Judgment January

For the last month I have had a pervading feeling of, well, bitchiness. I seemed to filter all events through my lens of shrewish crappery. I labeled January "Judgment January" for the simple reason that there was a lot to judge and be bitchy about. Believe me, my gossip filter was off and if someone had business to get me all up in, I was up in there, and I had an opinion about it. I think it began when I started reading a popular book by a popular Christian writer who shall not be named here. I was super annoyed by this writer. Irritated by his writing style (that, considering how many books he has published, should have improved by now) and his message that I feel has already been stated and written about many many times, I wanted to toss the book across the room in annoyance. And to top all this off, I kinda feel like this writer has sold out a bit. I know, super bitch. It just got worse from there. My students annoyed me, my friends annoyed me, even my cats were pushing my buttons.

I was talking about this with dear Kara yesterday and as I told her all that I had been bitchin about, I noticed that my blood pressure was rising and I was getting angry. Really angry... UP-IN-ARMS kind of angry about this laundry list of blargh. But that anger was really about something else. It is easy to stand in judgment over others, period. We do it all the time. It is really easy to turn off my judgy filter when I am scared or conflicted or hurt or fearful. Well, I am scared, conflicted, hurt and fearful. The journey my aunt is on is scary for all of us. Pancreatic cancer is a bully. And knowing my aunt is not herself, is in any kind of pain, is alone is beyond my coping skill set right now. My family is stoic, quiet, and persevering while I am emotionally turbulent, loud, and ready to throw in the towel. I want to go get this done. I want to take care of her. I want to stand up to cancer like Gandalf to the Shadowfax and say "YOU SHALL NOT PASS".

So that was January. Now Tuesday is the first of February, and February is about love and all that shit. Stoopid love. Love comes in and heals what is wounded. Love is intolerant of judgment. Great. I guess then February is going to have to be about Forgiveness.

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them" --Mother Theresa

All I have is this poem

My aunt is in the hospital with pain related to her pancreatic cancer and I feel so utterly helpless. There isn't anything I can do to make her hurt less. And I am so bloody far away from New York. My hands are raised up and I want answers, dammit! I want to feel some certainty in this day and know that everyone is tucked in bed safe and sound. These spoke-halting moments I can't figure out and I can't get right seem to be a symptom of my inner futility. The only thing I can do is go back to this great Miller Williams poem.

Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems, 1999
University of Illinois Press

WTF... Where's the Forgiveness???

First of all... did you see the Octomom on Oprah? She definitely opened up a new can of crazy in that hour. Oprah was even a little stunned by her obvious anxiety. She said that she had kids because she was addicted to the unconditional love that kids give. Really? Reaaaallly?? Here's the thing, that woman has to live with her addiction FOR-EVER!

Okay, I will get off my hooty-tooty high horse for a minute. What the Octomom couldn't be honest about was why she had a hole in her heart that not even 14 kids could fill. Denial is coursing through her life, and believe me, there are rapids in that river of hers. What I took from that really awkward hour of train-wreck TV (other than a profound appreciation for Suze Orman... LOVE her!) is the painful understanding that we have to be honest enough with ourselves and gracious enough to deal with the honesty.

Topic #2: I went snowshoeing today. It was awesome.



I live in a part of Colorado where it seems that a person is measured by how many miles they run and how many fourteeners they climb. I am the opposite of that. And when I get out in the wild, I try to enjoy it for enjoyment sake, not because I have some crazy bucket list. Summer is harder to hike in. It's crowded and hot and my engine runs into overheat pretty fast. Then I feel like Shrek-ette huffing up a dusty, dirty trail. But in the winter, the crisp, cool, clean air seems to inflate my soul and I fly up a trail. Plus, everyone on the trail is on wobbly snowshoes, a great equalizer. You may have climbed Maroon Bells, Climby McMachoman, but you have crappy balance, ha HA! I don't mean to be so bitter, but sometimes I just wish I lived around non-mountain obsessed people. Like people from Kansas. Bless you, Kansassians!



But all this leads to my main idea, which is that we all need a little forgiveness. When the tragedy in Tucson happened last week, I was reminded about how much forgiveness we need to give ourselves. Don't get me wrong, the shooting was a senseless, horrible crime and I weep to think of the lives lost. But that is a whole other blog post. I guess I wonder if that gunman would've opened fire on a crowd of people if he was able to be really honest and gracious with himself. Let's not wonder about this guy's motives for a sec. Whatever motivated him was secondary to how much he hates himself. Taking that self-hate out on an available target is really cowardly, but really easy. My mom always said that 99% of how someone treats you is about them and not about you. I wonder how much of that guy gunning down innocent people is about his own self-loathing and the inability to deal with that hatred. I wonder how much of Octomom's problem is about how she can't open that big, dark box of painful honesty in her emotional attic. I wonder how much of my antipathy towards Climby McMachoman is really about me.

I beat myself up a lot. I'm a bit of a bully when it comes to picking on my own faults. And then my friends get all up in my face and tell me to stop beating their friend up. We all do it. And each time we beat ourselves up, we build a brick wall of shame, denial, and defensiveness. Listen to that Patty Griffin song, "Forgiveness" and try to hear what she is singing. Times are hard, life is unfair, difficult and painful. We do life because we know there will be moments in the sunshine. But the hard work is to be honest and gracious with ourselves.

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us." --Martin Luther King Jr.

Lessons were learned... I think.

So I was watching Jenny McCarthy on Oprah. I know, you're thinking to yourself what a cultural bastion I am. I am, don't be jealous. But anyway, she was speaking very candidly about her relationship with Jim Carrey and the lessons she learned from the relationship. Oprah was on a kick about what relationships teach us. She had Terry McMillan on later in the show talking about bitterness and how holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

But I am digressing. I started to think about my relationships. What lessons have I learned from my relationships? And are these lessons sticking with me? Relationships always seem to school me, and sometimes when I exit a relationship I tend to slam the door in anger on any sort of trailing lessons that might follow.

And then I thought about my relationship with God. What lessons am I taking from that relationship every day? I'm not talking about lessons from the Bible, I'm talking about the intimacy with God that allows me to see myself through His eyes. I know God wants to teach me stuff, but I have been very closed to his lessons lately. There is a wall of bitterness and frustration and contempt that goes up when things aren't going my way. I wonder if he is trying to teach me openness and forgiveness, especially of myself. I wonder if He's trying to teach me that I am okay just the way I am. I wonder if He's trying to teach me that when I live in openness, I will feel more love. I know, you're thinking to yourself that I am incredibly perceptive and quick. I am, don't be jealous.

Fearless

A couple notes on fear since that seems to be the topic banging around in my head as I hesitantly tiptoe... as I tremulously venture... as I inch forward nervously into 2011.

A lot of people like new starts. I don't. The possibilities are never realized and I am left with a whole lot of disappointment and loads of free time to think about it. I am not one to look at free time and say, "whoopie-pie, I get a whole day to myself!" Instead, I am the person who looks at free time as the big, giant chasm of unplanned seconds that will inevitably leave me in tears on the floor of my closet. This is because free time forces me to either a) sit and think or b) self-medicate myself into guilt-ridden paralysis. No good can come of it. And as an extroverted pessimist, the start of a new year just means that I have a new, unfilled calendar. EEEE!

So I was thinking about this fear I have. Well, all the fears I have. They like to have parties and mock me for how chicken I am. It's true, I am a chicken when it comes to tearing down my walls and addressing what really scares me. Aren't we all to some extent?

Two things happened over Christmas break. First, I saw "The King's Speech" which is fabulous. It is about how we all have fears and to what extent we allow those fears reign in our lives when we don't want to face them. Second, I bought Marianne Williamson's new book "A Course in Weight Loss". Now I am not one to go out there and say, "Hey, I am a hefty girl," which is kinda like saying, "Hey, I have a nose in the middle of my face." Go on and state the obvious, I'm sure people will be surprised every time. But I haven't given myself permission to state the obvious very often. And as a consequence, I recently saw some photos of myself and just about wanted to die of shame and horror.

What I'm saying is this... we have to give ourselves permission to hang out in the scary place for a second or two more than is comfortable. Otherwise, we will just soothe our pain away. And whatever caused the pain is still waiting on the other side of self-medication. That bastard. I think of my fears as a tunnel that I am trying to crawl through. And just like the line in "Finding Nemo", you have to just keep swimming if you want to get through it.

For me, 2011 is about being uncomfortable. Wait until my fingers get pruny. Let the awkward silence go on a moment too long. It is only by giving myself permission to be in the fear that I can get through the fear. I could hire a personal chef to make my meals and a personal trainer to stand behind me on the elliptical with a whip, but if I don't address WHY I am fat, then I will never be okay being thin. Fears are like gravity, they pull us in and we struggle to fly off and be free of them. The more we struggle to be free of them, the more they weigh us down.

I'll end with this great quote from Marianne Williamson. Cut out this quote and put it on your bulletin board if you haven't already.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Be good to yourself today.