Tag Archives: Struggle

May 10th – May 31st 2005

Posts, , , ,

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. I miss Mom so much. I’m so sad for Dad. I’m still flat. I only have one “real” feeling.

I’m so flat. I feel a minor degree of excitement at the prospect of change and progress at work…but it’s not much.

______________________________________________________________________________

I’m here. Here I am.

______________________________________________________________________________

There’s too much to be spilled. Too much life….no, not enough in me. Too much being asked for. Too many people needing too much. I feel guilt for every iota held back.

The idea of a private life is still mysterious to me. I don’t know how to have one…how to get and hold onto one. I feel the pull to drain everything, but the simultaneous urge to hold back. I feel that I will die if I let it all go…dying is good though.

The prospect of being a disappointment hangs over my head like a giant black cloud. It’s always there…always promising a down pour, but only delivering earth shaking thunder….lightning that suddenly flashes out of the heavy darkness and strikes the ground of my life, rupturing my ear drums, causing me to cower with my head between my legs, eyes clinched shut, crying as loud as I can in a vain effort to drown out the overwhelming noise. That’s not all…it starts fires too.

A dry cloud.

If I manage to gain enough courage to move from my hiding place, I can scramble to maybe two or three of the small but growing fires that were recently started. I frantically dance upon these little fires, spitting out angry curses like my mouth is full of sand, and crying at the same time…desperate to put the fires out, wishing my tears of frustration were so voluminous as to drench them altogether…but they just fall from my cheeks as I madly stomp and spin…hissing as they evaporate…useless in the growing flames.

There are the occasional victories. A fire, that after great effort, is finally extinguished. As I pause, panting and smiling for just that instant, I become aware of how much I stink of soot and sweat and dirt, and my eyes take in all the smoldering hot spots. Dozens…hundreds. The fires still burning just beneath the surface of the dry needles and twigs. They’re everywhere.

Thunder rolls again and I look up, desperate for rain.

March 1st, 2005

Posts, , , , , ,

Oh my God…what a month February was. Mom’s kidney condition being and then a series of events…no a series of relational convulsions that still have me a reeling a little bit. Without much elaboration let me try to list these convulsions (perhaps not in order of occurrence…can’t remember that part too well):

  1. Person A explodes all over me after receiving criticism. Threatens to leave the band, Project Va’ and the small group.
  2. Person B gently and appropriately reveals that he’s been disappointed in the amount of attention I have been giving him.
  3. Person C says I’m spreading myself too thin relationally…but he doesn’t want me to stop giving HIM attention.
  4. Person D explodes all over me saying that I don’t love him because I don’t give him enough time. Threatens to leave the church.
  5. Person E reveals that he isn’t feeling loved by me, and has already, essentially left the church.
  6. Person F threatens to leave the church upon receiving a notice from me that he has to fish or cut-bait regarding Brazil (apparently he’d already decided not to go…and just stopped coming to meetings) Of course he talks to Rick about this and not me. (probably better that way given the timing).
  7. The big one: Brenda doesn’t want to go Brazil anymore.

It would serve no purpose to try to unravel all the details of these convulsions. The larger point SEEMS to be, and I guess I’m asking you now, Lord, that I am disappointing people on a wholesale level, and I’m wondering if I’m doing this right.

Over a year and half ago, God, you showed me so clearly that disappointing people was something that I am profoundly afraid of. I don’t doubt that. I also got the message that I’m going to have to start disappointing more people (which apparently I’ve been quite successful with). But…am I doing it right? Have I been a tease? Have I created expectations in people through some dysfunction of my own, and then willy-nilly broken those expectations when I feel my boundaries have been crossed?  Gotta go back and read my journal entries about disappointment….

Well, I don’t know for sure. Here’s another tid-bit that came to me earlier this week. I am profoundly dis-appointed in Brenda for not coming to Brazil. I don’t understand what’s changed. She doesn’t “feel like its right”…BUT…maybe the point is: I need to remember what it feels like to be the disappointed one, so that I’m not too flippant when I disappoint others.

Rick has accurately identified a tendency in me to go at two speeds: ALL or NOTHING. I don’t want to back track…don’t want to revisit; to anticipate the long and boring work of loving someone…I’d rather keep moving forward, or just blow it off altogether.

Am I a tease?