The Obtuse

Obtuse definition (from dictionary.com):

1. not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant; dull.

They live among us…the Obtuse…those poor souls that you could hit over the head with a frying pan, and they still wouldn’t understand that you’re trying to get their attention and/or what you’re trying to say.

We all deal with the Obtuse at some point in our lives.  Unfortunately, for some of us, the Obtuse are members of our own family.

The Obtuse are the people who, while they may be aware of your childlessness, will insist on thrusting their baby’s pictures in your face or worse yet, thrusting said baby into your arms without first asking if it’s okay.

The Obtuse are friends or family members who don’t understand why you’re not giddy to attend holiday functions or church services where the focus is on children and which families will, yet again, be adding new additions in the upcoming year.

The Obtuse tend to take your lack of excitement in said events and/or participation very personally and most likely will tell you exactly how they are feeling.

The Obtuse are the people who after you send them an e-mail explaining why you and your husband are struggling with the holidays this year don’t even bother to reply much less say, “We understand, and we love you.”

The Obtuse have a way of making you feel like an outsider in your own family or social circles, and what’s even more frustrating the Obtuse don’t even realize (or care) that they are doing it so well.

So, beware of the Obtuse this holiday season and stay clear of them if it all possible.   Like the Grinch they have an uncanny way of stealing your holiday joy.

Most of all don’t be a part of the Obtuse.  One way to keep out of their ranks is to realize that many people deal with pain and loss during the holiday season.   Be sensitive at family gatherings.  If you know someone who deals with pain, loss, health challenges, or unfulfilled dreams simply give them a hug and say, “I love you, and I’m thinking and praying for you.”  Nothing else needs to be said.  You don’t have to understand exactly what they’re going through…all you have to do is simply convey that you know and you care.

The Hamster Wheel Experience

Today I feel as if I’m on a hamster wheel.  I’m spinning and spinning and working and working and getting nowhere.  I’ve had a good week, really.  I’ve tried to stay away from all the negative things, but no matter how hard I try the negatives start throwing themselves in my face eventually.  I had a horrible weekend last week…a meltdown…the old, ugly weekend anxiety thing.  I have too much time to think on the weekends.  While keeping busy would be a great way to combat it  I cannot keep busy 24/7 and live for very long.

The things that are rearing their ugly heads are things that have plagued me for years.  I won’t go into detail, because they involve people I love.  I don’t like to air my dirty laundry to the public, because in this case it’s other people’s dirty laundry too, and that just wouldn’t be fair.

I want to live a happy, fulfilled life.  I want all my relationships to be peaceful and harmonious, but then reality sets in, and I start to wonder if I’m really going to survive it all.  It seems a few mistakes I made in my twenties are going to forever haunt me.  While it’s nice to say, “Leave your past in the past” sometimes your past won’t leave you.  It keeps banging on your door demanding that you pay your consequences.

I’m not one who gives up on responsibility, but when the other side does not make it fair and makes it impossible for you ever to be free from their chains I’m wondering if “giving up” is the only way out?

Again, I’m talking in code, but it’s necessary.

So, I sit here on the precipice of another pity party this weekend hoping that I don’t fall over the edge,  I’m fighting by being as logical as I can be.  It doesn’t matter if I have a pity party, a worry party, or a crying party.   It won’t change the reality that there are a couple of things in my life that really stink, and the possibility of them being anything but stinky for a long time (or forever) is not very high.

I also give it the Lord, and hope one day He will fix it all.  I’ll keep running on this hamster wheel, because right now, it’s the only thing I can do.   It’s not God’s fault that I am where I am today, but He’s my only hope.  Only with Him can I survive to keep fighting another day.   If it weren’t for Him I’d given up a long time ago.  He’s the only thing holding all of us together.

 

 

Mother’s Day

No, it isn’t the easiest day for me.  In the past it has been almost unbearable, but as the years have rolled by I’ve learned to cope with this day.  I allow myself to feel the melancholy that inevitably comes with this day to a limited extent, but in turn I also count my blessings.

Some people minimize the holiday by justifying that it was a holiday brought forth by the greeting card companies to generate more sales.  They’re probably right, but in America it’s a big deal.  I mean, where would we be without our mothers?

I know some folks lost their mothers early in life.  Some folks had a mother who for whatever reason…either by choice or not…couldn’t be  good mother.  While this day is supposed to be a joyous celebration of the wonderfulness of motherhood I can only imagine the pain it brings to those whose mothers were the opposite of a June Cleaver type of mother.  There are people whose birth mother chose adoption.  Even if that person ended up in a wonderful home he or she probably always wonders on this day “what if?” and where their birth mother is today.  I also think of thousands of children in foster care.

There are also the many out there who have lost their mothers.  I cannot imagine what that must be like as my mom is still with me.  My mom’s mother died at age 57 of a brain tumor.  The illness had been quite unexpected as she was a very vibrant, healthy woman up until that point.  The effects of the tumor, the surgery to remove it, and of a subsequent stroke were quite devastating.  For 18 months she lingered in a very debilitated state until God finally took her home to be with Him.   My mother misses her to this day, and every year on Mother’s Day I see her shed a few (or many) tears.

My dad lost his mother in 2007 after about a 3-year period of declining health due to a blood disorder.  My dad is the stoic sort, but since his mother has passed I can tell it has affected him greatly.  I’ve seen him shed tears intermittently in the last couple of years…most recently while watching the movie Marley and Me.  I can’t remember ever seeing my dad cry at all before his mother passed with the exception of my wedding day when I could see a little mist in his eyes when he walked into the bride’s room and saw me moments before he gave me away.

Then there are us who have never been able to have children.  Even if we are new or old to this condition we always feel a little…or a lot…out of place on this day.  This yearly reminder of what we cannot be is a mile marker we’d like to bypass, but the truth is we cannot.  We can only do what we can do to make this day a little more bearable.  I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself this day.  If I feel like attending church I do, but if I don’t, I don’t.  I believe God is near to the heart of  the childless woman.  The story of Hannah is a great example that God felt it necessary to include the plight of a childless woman in the Bible (and don’t forget Sarah and Abraham).

So, I take it easy on myself on this day.  If I feel like crying I do, but I try not to wallow.  I do something nice for myself, and try to remember that:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11

No matter what situation you find yourself in on this Mother’s Day try to concentrate on that!

Does Becoming a Mom Affect Your Emotions?

I’m a very emotional person…always have been.  Truth is most of us are.  It’s part of being human.  When I say I’m emotional it means I’ve always tended to let my emotions have too much influence over me.  My parents and husband would probably “amen” me on that one.

Sometimes I wonder if I had become a mother would I have grown up…meaning would I have become more stoic in order to not upset my own children?  In other words would I have learned to have more control over my emotions?

It’s hard to know, because I have seen some women who I considered tough ladies turn into emotional cream puffs once they had children.  I’m not talking about the post-partum depression, hormone-induced emotional mess I’m talking about a personality change where they are more easily moved to tears by the plight of others…especially children…since they now love another human being so completely that they see in every person a reflection of their own child?  I guess I can best describe it as they now feel like they are a mother to every child or person in desperate need.

Okay…I got pretty deep there…my apologies.

I mostly see this phenomenon in younger moms.  Fast forward about 15 years and most moms have become “tough moms”.  They’ve weathered the years of teething and toddling, ear infections and broken limbs, and now they are dealing with a saracastic alien child they don’t even know anymore, a.k.a. the common teenager. Boy, if she’s not a tough mom by then she better become one fast!

If I had become a mother at all especially when I planned to become a mother I would be in that stage now.  Would I be the tough mom who knows how to control her emotions and/or use them to evoke an expected outcome, or would I still be the blubbering emotional mess one day and the happy-go-lucky gal the next that I am today?

Who knows, and of course I’m probably over generalizing…I tend to do that, but I wonder about these things sometimes (scratches head).

An Unexpected Rough Patch

It’s been a little while since I’ve written…sorry for the dry spell. I guess my last post pretty well eluded to the fact that I’m (we’re) going through a rough patch right this moment. It’s safe to say that we’re not the only ones going through a rough patch. Oh, I could stretch out my arms to the right or the left and easily touch many folks I know going through rough times.

I’ll say right up front. My problems are minimal considering what some are going through…loss of a job, cancer, loss of a loved one. I could have it considerably worse…much, much worse.

I was blindsided by this rough patch though. I was going along just fine…making progress in embracing and accepting my life for what it was, and then BAM! A sucker punch hit me upside the head. That was followed by a series of minor blows, and a descent into self-pity which has pretty much held me captive for the last several months.

I’ll admit I don’t deal well with situations outside my control, and I can count at least five situations right now that are not going my way and are firmly out of my control. I don’t know exactly when I became a control freak, but it must have been around the time I married…maybe that day. For the five years I was engaged to my hubby life was mostly a fairytale with very few bumps along the way. I finished college and planned my fairytale wedding. Life was bliss even though I was working very hard. Life is blissful when you are achieving goals and have something tangible to look forward to.

Then on the evening I said, “I do” we were driving to our hotel in Savannah, and the seriousness of what had just transpired washed over me. I was taking my turn driving when I looked at my husband asleep in the passenger seat. I said to myself “I am a wife…I am HIS wife.” I felt a sense of responsibility wash over me like a heavy blanket even though I was enormously happy that we were finally married.

After the honeymoon I got very serious about my wifely domestic duties. Even though we lived two months in his parents’ basement before we moved into an apartment on the college campus where hubby went to school that little space was mine to keep clean. I took that very seriously! When we finally moved into our apartment I got even more serious about being the perfect wife.

Well, I pretty much stunk at being the perfect wife, but that didn’t stop me from trying to be one. Fast forward about two years, and things got really serious when we began to try and have a baby, and we all know how that turned out. Because I could not perform this pinnacle of wifely duties my self-esteem took a serious blow which at this time has turned into a 17-year blow to my self esteem.

I mean, who can stand under a 17-year pummeling of their self esteem?

Not me.

I have never really gotten over the fact that I cannot have a child, and these last few months have amplified that. I am jealous of those who can have children, and I don’t like that. I want this 17-year-old ghost to leave me alone, but it just keeps rearing it’s ugly head. It continually chants “failure…failure…FAILURE”, and I find myself listening to it, defining my life by it, and pretty much being miserable to live with.

Over the weekend hubby and I realized how great a toll this has taken on us…that and our misguided attempts to be the fix-all people in our families. We have lost ourselves in trying to be everything we cannot be. No wonder we feel hopeless and helpless! We were not called to be the things we are trying to be…parents, and the savior of those who refuse to be saved and/or take charge of their own lives and happiness.

We talked again today about the steps we need to take to ensure that we get our lives and marriage back on track. We realize we must give EVERYTHING…our hopes, our dreams, our health, and our future over to HIM (meaning God). I have to stop letting the inability to have children define who I am. I have to slay the perfection/failure ghost. We also have to further define boundaries with our families and people who continually demand too much from us. This will involve us saying, “no”…something we very rarely ever do because we are both people pleasers.

Oh…that’s going to be about as pleasant as Chinese water torture, but it’s very necessary.

We also have to redefine as well as legitimize our family of two. If we don’t declare ourselves a family worth defending then nobody will. Society is doing it’s darnedest to tear down God’s definition of family. So we all…no matter the size and make-up of our family…have to be extra-vigilant when it comes to protecting our family

Hopefully, this is the turning point in our family and in this rough patch. There will definitely be bumpy roads ahead of us, but with the Lord’s help and our love we can ride it out.

Feelings…whoa…whoa…whoa…Feelings.

I’m not going to vomit my emotions all over this blog post. With Jesus’ help I’m trying to get a hold of my emotions and see them for what they are…fleeting feelings. I just sense things are weird right now. I’m kind of floating around and observing things and trying not give too much credence to my emotions. I’m fighting the intense desire to try and control everything and the compulsion to get my life’s ducks lined up in the neat little rows I want them to be. I’ve realized it’s an exercise in futility, because those little suckers always just end up waddling off in their own desired direction anyway!

The truth is…and I think I’ve said this before…I’m not in control. My head knows that, but I have a hard time getting it to sink deep into my soul. My soul fights for control like a child fights to keep a hold of his favorite toy. I get tired of fighting myself not to mention all the folks out there who continue to lob emotional hand grenades in my direction without even realizing it…bless their little hearts.

Right now I’m tempted to retreat into my own little world and build a razor wire fence around it, but that’s not realistic or even healthy.

So, I keep plugging along and asking God to give me strength to deal with all the weirdness in my life. That’s all I or anyone can do.