[you've been warned]
Actually, let me do this in reverse order, from the last half of the day first.
Sydni and I went to church this morning [about which the latter part of this entry will spiel], and afterwards headed home to try a nap [no success] and tidy up the house some. We were done with plenty of time to spare by the time Becky was off work, so we headed up to Northside, picked her up and headed out to the water.
Oh, and check out what she picked up for me at Market!
I. Love. It. [Thanks, Becky!!!]
Anyway, our original plan was to go kayaking, but we changed our minds at the last minute and piled all three of us into a canoe instead. Sydni had a blast.
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| canoeing with miss becky | viewing window at dewey's! |
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So yeah.. like I said I wanted to get back to, and focus today primarily on the revelation I had this morning and how that's been spanning over the course of my day so far. Here's where this becomes a diatribe.
Sydni and I went to church this morning: It was my second time visiting SonRise, and Syd's first. She seemed hesitant at first, but then discovered the tube slide that serves to introduce kids into the classrooms, and immediately threw all caution to the wind. From what I saw and heard afterwards, she loved her class, teacher and the other kids in with her.
What hit me this morning, was this:
I landed in SonRise in the middle of a sermon series, which is not uncommon and I was curious to see how much I'd missed. The focal point of this series is human emotion and how that corresponds/correlates with the presence of God in our lives and His purpose for us. Today was honed in on anger. What's most interesting about anger is that it's one of the hardest emotions to break; even psychiatrists and behavioral scientists don't have failproof methods to combat it. I realized today that I grossly underestimated the amount of anger I had - and still have - in certain areas of my life.
If you have, for some reason, been following along over the course of the past year or so, it's no secret to you that I've put myself and been put by others through some not-so-pretty things. I went through a divorce, started dating someone new, relocated across two states, started a new job and found myself back in Cincinnati, both to my disappointment and relief. That's the shortest version of the recap. I've always coined myself a resilient person adaptable to most types of change, but even for me, it was a little much.
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| break free. i will. |
Today it hit me that the anger I have inside me, mainly directed a few individuals, is deep-seeded, beyond what I originally thought was just the past year or so. I realized today, that it started over four years ago. I'm not naturally a bitter or resentful person, so for me, that's a long time to be angry with the same person[s]. It wasn't until that anger turned to hate... literally hate in my heart for things that both were and weren't in my control. I started building a prison around my own heart.
I have been crippling myself with this, more evidently so in the past year. From 2009 to the end of 2011, I had become an angrier person than I had ever been, ever. No, not angry as in physically-aggressive or violent, but emotionally furious: with some other people, with the stagnant state of my life, but most of all with myself for keeping record of things in my head but keeping my mouth shut about them until it was too late. In 2012, I made and went through with the final choice to end my marriage, which still stings to think about [not the other person, but the idea that I was a part of something that had become toxic to the point of ripping us both apart as separate people if we forced it any further]. Things boiled over: Things I'd left unsaid for three years, reasons I felt the way I did and harsh judgments and facts that at the time seemed entirely justified to say out loud. They came rushing out in ways I didn't even expect: lists on lists of reasons we had failed, why I was so enraged, to the core, and unequivocally inconsolable
People tried to help me. Family, who fortunately in my world is always there for me, first, and of course my closest friends at the time, all tried to be an outlet in one way or another for me. But no... I was too angry, too hurt, too embarrassed by it all, too exhausted to slow down and put a white-hot boiling heart on my sleeve for the world to see. Instead, I shut down. I stopped speaking all together, to just about everyone.. about anything that mattered, that is. People even as close as co-workers wouldn't have been able to feel the heat, because I made it a direct point to shelter people around me from the burden of whatever strife I had going on. Only those carried by gusts of gossip or those as close to me as I'd let any of them had any inkling of how defeated and abandonded I really felt.
Here's the thing that hit me today: I can't do this anymore. More than that, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm so relieved [& honest] to report that now, not even a year after my divorce, that I am happy. I really am, and it's genuine this time. It's sincere, not urged or forced for the sake of blending in or standing out, whichever was called for. I'm happy, from the inside out and not the other way around.
However,
By that, I primarily mean that, we'll call it 98% of what was causing me to deteriorate before, has been removed and replaced with new, functioning elements that have been integral parts of my repair so far. The 2% I can't claim, though, is the lingering amount of anger I still have, because I am both stubborn and human. Because I have realized the anger I have, its targets and I have recognized that I will NOT be able to do a 180 turnaround overnight. I will continue praying, and continue focusing my energy on letting go of things beyond my control and out of my hair.
I will give you two very real, very legitimate reasons that I have to do this:
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| they love me, & deserve the unfiltered best of my love |
^ I admitted to myself today that I am not capable of loving the important people in my life now, the way I want to and the way they deserve, if I'm still harboring resentment or hate for anyone from my past. Chapters of my life were written and closed for a reason, and I need to focus now the fact that it didn't destroy me; in actuality it made me stronger, wiser and in some ways, more passionate about the ones I love and the causes in which I believe. It's taught me the stark differences between fake and real, forced and natural, and surface feelings versus a state of being that starts from places deeper than I've ever been before.
MONTHS ago, I started a series of letters. By series, I mean just a handful, but very specific and very different, in there own ways. Those letters will not be shared here, at least not by me, but it is my committment to an invitation given today by a Pastor I've yet to get to know well, to initiate the first step of forgiving: Them AND/or myself. I'm scared to admit that the latter will most definitely be harder than the first, but the angry cycle I'm in now has to break.
I didn't much enjoy it while I was sitting through it this morning, feeling that familiar conviction when it seems like a lesson was written with your face in mind. It doesn't always happen that way, but when it does, I sit and hang onto each word, knowing that if I'm doing that, I must need it more than I thought.
I'll leave it at that.
Yours truly,
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| imperfect, but trying. i'm not giving up. |
xo | cmd
