Being there

Rough day for our daughter and grandchildren yesterday. Don't think we're getting the full picture, but then, we really don't need it. Just need to be a pillar for them.

For godddaughter, too.

We all need somebody to lean on . . . 

The Wall

When I was in my first college career (i.e., my partying career), I misinterpreted the meaning of Pink Floyd's tour de force in multiple ways. For instance, I thought Goodbye, Cruel World was a song about suicide. It wasn't until I read more about the album a couple decades later that I understood what they were actually conveying there.

Sometimes it's all I can do to not put the final brick in.

And sometimes I wonder if I haven't already.

This is my normal

It isn't my new normal; it has been my normal for a really long time now. The thing is, the things that could change it don't appear to be options for me. I will keep trusting in God and letting Him remind me to be thankful rather than resentful. There is so much to appreciate.

"This" is still an anagram.

F* ptsd

YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT TO READ THIS.



in my nightmare, i am my current age. my stepfather is here, in my house. i am alone with him, but i know he is now too old and senile to be a threat anymore. i am showering downstairs when he shockingly pulls open the shower curtain and starts to climb in with me. how did i not hear him open the bathroom door? he isn't nearly his current physical age, and he reacts to my shock and my insistence that he leave by brandishing his tiny erection and clear intentions, cackling his fucking abusive amused cackle. i somehow flee the bathroom and run upstairs while he continues showering and calling out to me to come back. i consider calling 911, knowing now as i didn't then that this is how to respond to his abusive actions. but i imagine them dismissing the threat, chalking the incident up to his senility and advanced age. still naked, i grab the chef's knife and go back down the stairs, where he is still showering in the closed bathroom, but decide that probably won't go well. "why hadn't i locked the door?" i excoriate myself, again piling guilt on myself that has always rightly belonged to him, just as he'd always taught me to do.

i know, i think, i'll just leave and figure it out from a safe place. i rush back into my bedroom and grab my jeans to pull onto my not-quite dry body. (how did it get that way? i hadn't toweled off. dream weirdness.) i have them not quite secured when i hear him approaching down the hallway. oh shit! i left the door open again! wtf was i thinking? (more self blaming). i rush to close and lock it, but before i can turn the lock he is turning the knob and pushing against the door, and i am still not as physically strong as him. i never was. he is overpowering me again, forcing the door open. i know what is coming next, no matter how much i resist.

this is when i woke up, bolting upright but not shouting out loud, somehow not waking my wife.

and it wasn't until i left my bedroom, awake, with no hope of returning back to sleep until my racing heart calms back down, that i realized my granddaughters are here. and it wasn't until just now that I realized it isn't a work day.



he can't hurt me anymore. this is just a dream. i am safe.

again i choose to forgive him, even though it isn't what i want to do and even though he doesn't deserve it for what he did to me over and over again. i pray that he will be well, and heal from his own brokenness, and live in God's love. it is still true that he doesn't understand his sin. and i will not pay the price that hating him will cost me. that isn't self-love, and i will not give up the freedom Jesus has won for me over him. yes, i hate what he did to me. but i refuse to hate him.

Lord, heal my mind, and please heal my step-father, too.

The Sound of Silence

Hello Darkness, my old friend . . . 

This turns out to be a very different post from any I'd have expected to write that would start with those words.

I heard a Paul Simon interview on the radio this morning, in which he discussed his current album while in the midst of his farewell tour. The album consists of new treatments of older songs that he'd decided he wanted to do something different with. Of course, during the interview they played this song, which is not on his new album, because he mentioned it as one of only a relative few that he's never really wished he'd done anything different with. I agree with him that it's amazing he could've composed this at 22 or 23 years old. I've always had an affinity for it, too. But this morning, something important dawns on me.

The darkness is not, and has never been, my friend.

It is more akin to a secret lifelong lover, to whom I clandestinely steal away on a regular basis, in the vain hope of experiencing a deeper and more mysteriously noble version of myself.

That is an empty promise, a vapor, a mirage. All it really has ever done is to suck the joy out of the life to which I am called.

Goodbye, darkness . . . 

Challenge

"Get your head in a good place," she said.

"Yeah. Good luck with that," replied my head.

A dark moment takes me by surprise

"Not that we long to die . . . " our pastor said in his Easter homily, in the context of our eternal life in Christ giving us perspective on death.

"The hell I don't," my brain insisted.

Passionate Grace

In our reading of the Passion today, I found a moment of connection with my darkest, most shameful moment. As it briefly washed over me, I found a response other than crushing regret. I remembered that the intervening years have brought an abundance of grace and reconciliation and resurrection out of something that definitely needed to die in me.

Seems to fit today's reflection from Dynamic Catholic.

I'm sure that video link will be cleared at some point. The theme was not rushing past Palm Sunday and Holy Week to get to Easter.

when the memories

are so heavy that you want to curl into a ball and hide under the covers until they never happened, and the weather seconds the motion, only you have to function anyway, and when i say heavy i mean that their gravity sucks you into its relentless pull and you don't have enough booster rockets to reach escape velocity and you run out of fuel and your orbit decays and you are falling, accelerating downward and rushing to meet the surface and you can't wait to get there because at least then it will be over but you just keep falling . . .

Realization

I was 37 years old before I was emotionally healthy enough to make effective decisions about relationships.

By then I'd been married for 17 years.

It's worked out pretty well anyway.

How I am

Better when I don't overthink it much, I suppose. So I'm not gonna.

The Golden Gate jump survivor

The first thing that struck me in his story, and probably the most important, was the panicked regret he felt the instant he was clear of the rail.

The other thing that strikes me, for others, and maybe with a hope of comfort for myself, was how those who've attempted (or committed) suicide so often regret, once it's usually too late, hurting the people they love. Did my dad feel that way, in that fleeting moment between when he pulled the trigger and when the bullet irreparably destroyed his brain?

For that matter, did he love me?

so . . .

very . . . tired . . .

I know a very special girl . . .

. . . a very highly intelligent, creative, caring girl, who is going to bear very deep wounds of rejection and emptiness, and a terrible burden of unforgiveness in her life, if we can't find a way to help her deal with the rejection she is receiving from her "dad."

She deserves so much better than this. When I heard the latest, my eyes and heart filled with tears for her. I have known for myself, and seen in others I love, the damage that this causes in a child's life. God can, of course, heal it, for all things are possible with God. But even that takes a willingness to be open and vulnerable that is nearly impossible on our own when we have known such pain.

My precious granddaughter, I love you so very much. It is a great privilege to be your grandpa. I hope that you will let me help you through this so that it will not haunt you through decades of your life. 

Today's word

tristful /TRIST-ful/ - sad, melancholy

This quotation cited in the article has felt true for me, at least at times, in my life: "I've been dreading the moment I wake. Waking is a tristful business for the man who reflects." — Howard Jacobson, The Independent (London), 27 Nov. 2010

But this underscores something that Neal Lozano talks about in his Unbound videos: even though our society places a high value on introspection, it is actually a negative thing. It transfers our attention from God's abundant love for us onto ourselves. That isn't to say we shouldn't be self-aware, but being introspective puts too much emphasis on ourselves, and the quote above illustrates exactly what's wrong with that.

It's a fine distinction, but an important one. 

Our never-ending dynamic

I often hear you explain to our grandchildren how they need to apologize when they hurt one another, even if their intention wasn't hurtful, even if the harm was accidental. 

This often applies to us, too.

So today . . .

. . . and probably tomorrow, I am welcoming sadness, with more than a little loneliness in it. There is also a bit of self-judgment over that, given that she still deserves better, but that is okay as it finally leads to warm memory.

Something to be a little careful of . . .

. . . and yet to consider:

The Guest House
Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Now that I'm nowhere near the edge

I really need a chief reason that isn't also often my chief anti-reason.

I think I know . . .

. . . where each of my daughters got her sense of superiority.  😢

If they don't learn to accept and forgive each other, they are each going to have a harder road than they think they have now.

There is plenty of blame to go around for their conflicts.