Kindness in Giving Creates Love,a blog of which the creator's brain is ninety percent song lyrics, wanders and ponders and rants through all of life's joys and pains.
Strictly for infotainment purposes, any enlightenment is purely coincidental.
If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. ~Bob Hope
Long title. Sorry. I woke up this way. With this particular song swirling about me gulliver.
I met the devil. It was October of 2014. I set foot into my house after a grueling emergency trip to Charlotte. That moment is burned into my memory so deep that it truly haunts me. It's the reason that blonde woman of a certain unfortunate build and facial structure trigger anxiety in me. It's why I question her intelligence and the state of her soul. May God have mercy on it indeed.
I have learned some things in the past 24 hours that have me boldly praying for the truth in both lowercase and uppercase form to be brought to light. Everything from all sides of the street. I am not scared or worried about it because I have nothing to hide. It's about time that we all got set free. Not just free, but free indeed!
I've been convincing myself that I'm worthwhile Cause I'm worth what I'll convince myself to be
I have spent too long accepting less than as a state of being. I have spent too long dwelling in the desert of this desertion. Broken people do shitty things. I get that. But I was thoroughly unprepared for the bending and breaking and relentless bullshit that I have endured over the course of the last three years. I am sick of unscrupulous people. I am sick of bad theology. I am sick of people twisting Truth into fiction so that they can justify their off base, off course actions.
But I am glad for stalkers...God would never send you a married man, honey. And he certainly isn't going to bless that union in any way, shape or form because God can not bless sin. I hope you both take your restraining orders off of Jesus.
As for me, I am dusting my feet off of the both of you. You are God's children, he can deal with you. I worth much more than the both of you threw me under the bus for and I do forgive you both. Now if you will excuse me I need to go jam out to Relient K and get on with my life.
But one last thing before I go, the relentless pursuit of your own freewill isn't freedom at all and one day I hope that everyone truly learns that lesson.
I remember a day when this song haunted me, like everywhere I went, every time I got into the car, everywhere some rendition was playing. It's a great story I will have to tell it to you sometime.
If I could bottle this up right now and keep it forever.
Tonight has been such a blessing. It is well, folks. I think I got my still back and thank God for that because I was starting to believe the lies and rumors about me. It is so well and I believe it will stay that way.
There is another version of this song on the Gaither VEVO page that is worth checking out for Wintley Phipps intro to it. I didn't share it here because I just wanted everyone to get straight into one of my favorite versions of this hymn.
Heavydirtysoul would have been a better title but I am trying to keep a theme here with my titles. What I wrote last night was really freeing to me, freeing like when you flush a toilet only to realize how profound your plumbing problems are really.
To those who feel it their duty to police the world and set everyone straight, why yes, I do realize that this blog is called "Kindness in Giving Creates Love." I titled it a long time ago, in a suburban neighborhood now seemingly so far away. Yes, I do realize how totally un-Christian my diabolical hatred of the other woman is, do you realize that your condemnation of me is also of the enemy? It's a thorn in my side and in the long run, it's between me and my God but I thank you for your concern. It is entirely possible that things do blindside people. I am not saying I am perfect but all y'all this applies to need to take the words and thoughts that I must have done something to deserve this straight out of your mouths. It's moments like this that make me think of that scene in Empire Records where Deb says to Joe,"You think you can fix me Joe? Go ahead fix me." It is, of course, why this song is on me this morning. I want to sing this to so many people:
Can you save Can you save my Can you save my heavy dirty soul? Can you save Can you save my Can you save my heavy dirty soul? For me, for me, oh Can you save my heavy dirty soul? For me, for me, oh Can you save my heavy dirty soul?
Not that I want anyone to save me. I am no damsel in distress. Just broken by the dumbasses that reside in this fallen world with me. I have a savior and I am working with Him for the restoration that my body, mind, soul and spirit need. I get tired of the other voices. The other perspectives. The irrelevant comments.
I keep thinking of Paul and the thorn in his side.
From 2 Corinthians 12:7-9
7 And
lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the
revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan
to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
His Grace is sufficient. If you are not getting, understanding that throughout this, in the thick of this, that God is the strength in my weakness then I really need to hone my skills. Yes, I immensely dislike the events of the past nearly three years. I hate that two peoples thoughtless actions caused so much destruction and devastation to me, my kids, my entire family and circle of friends. But none of it was a surprise to God and He was already ahead of the eight ball making ways for me that I could not have made myself. I maybe underplay the magnitude of the blessings that have come my way in the wake of my husband's infidelity.
I believe very much that the best is yet to come but I also know I have heaping piles of coal on my head that I need to, with God's guidance, contend with. I am who I am by the grace of God. Today that grace gave me this song. "This doesn't mean I lost my dream. It's just right now I got a really crazy mind to clean." I know that none of you can save my heavy dirty soul. I know the one that can, though, and I look forward to seeing His strength made perfect in my weakness(es).
Distractions keep getting in the way of my writing. Stupid distractions.
Don't let the blog title fool you, I am in mostly good spirits. It's just that I have had this song stuck in my head for the better part of the day and mostly because of the "anger is an energy" lyric. It's strange to me, too, that I was 11 when this song came out. How the hell does a little girl in rural Ohio fall in love with a song like this? I mean sure it was the heyday of WOXY out of Oxford but still.
Anger is an energy. That whole dark side of the Force, crazy monkey rage, loose cannon, seething, seeing red unpleasant energy. Anger is good in small measure and then there is the whole righteous anger like when you get mad at someone kicking a puppy or that damn friend of yours who keeps posting the videos of dudes kicking puppies in some sort of misguided activism. But it is an energy and the path of its trajectory can be quite a ride.
I have really come to terms over the past several days with the fact that I have this undying anger at the other woman. I can work through things in my mind with my husband, the collapse of our marriage, the bankruptcy, the two foreclosures, the pending divorce, my favorite hangout closing, and various other anger inducing experiences but I can not crack my emotions surrounding this so-called woman. I can not open my heart to forgive her or open my mouth and sound like anything less than a hardcore gangsta rapper born to Sam Kinison and Lisa Lampanelli.
It's eating my soul. It's so much more than just the obvious and so much more than I can write at this juncture. It seriously pains me that there are woman like her in the world. Not just because she's a husband(expletive deleted) whore, but also because she bought hook, line and sinker whatever pile of steaming malarky he was selling her and she didn't think twice about it. I personally would never enter a relationship with a married man, no matter what he told me the truth was. I always fact checked guys because we have this thing called the internet and public records and if he said he was divorced and I couldn't corroborate that I declined. I will never understand woman who are so hard up for a man that they do not so much as bat an eye or an iota of conscience when a married man crosses their path.
I am learning that healing from infidelity isn't easy. I trust very few people. My self-esteem is completely shot and most days really I am just faking it because I do know that I do have people who love and care about me that don't like to see me feeling less than. I am completely unsure of how to rebuild my life because I never expected to have to be starting from nearly scratch at 40. I try very hard to be positive to find silver linings. I have great cheerleaders who help me with that. But this anger...this anger is something I was unprepared for entirely.
Anger is an energy...an energy that I need to channel into something positive. I wish I liked running, I might consider taking it up as a release valve. I could write. I have contemplated various projects. The downside is that with anything that I wrote the whole "any similarities" thing would be a total lie. Probably shoots my comedy career in the foot as well. But until I get a spark of inspiration or divine revelation, I am just going to have to sing along with John and hope it autoplays into something even better.
I have had this song in my head since the weekend.
I had intended to not let life get in the way of my writing again because honestly writing keeps on a somewhat even keel. Mostly because it's a release valve. But...if you have ever used a pressure cooker and played with the release valve, you know that sometimes the force of the steam is painful.
A week ago, I had one of those moments. It started on Wednesday. I went to my mom's group and stayed super productive and in the flow all day. I got most of my house packed. I scrawled poetry out of my brain as if the words were on fire. I jammed the Pandora Class of 93 Hip Hop station at ear-splitting volumes. It was in many ways a really great day. A great day that completely broke me.
Stupid poetry. Stupid life not cooperating with me. Stupid, stupid girl.
There has just been this cacophony of epiphany that really should be evidenced by the fact that I just constructed this sentence. The more I pack, the more I unpack. It's a beautiful messy horribly painful thing. Completely letting your entire life flash before you while simultaneously trying to stay in conscious contact with God and His will for me life. Trying to maintain sanity while to some degree losing all control. By the end of Wednesday, I had all but broken down.
Some days I have all the words and thoughts and every thing flows.
This is not one of those days.
Today, I am sitting here listening to "Into the Ocean" on repeat play trying to remember when it was that I stole the fizzy lifting drinks that kept me from getting the chocolate factory. Today, I am sitting here thinking about the wise words of a friend that it really doesn't matter what decision that you make, only that you make a decision. Today, I am so ready to not be stuck, to be on to my next adventure.I have been so blessed and highly favored over the past week that I feel a bit guilty at my self-indulgent existential crises this morning.
I hear the best way to keep from drowning is to stop struggling. To relax. To not panic.
"I want to swim away but don't know how, sometimes it feels like I am falling in the ocean." I have never even seen the ocean so I am only working with my imagination and stock footage from every surfing movie I have ever watched. The immensity of every thing going on in my life is so vast. This blog is just an iceberg in the ocean of my life. What I share is minute in comparison to the totality of things. It's hard to not drown a midst it all.
I don't have any wisdom or deeper truth or humorous pep infusion this morning. I just have this heavy ocean theme running through my head that is going to produce quite a nice playlist by bedtime. And the remembrance of these words, the final lines of one of my favorite books:
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The thing of it is a lot of times, I write what I am thinking or respond to something or am otherwise way too serious in some of these blog posts. Something I don't write enough about publicly is praise and gratitude and certainly not to the extent that I should. Last couple posts, may seem like I am not content. I am. I have been very chill the past couple of days. We all lose our cool sometimes, we all have days where we vent and thrash. It's all good as long as you don't live there.
It took me awhile to learn to channel my grumbling into gratitude but I am so very glad that I did. Oh I still have complaints but I very much try to not ride a downward spiral into the abyss of malcontent. Some days it is very easy to list a bazillion and a half reasons I am grateful. I am in the flow, everything is awesome, everything is coming up roses, there is a spring in my step. Easy...like Sunday morning (could not resist). Others I go to my standard I am having the shittiest soul sucking black hole of a day starters and even then it's debatable. My standard starters are: woke up this morning in a bed with food to eat, a roof over my head with clothes on my back and food in my cupboard. From there sometimes, the praises go up with ease. Other times, I really have to dig.
Peace in the storm is not something that Jenny accomplishes on her own. Never has been. I am not as strong as everyone gives me credit for in all honesty. Attaining the peace of God that passes understanding is a lot like the game Othello...a minute to learn, a lifetime to master. Yep, kids, it's that old Sunday School answer...Jesus. When he isn't busy building hot rods and turning water into wine, he is walking with me and talking with me and telling me that I am not alone. I have been thinking a lot about that tonight about how profoundly different that this journey would have been for me without my faith.
Deep in thought, this song came on the station that I am listening to tonight. I had never heard it before tonight. I have heard plenty of other songs with the same sentiment. But this, this was so appropriate to some of my trains of thought the past couple of days. Trains of thought that can best be summed up in words stolen from my 7 year old: sometimes you have to kick the devil in the crouch.
I have been hanging out in this prison, partially of my own design. I have been letting fear rule me in a lot of areas. I am so not about all that right now. I had a multitude of good girlfriend conversations this weekend. I think I shared that already. Thank God for all of them and their insights and wisdom. These shackles they chafe at times, who wants that?
As a point of reference, the song is referring to Acts 16:25-26:
25But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them;26and
suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the
prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and
everyone's chains were unfastened.…
I am going to wear my crown and my big girl shoes and keep singing praises and doing my own little touchdown dances. I am going to keep rephrasing my tribulations in the form of a thankfulness. I am going to keep on keeping on. These prison walls will break off and these shackles will fall!
I challenge you to take a deep breath and rephrase your tribulations in the form of thankfulness. Write out your gratitudes. Find joy in the little things. Praise BOGO sales and the dollar menu and open wifi! Break free from prison with me!
I meant to post earlier in the day, but the day had other plans for me. It's been a busy sort of weekend and I am grateful for that.
I have no profound words about Valentine's Day.
Friday night, I went to dinner with a good, good friend of mine. I think it is the first time in awhile that we dined without my son in tow. So not only did I get to wear my big girl shoes, we got to have solid, uninterrupted girl talk. Driving back to her place, she posed a question to me that is still resonating with me tonight because of my answer.
In the blissful afterglow of good food, good conversation, and a good night sleep, I went to work yesterday in a strange state of contemplation. The cold kept people away so there was a lot of uninterrupted thought. In the afternoon, after my cohort clocked in we had another equally profound conversation. So with those two conversations rolling through my head I clocked out anxious to get on to my next adventure with the girl who is Statler to my Waldorf or is it the other way I can never remember.
Have you ever had a blossoming friendship that has moments that make you kind of go whoa, that's shit that my friends say, and by friends you mean people who have known you since you were a young blank slate, people that knew you before all the duct tape and white out and gesso and crack filler and staples and stuff. My friend of a scant 5 months totally got on my case about my lack of focus and my lack of writing. It wasn't even what we were talking about, she just stopped mid-sentence and exclaimed,"Oh my God, you haven't been writing have you! That's what's wrong with you."
What does any of this have to do with anything? Or with the subject line for that matter!
Sigh.
It remains to be seen.
I have got to focus. I have been in damage control for 27 months. That is a long time to not be alive. Held back by fear, deep fear and a completely shattered sense of self. I don't talk about a lot of things I should talk about in order to help myself. I am still in denial that my husband who swore he would love me forever would actually take my heart to pieces like this. I am not in denial about what is happening or delusional about anything. I realized that I need people to respect how deeply and mortally torn my heart is over my divorce.
I was never a girl who sat and dreamed about marriage. I could keep anyone and everyone at arms length. Anyone but him. I tried. Hell, I tried to not even meet him. Once, I did...I was hooked and I always believed that everything progressed the way it did and in the time frame it did because it was exactly what was supposed to happen to us. My husband changed me in ways that I never thought were possible. He made me a better, kinder woman not because of who he was but because of who he believed in.
Thank God I met him and he encouraged me in my faith. I imagine, if he could let himself, he would be proud of my progress and my propensity for praying prayers of surrender. All those times he prayed for me and he isn't even here to see that his prayers were answered. Some days when I see him I totally want to tell him that I am the lucky rabbit too and all the things that have happened for me because I got out of God's way.
But he doesn't talk to me at all. Not even about our son if he can help it.
It's truly sad.
I can't do what everyone wants right now. I can't move the way people want me to move. I can't date because I am not ready. So not ready and I don't know if I ever will be. I really need everyone to be okay with that. I am. I totally am because I had everything I ever wanted and a great deal that I never realized I needed with him as my friend and lover. It's not about me being stuck. It's about me needing to fully mourn a great loss.
It's not going to happen unless I focus.
I miss him terribly. And it's the election year more than Valentine's day that has me feeling the void of his presence in my life. It's walking out of sermons that he would label as "strength" and wishing he had been there to hear so we could discuss it further over lunch.
And I usually don't admit that I do miss him because then people get all negative about him. I know what he did. It's a fallen world and we all fall short of the glory. I chose to forgive. From what I can tell it is the road less taken in these cases and let me tell you it has made all the difference but since very few people have travel this road...the path is narrow and not as easy to travel.
The title today is from a Tom Waits song that has been on my heart tonight:
