Solomon says:

“Like a lily among thorns,

So is my love among the daughters.”

Later, his Beloved responds:

“His left hand is under my head,

And his right hand embraces me.”

I think that will be the idea we are going to symbolize here.

—————-
Now playing: Paul Oakley – House of Gold
via FoxyTunes

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Three finger salute Wednesday, Sep 26 2007

I wonder if someone is praying for me right now…

I just had a realization that is so obvious, yet hasn’t occurred to me until just this moment.

While Christina was drifting away during the last few months, I pleaded with her: find a spiritually mature woman in your life who has been through what you’re going through now. Connect with someone who can give you hope, who’s own life proves that you can make it through your own struggles.

Sadly, Christina didn’t do this, but rather withdrew from most of the friends she did have.

Am I blogging about this to point the finger at Christina? Nope. Because as the old saying goes, there’s three more of my own pointing right back at me.

Where was my mentor?

Sure, I had counselors and friends and buddies and whole bunch or support people. But where was the more spiritually mature man leading me? Whose authority did I submit myself too?

Where was I setting an example?

There wasn’t one.

What does that make me? Telling someone else to do something I hadn’t done myself?

A hypocrite.

So interesting that such a blatant failure to lead should have escaped my attention for months until now.

The flipside is that whenever I discover a way I have been doing exactly what I’ve seen my spouse do or vice versa, when I see these thorough connections between our two lives and personalities, it makes me feel that we are really expressing one life–that we truly are soulmates.

Time to find a mentor. I’ve got a candidate in mind. Hope he’s not too busy. That’s the thing about mentors: they tend to be successful by definition and therefore subject to previous commitments. . .

—————-
Now playing: Red House Painters – Silly Love Songs
via FoxyTunes

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Just One Star to Navigate By Wednesday, Sep 26 2007

Thank God I have Him at all.

There is so much going on right now. Some of it is very good. Some of it is very bad. But it all adds up to a lot and I’m just trying to keep up.

I’m working now, and that’s going good. I’m going to push for them to move me up to server. It will be a stretch for me as a person. There’s a part of me that wants to stay a host because learning to be a server is a whole other ball game and I don’t know that I can swing it. Which is why I want to do it and knock the teeth out of that part of me. Perfect love casts out all fear.

I need the money I’d get from serving, now more than ever. I just found a letter from school saying my financial aid has been suspended. This is especially bad because I’m already behind on the rent. I was counting on my financial aid check. Now I’m not going to get it for at least two weeks, if at all. It depends on how my appeal goes to have it reinstated.

My writing is going very well. I have fifteen pages of my screenplay done. That means I’m 1/16th of the way to a finished draft. And my best friend Ramsey just got signed to a management group, so that’s really encouraging to hear he just got a greenlight in his acting career. He’s been persevering for years and years, so I hope some solid work comes out of this and soon.

Monday was a really good day with Christina. I love her so much. Anything good with her is mountain air for my heart and soul.

I’m trying so hard–so hard–to just give my life over to God’s direction. But I’m having such difficulty discerning His voice. I know this financial aid situation is a test of faith. The timing was so conspicuous.

Here’s what I know:

I am supposed to write.

I am to be patient and let Him work.

I am to trust in Him to provide.

I am to fulfill all of my obligations to the best of my ability.

I am to worship and praise Him and seek His rest in the midst of my strivings.

Only two out of five of these things are clear to me: the writing and the worship. The other three, I don’t know quite how to go about. Sometimes I have ideas, but I wonder if I should pursue them or not. Sometimes I can’t think of a thing. There are other things, especially concerning Christina,

where I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL I AM DOING. I know my life is a journey, that I won’t become who I want to be in a day.

I just want to be who I am supposed to be on this day.

I’m at sea, the water is glassy smooth, the sun is hidden by the clouds, the GPS went overboard weeks ago, and I am just desperate for some kind of marker so I can set a course.

I know You are out there. I can feel you lifting my despair when it encroaches.

But what am I to do?

—————-
Now playing: Moi – You Said
via FoxyTunes

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The Root of the Problem Saturday, Sep 22 2007

So last night I’m at work and there’s a new girl who is going through host training. She’s actually coming on as a server, but you have to know just about everything so they have you cross train through all the different stations. I’ve been there for all of a week and a half, but I guess that’s enough to train someone else. Actually it isn’t, because most of her questions exposed my ignorance of my own job–but hey, maybe in three weeks I’ll know everything.

Hosting the front desk at a restaurant reminds me of something a jet fighter pilot said about his job: long periods of tedium and boredom punctuated by a few minutes of pulse-pounding terror. Okay, so I haven’t experienced any terror at work, just a crush when all the reservations and a couple of walks-ins wanting a table for six all show up while three phone lines are ringing. But in between there’s not much to do but talk.

So its fairly soon that my current marital un-status comes up; especially if I mention my daughter. It goes: “Oh, you have a daughter? How old is she? How old are you? Really? Are you married?”

So I say my wife is divorcing me and it sucks because its definitely not fun, but its okay, and if they ask why is it okay I let them know because God has promised me that no matter what He loves me and nothing is beyond His Love and He works everything for good, or as much of that as I can say that I feel will be received .

So this time she asks and I say,”Yeah, sort of. I’m going through a divorce right now.” And her response is “Oh. That’s too bad. Were you financially unstable?”

I had to smile. She’s right of course–finances are an important component in any family. But it stood out to me that she asked about money first, and in such a carefully crafted Country-Clubbish code question. You only learn to talk like that at that age from the folks you grow up with. When I answered honestly “Why yes. Yes we were,” it seemed to suitably diagnose the root cause of the problem for her.

Was money a problem? A stress inducer? Oh yes. But WHY, dear friends, was there a lack of money?

There was no money because there was no passion. There were dreams. There were not adventures.

That was the problem.

—————-
Now playing: Tegan and Sara – We Didn’t Do It
via FoxyTunes

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