Pathway to Happiness

I was sharing with someone today about the last couple of years and how my life has changed radically in that time frame.

I remember saying something like, "My kids, and others who know me really well, would tell you. My kids are still saying every so often, 'What's with Mom? how come she's not freaking out?' The biggest thing about this is that I've learned to step back and let people be who they are. That is so freeing!"

It sounds so weird when I say it like that. "Let people be who they are." But for many years I couldn't do this one seemingly simple thing. I couldn't stop trying to change people, especially (but not exclusively) people I loved. I felt threatened by anything they did, anything they thought or believed, anything they said, that was not what I would do, say, think, or believe. I couldn't carry on a civil conversation with someone whose views I didn't agree with. I was all about making them be who I was.

Which is kind of sad, really. Who I was at the time wasn't anyone even I liked. Why did I ever want more people like me running around manipulating, guilting, feeling responsible for, and trying to control everyone's "bad" behavior?? Yikes!!

Once I got into a healing process, one of the first things I had to learn to do was let go. Let go of my need to be involved in the little details and nuances of people's lives, heartaches, interpersonal and/or private troubles. And I would indiscreetly share my own troubles with others who might use that information as a weapon against me. I was constantly, as one of my friends puts it, getting up other people's noses. I had to learn what was my responsibility and what wasn't.

One of the things I learned was that it was okay for people to have their own opinions - even if they weren't the same as mine. (After all, my opinions were the only right ones!) This was based on a false assumption, one whose antidote I learned much later : just because they had a differing opinion than mine didn't mean they weren't out to change my opinion - at least not the way I wanted to change theirs. I'd turn any opinion I had into some sort of doctrine, never to be questioned. I didn't like a TV show - okay, I found a way to Christianize my reason. My REAL reason was - I didn't like it. Because I didn't like it, I didn't want anyone else to watch it.

For another BIG example, anyone who didn't believe in God, who belonged to a different religious organization, or who even had doubts ... well!! That person threatened my world. I became indignant and when I did, it turned them off (of course) and then they'd clam up and perhaps never bring anything like that up to me again. There went a lost opportunity to open a dialogue and listen to someone else's heart for a change. But I never saw it like that. My logic was that my faith was such an integral part of me that when they disrespected the object of my faith, they were disrespecting me. How blind I was.

This type of thing caused more hurt feelings, fights, and scream-fests than any other in my home, between me and my daughters. I nit-picked about the TV shows they watched because they were "of the devil." I forbade them to watch certain types of movies or listen to certain types of music for the same reason. "Oh, this movie is so New Age." Or, "You see how they portray the father in that show? like he's a flaming idiot - way to foster disrespect for the head of the home - no wonder kids don't respect authority and mouth off at their parents ..." Or, "You know how demonic those lyrics are..."

I was pretty much "anti-everything." The result was that my kids tuned me out, shut me out, and nearly turned away from God - because of me. One of them coined the term, "Christianazi" - because of me. And they held resentments against me for years because of these things that made them feel like freaks when they were talking with their friends -- and couldn't participate in conversations about this episode of this or that movie they weren't allowed to watch. If they had a personal problem, they refused to come to me, knowing they'd get either judgment for feeling the way they did, or I'd get all "Judy to the rescue" on them, or I'd get indignant against one of their friends, and want to make a big issue of it...when all they needed was a listening ear.

But then I got so desperate for help that I was willing to do ANYTHING to stop being so incredibly angry, fearful, and sad all the time. And God made it possible for me to find exactly the type of counselor I needed, one who had been where I was and who also was a Christian, to show me the way out.

So when I got into recovery from my insatiable obsession with controlling everyone's every move and rescuing them from the consequences of their own actions, something changed fundamentally in me. There was a paradigm shift, as the psychologists say. A new way of looking at the world. I was introduced to the idea that I was powerless over other people, and that in tryng to control them, I'd lost myself - and not in a good way. I was lonely, scared, and so very unhappy.

Now... I'm not. There was indeed a way out. I discovered the roots of my unutterably abysmal behavior in my childhood - and it was a slow, difficult process to rid myself of those scars and learn to look after myself instead of focusing on everyone else around me. And I needed help to do it - help which God gladly provided by an amazing set of circumstances. It wasn't easy to work through those things and learn the path of acceptance and forgiveness, to find out who I was and what God was really like, how much He really loved me. But as I did, I literally could feel the tightly-woven mummy wrappings loosen from me. I could move a little more freely. My relationships started changing: first with myself, then with God (I'm being honest here...) and lastly with the people in my life. They all kind of changed together, but the first in the healing stream was me, then me and God, then me and others.

And one day a few months ago, I looked around me and the emotional and spiritual landscape had changed from what had been a laborious, rocky vale of tears and strife - to a peaceful mountainside pass beside an artesian well, accompanied with the songs of birds and a cool summer breeze.

I was happy. Not just once in a while and for short periods, but most of the time. This was a new experience for me ... and I liked it.

I still do.