Once all the best was mine...Tipp City yea, I'm still here.

So, ummmm, yeah. For e'ry bit woohoo hallelujah positive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound that I was yesterday, I am the penultimate today.

Life is like that I guess. I don't know, I am fully just guessing. I having one of those days when I am thinking of that shirt that says,"Jesus Loves You...Everyone Else Thinks You Are An Asshole" and thinking the opposite applies to me. E'ryone loves me, Jesus thinks I am asshole.

I am. I am willfully disobedient in a few very small areas and I kinda think that I would like to be Nicole Arbour's BFF 4 life. I am not even kidding. It'll be me and Nicole Arbour and Lisa Lampanelli and we'll be toking it up with Johnny Hopkins and Slone Kettering. Okay, maybe not, but oblige me, I am in a massive funk today and I trying desperately to pull myself back on course.

I slept poorly. Had crazy, crazy dreams about my doctor and trying to get to an appointment, and so when I came back from dropping the boy off at school, I curled up on the couch. My "old mangy, transient" husband stopped by while I was sleeping and that's when I went downhill. He doesn't speak to me at all anymore, not even about things that matter. About six months ago, I thought that we were over all that but I guess is skank-ass girlfriend heard we actually had several civil conversations in a row and freaked out.

(Queue "Where is God?" by Oliver Adams)  (So obscure, I can't find it anywhere for the link.)

I know you are probably thinking at this point, what does Tammy and the Amps have to do with any of this? Well, I am glad you asked.

Tipp City has been on my mind a lot lately. I have no clue why. Not really. I mean, it's about equidistant to the grandparents so there's a bonus. It's closer to a lot of other family. It's closer to things that keep my daughter happy. It's a bit like whence I came from but without me having to constantly relive my backstory that involves being a complete douche to people who didn't deserve it. I could be me without having to prove or disprove any notions about who I am.

It's not the first time in my life I have considered Tipp City as a place to call home. Several years ago, sigh, for whatever reason, my husband (who grew up in Miami County) always wanted to go spend our free time there...despite saying he hated everything about Miami County. There's a great park in Tipp City that we would end up at occasionally. A great park where we by the end of the journey would have met new people who actually sat and hung out with us as we all watched our kids play together. At the time, his parents were helping us out quite a bit and moving to Tipp would have made sense. (My mom would have moved up there eventually because she's good like that.)

Anyway...so I totally feel like I don't fit in, don't vibrate right, don't something in my present situation. Everyone so concerned all the time with matters of consequence. Everyone so booked to the gills with stuff. I know some of it is the way that this pending divorce, the bankruptcy, the complete and total lack of ability to claim any sort of worldly success is totally f****ng messing with me. I don't need to be mega anything, but honestly no part of my life plan ever involved having to hang my head in shame and mortification as I told people my husband left me for livestock. No part of my life plan ever, ever, EVER saw me 29 days from 40 and so broke I can't even pay attention.

Shrug. This is not exactly inspirational. I am not there today. I want to be. I have cried out to the Lord so much since this morning, I think He is letting all go straight to voice mail.

What did I ever do so horrible in my life that I deserved to be cheated on and all my dreams shattered?

NOTHING.

God allowed it. No clue why and still working through some emotion on that. I am not the woman I was when this started. There is good in that but so much bad. I don't think that a lifetime in prayer and therapy will heal this gaping chest wound that my husband and his self-centered malady left me with. There is no beauty for ashes today. Today, once again God chose not to make all things new or to work all things to the good of Jen who loves him, I willfully and willingly stepped into being a full-on, stay-at-home mom. I don't regret the time. I only regret that the world is not so accommodating and that further exacerbating the annihilation of my confidence that has come from the actions of my husband is the clear cutting that comes every-time I unsuccessfully try to sell myself to some prospective employer.

I can not press any further in without actually going home to the Lord himself. That my friends is the truth of my situation. I have nothing but God and his promises. That I have survived this far in this situation is nothing but the grace of God. No joke. Pressing in doesn't mean you don't feel the pain. I feel the pain. Daily. Some days hourly. I live in a world where hypocritical women's studies lecturers fuck husbands because of their own damned brokenness. Your actions destroyed my world, my life, my peace. I fucking hate you both. May God deal with you ever so severely.

I hate this world.

I am tired of so much.

I just want to move to Tipp City and live out the remainder of my years in the relative peace of Miami County. Once...all the best...it was mine. I never once took it for granted. I really didn't But here I am. Busted and broken and abandoned. Tipp City, yeah, I am still here. And it beats the hell out of moving back to Germantown.

I never claimed perfection.

I just want to be content.

Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part To Save The Scene And Stop Going To Shows)

Sometimes, little things in life act as confirmation. Confirmation that you are on the right track. A nod that you are doing the right thing. A wink that you are in fact in the right place at the right time. This past Sunday was one of those times for me.

The ladies in my mom's group (and a few other really) have teased me before about my propensity for using movies to apply spiritual principles and moral concepts. So, you can imagine my utter joy when our pastor began to preach out of "Shawshank Redemption" on Sunday morning. The sermon entitled "Get Moving" is the first of four about spiritual growth. Now, if you know me, you also know that I revel in using song lyrics as blog titles and so as I headed home that morning, I found Fall Out Boy's "Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene And Stop Going to Shows)", stay with me, and give me a few paragraphs and I will tie it all together.

Get busy living or get busy dying. Those words have been bouncing around my head the past several days like a truckload of Superballs in gymnasium during an earthquake. Get. Busy. Living. Get. Busy. Dying. There is no in middle. I know this because it is what I am discovering through this particular trial of my life. To chose nothing, to chose complacency, to try to balance on the fence is a passive choice toward death and decay and stagnation. It's okay to have a bad day. It's okay to react in anger. It's okay to plot to send twenty-five pounds of micro-fine red glitter to those who have harmed you. It's not okay to stay there. To stay in the dark is to stay imprisoned.

But how, Jen, how do start living you don't know what I am up against. I don't, you are right but I do know what I have waded through in my life and I am still standing. I am currently living in a season of my life where if I was not actually living it I would very much think that I was making some of this stuff up. I made a conscious choice in this trial early on that I was not going to live in the dark side. However, I am not skipping through a field of poppies with a song in my heart and a gleam in my eye every day. No, no, some days the feeling is much more that of being in a bog covering quicksand covering a black hole. Some days the weigh of my comforter is too much to deal with, let alone a failing marriage, a financial crisis, endless unemployment and all my motherly duties. I get it.

The Fall Out Boy title resonates with me because I married a musician. When he started making connections that were counter to what we had said we wanted for our family, I took a step back. Spirit led me that way. I don't belong there. I miss it sometimes but truth be told but I would rather suffer as a daughter of Christ than reign as the queen of the underground. I am just too sparkly to be that dark. I know that I am none of the things his band mates said about me and none of the lies he told his girlfriend about me are rooted in truth. They keep their folly, I keep my soul. It seemed like a fair trade.

Our circumstances may be different but the suffering is the same. So while you are there..."alone in your electric chair"...what is it going to be? The choice is entirely yours, that's what freewill is all about. I made my conscious decision way, way, way before the sneaky behavior, the lying, and ultimately the cheating happened. I didn't just make a declaration that life was going to be a certain way and then POOF! Snarky, sardonic Jenny was suddenly transformed into Polyanna. It's been a journey. You can't change without movement, reaction, refining and pruning. There is mourning involved. There are tears. There are walls. There are choices to be made.

So, what's it going to be are you going to get busy living or are you content to spend the next forty years dying?

Get busy. Get moving. Go

*********
Below is the sermon entitled "Get Moving" from Christ United Methodist Church in Kettering, Ohio. I encourage you to follow the sermon series on Vimeo or if you are in the greater Dayton ares come out and join us on Sundays at 9, 10 or 11:15.


September 13, 2015 Barry DeShetler Get Moving – Exploring Christ from Christ Church United Methodist on Vimeo.

Guinnevere

Original Poetry by Jenny Reibert-Wolfe ~ Copyright 2015

Shards

Sometimes, I write.

Sometimes, it's good.

One of those things may be true here.

Without further adieu, Shards....

Shards - Original Poetry by Jenny Reibert-Wolfe Copyright 2015
Graphics arranged by Jenny Reibert-Wolfe using picmonkey.com

It's a never-ending circus ride, the faint of heart need not apply.

Today's blog is brought to you courtesy of life. My life has unwritten the content and has secured the funding for what you are about to read.

"Mi Vida Loco" was running steadily through my head earlier today. I have thought of it from time to time but not like it was hitting me early this afternoon. This country hit from 1994 has a special place in my heart, and today that heart and these lyrics seemed as one.

See, once upon a time I was a 19 year old I don't even know what I was, maybe just 19, maybe 19 needs no adjectives to describe it because it just is what it is and whenever someone starts a sentence with when I was 19 everyone should just graciously say, that there is nothing else you need to say. So, once upon a time I was 19 and I owed a friend money but I didn't have cash but I had credit so I offered to take her to dinner to be even. So Bert and Ernie, as we were affectionately known, headed to Denny's because it was the only place open where we met Nick and Dan.

Nothing about him would have ever made me think his senior to me was as many years as it was. By the end of the night, we were inseparable. And I knew he would call me because I had his jacket. What ensued was, sigh, what ensued has only ever been matched and superceded by one other person in the history of my life thus far. Being 19, no red flag ever showed up on my radar. He treated me like a queen and I enjoyed every damn minute of it. I could be me and not all hung up on worrying about if I was cool enough. We enjoyed some of the same music and had enough glue that the differences were irrelevant. He would tell me that I looked like Tori Amos and that this song made him think of me.

The ultimate gift, trophy of that relationship would be my daughter.

I don't know nor will I probably ever understand why things went the way that they did. It's not even worth dragging out tonight. I certainly got the better end of the deal, a wonderful, beautiful daughter all to myself, no custody drama, no alternate weekends, no split summers. Just me and my Jo. I am sure it wasn't easy. I am sure there was always wonderining. I wish that I had had answers.

Fast forward and disregard everything else. This afternoon, his dad picked her up. She made contact with the other side as it were several weeks ago and it going to be spending the next several days getting to know them minus her dad. I am grateful. I am grateful that our God is a God of reconciliation and redemption. Grateful but unprepared.

I never realized that all of this would hit me the way it is hitting me. I am happy for her. But I am wondering about myself and my own life that after going through all of that I would find myself in the exact same arrangement with my marriage. Here I am, twenty years later, dealing with a man who walked away from me and our kids and not really sure what I am supposed to learn from all of this.

It's little consolation that God always loves me when the two greatest loves of my life willingly walked away from me and their children. What did I do wrong Lord? Because tonight to be honest, it doesn't feel like I have ever done anything right. It's like everyone else always gets the credit even though I am doing the work. I am kinda salty about that. I don't what to do except write this.

So, yeah, "Mi Vida Loco" it was assigned to me in the summer of 1995. I don't feel much like a wild rose anymore. I do think once upon a time it was a perfect song for me but then a shit-ton of bullshit got in the way of my happily ever after. Shrug. You can't win them all I guess.

I'd like to win one though.

Maybe someday.

I don't know.

If I made you feel second best Girl I'm sorry I was blind

Last couple of weeks, I have really, really been missing someone. I haven't really connected with this person in awhile. I used to totally love to hang out. It's really sad how people lose touch through time and circumstances. It's even sadder when the person you miss is yourself.

Sigh.

This summer, this last couple of months, the last year, the last two years, it's been a particular season. It seems like I am constantly off kilter. So busy merely surviving that I can't live. It's deeper than this season. I have been an adult in the eyes of the law for long enough that my daughter is now an adult in the eyes of the law. Parents make sacrifices. Big hearted people make sacrifices. I made a lot of sacrifices. Some I am 100% okay with but some in the last 2-4 years, maybe longer, were not wise.

Someone once told me that they believed that for me writing and breathing were pretty much the same. I never really thought about it. I just like to write. I like art. I like to write. I like to create. It's just what I do. Creativity is the closest one can get to knowing what it is like to be God and to be one with God. Everyone always thought I would be a writer when I grew up. (Good news, according to my runaway husband I haven't, so there is still time!) I started out college in theater. I always recognized that poets needed to eat. But I never really attempted anything huge. Always so scared of the rejection. My biggest writing accomplishments to date are winning a Bill Morrissey CD from WYSO because I penned a quick poem to Vick Mickunas of which all I remember is"Oh why, oh why must they disparage me and my 91.3"  and getting honorable mention in a poetry contest for a piece called "Easter" that was a nice piece of angst about my imaginary boyfriend calling me up drunk on Easter eve. As an aside, the imaginary boyfriend is a real person, imaginary is just a title he fell into somehow.

Anyway, as this consciousness streams on, as I keep on keeping on, keep on pushing, I have these moments. I miss a random something I used to do. I don't know why some other thing stopped being done. I get flashes of consuming creativity at inopportune times. I know all of what was still is there. But you know sometimes those first few cookies out of the press are not so great, so I just quietly thought is was some random whatever to cope or you know the system just clearing itself out of junk.

Then I went to California. I didn't even have an aching in my heart. I had a long time to just be and observe and apparently some rapid decompression happened. I wrote. I wrote poetry. Mostly I have been stuck in blog and journal mode which is mostly non-fiction. Oh but I wrote something. Something that made me wish I had study hall next hour because I was so in love with my brilliance.  Moments like that, they are rare when I write.

So yeah. I miss me. I miss being creative. Writing, painting, drawing, sewing, some where, somehow I got lost in the shuffle of my own life.

Some day, I will write about it.

But until then, I will just share the poem I wrote on the way to California. I hesitated at first because of some things but then realized it was stupid because I know damn well that even though his music doesn't always have lyrics it's about me. Not delusional, I just know how artist process life.

Stop reverse that. I really want to share this poem. Really, really, really I do. It's not time. I can't quite defend myself on the back end. It's a beautiful poem. It's just that it's a scathingly honest, wistful, sorrow-filled piece of free verse. Maybe some day I will share it.

No, today, or tonight rather, I am going to serenade myself with multiple versions of this old gem.I let myself, let me feel less than. I have no excuse. It's time to move to the next level. Until then, sing it with me...

Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time

I'm thinking of things that I just can't abide

Heh, I am of an age where the word "abide" makes me think of the Dude. I don't really care for that movie but hey, at least I got the reference for it.

Another small victory for Jenkind is that in searching for the video to go with this post, I decided to search for my personal Holy Grail which is an old SNL sketch about parliament. And I found it here heeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

Today has been fantastic. That is my story and I am sticking to it. At some point, I did find myself preaching to myself. Over and over saying, it's not a setback, it's a setup. Over and over reminding myself that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Reminding myself because well, I was thinking things that I just can't abide. So yes, at some point, this song popped into my head.

I truly don't understand how things in my life are playing out right in this moment. I have to keep repeating things I know to be true because I 100% do not have any natural understanding of what is going on or why things are playing out like they are or if this is new normal and I missed the memo. I know it to be patently false that the darkside has cookies, so I try to avoid it at all costs.

I have been believing that God works all things to the good of those who love him. I have been believing that God makes all things new. I have been believing that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

I ask Him to direct my steps, He says be still.

It's the hardest lesson ever. I am ready, willing and able to do so much more but He says wait. Don't look left or right, but look right at Me he says. Some days it is so easy to do. Today, not so much. It is what it is and it will pass. I struggle with anger at this whole situation, these circumstances. I don't want to be still. I want everything to be better. I want to wake up with a heart that doesn't hurt anymore.

I want to see what the setup was for. I want to see the goodness of the Lord. I want to get to shore so I can stop swimming.

I want everything to come into perfect alignment.

Maybe today...

Maybe today...

But until then, I am just going to roll with it.