The Truth : Taking Responsibility

| This above all: to thine own self be true,
| And it must follow, as the night the day,
| Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Polonius, in Hamlet, Act I Scene iii (William Shakespeare) 

I've been having discussions with a few people lately about how important it is to be honest about even the little things, to maintain personal integrity. The practice of honesty with oneself (and then inevitably with others) is one that, in today's society, is slowly going the way of the whooping crane. 

It is high time to revive it. 

During the last four and a half years, I've been living a lifestyle that demands rigorous honesty - first with the self, then with God and with others.

That forces me to be realistic with myself about a great many things I might otherwise have shoved under the carpet and lived in denial about. It fertilizes my conscience. It demands that I own up to my mistakes - even to (and especially to) my children. It makes me examine the motivations behind my own behaviors that still at times baffle me.

I've discovered that as I embrace this personal honesty, I have less tolerance for being snowed, no matter who's doing it. It's like I have this "BS meter" that points not only within but also outward. It pings all over the place when I hear people talk whose power has gone to their heads - notably politicians, high-ranking officials in businesses or organizations, and the like. 

However, the loudest pinging goes on when I am not being true to my moral compass, when I allow myself to be led astray or I start rationalizing my behavior to myself. That's a good sign. The loudest pinging used to be when I noticed someone else being dishonest. I still notice, but it's tempered with the knowledge that it could just as easily be me compromising my principles to satisfy some ulterior motive.  I know. I've done it.

Insisting on honesty doesn't mean I'm not tactful when I notice something askew in someone else's behavior. It doesn't mean I "let it all hang out" and justify my lambasting someone by saying that I'm being honest. Nor does it mean that I keep silent when silence is not called for. It means that I look at my own reactions and check my own integrity first. It means that I understand that I am human. Fallible.  And that it is okay to make mistakes - as long as I recognize them, and that I learn from them. 

Telling myself the truth is the first step in me taking responsibility for my part in whatever situation has become unlivable. It doesn't allow me the luxury of blaming another person entirely for the state of a relationship or a situation.

When I do need to confront someone, I remind myself to do so in meekness and kindness, with consideration for that person's feelings. It's the way I want to be treated whenever I mess up.

Wouldn't you?

Learning about living - from the dying

Thanks to a facebook friend, I read an article this morning from a British newspaper entitled "Top five regrets of the dying" which talks about a book written by an Australian palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware:  The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.  (if the link doesn't work for you, it's because you're not on facebook... so my apologies in advance!)

Anyway, at the risk of 'spoiling' it for those who would have read the book, here are the top five, in order of importance, of things people wish they had done in their lives:

1.   I wish I'd lived a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2.   I wish I hadn't worked so hard (in other words, I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work, furthering my career, and not enough time with my spouse and family).
3.   I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4.   I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5.   I wish I had let myself be happier.

This print is for sale at INMAGINE

Wow.  Truly the dying can teach us about how to live.  

I'd rather not wait until my death-bed to look back and regret what I could have done NOW.  So my response to the top five regrets of the dying is that it's high time I started living the way they wished they had!

In the last three years or so, I've learned more about how to live life unfettered, unwrapped from the grave-clothes of the past, and unashamed of my feelings, than at any other time in my life.  I really feel as though I am finally - after decades of being steeped in tradition, bound by rules and regulations, and hobbled by hypocrisy - learning how to really LIVE.  It's a heady, scary, delirious, amazing ride with lots of unexpected twists, climbs, and drops.  But it's living instead of just "making do" or "managing." It's living intentionally, not just reacting to circumstances.  

Things no longer "happen" to me. That's "victim-thinking." They just happen.  Period.  Living life in the moment, trusting God for the strength for today ... keeping it real, keeping first things first, expressing my feelings - these are the pillars of the lifestyle I'm learning to live. 

And I'm LIVING. What a trip!

In spite of the circumstances, when I look at my own happiness quotient (in other words, how happy I am) as compared to my life before this new day-by-day kind of living - I'm happier now than ever I was before, even on the bad days.  

And the happiness is spreading.  As I'm learning to be comfortable in my own skin-suit, I treat people around me differently... and now THEY are happier too. 

It's win-win.  For everyone.

And when someday I am facing the Grinning Reaper... I hope that I'll be able to grin right back.

Living in balance

You can't give what you don't have.

It's a simple concept... but over and over again I have tried to offer help, whether emotional or practical, out of a place of want, of deficit, when I was just scraping the bottom to meet my own needs.  I ended up feeling used, put-upon, taken for granted, and yes, resentful. 

It's like the teeter-totter at the playground when the big kid gets on the other end. No matter how the smaller kid jumps up and down on his or her end, he or she is suspended, legs dangling, unable to get down and not having any fun at all.  When life is out of balance - when we pay more attention to the needs and demands of others (when they carry more weight) than our own needs, then there is the potential for a lot of resentment.

The lifestyle I've been practicing for the last three years or so is based on taking care of three central things in a specific order: 

(1) relationship with God, 

(2) relationship with the self, and 

(3) relationship with others, 

and then maintaining and strengthening those three relationships in that same order. The principle is that one must first have a full cup before one has the capacity to fill another's.  Sounds simple enough.  But the old lifestyle I had -  which still lures me back into its clutches occasionally - was just the opposite.  Give til it hurts, and then give some more. My motivation was that I wanted people to be grateful enough to do what I wanted them to do. Change, be more attentive, stop drinking, whatever.  And the result of that was that people first of all didn't change, but they expected me to keep giving, keep putting myself out, and then they wondered why I was so cranky.  Hmmm.  

When I learned that I was powerless over other people, that I was actually trying to be God in their lives - and without His permission! - things started to change.  I started focusing on what mattered most: my relationship with Him and then with myself.  Once I felt more at ease in my own skin, and was able to let go of my need to control the outcome of others' lives, I was able to have more healthy and fulfilling relationships with other people. 

I still have times when I go down that dark path and end up at the top of the teeter-totter, bouncing up and down and wasting my energies trying to look after someone who isn't budging and who might even use my people-pleasing nature against me.  At times like that I need to remind myself that I am responsible for my own actions, and that the other person is responsible for his or her actions. Then I can more easily let go, and let God do His stuff.  

That's a bit more "in balance". 

Hope for a New Day

Tonight I was reminded once again of just how desperate I was when I first started my journey of healing a little over three years ago.  Fear was a way of life for me; and fear (when it was cornered) became anger and rage.  I wasn't living life; I was surviving it - and quite badly.  I was more and more alone, and didn't know how to get free.

As I listened to someone telling her story tonight, and could relate so very much to all those feelings of bewilderment and terror, once again I marveled at just how far God has brought me by following a simple 12-step program of spiritual recovery from what I have called control-freakism and doormat-itis.  Today I do have a brand new freedom, and I can have normal and healthy relationships with people ... as equals. The power trips I went on, the power trips I allowed others to take me on - they are relegated to the past. This is such an amazing trip for me.  I can hardly believe it's actually me living this. 

Part of a reading I turn to quite often goes like this: "No matter how traumatic your past or despairing your present may seem, there is hope for a new day in the twelve steps of Codependents Anonymous. No longer do you need to rely on others as a power greater than yourself.  May you instead find here a new strength within to be that which God intended: Precious and Free."

From the site:
http://quesoyvinoconmigo.blogspot.ca/2010/03/out-of-darkness-into-light.html

The journey is daunting when seen in its entirety.  But thank God, I didn't have to travel that road all at once.  I traveled it - and am still traveling it - one step at a time.  Every step toward the light takes me one more step farther away from the darkness of panic and being without an anchor.  And every step is empowered by the One in charge of this process.  He allows me to stop and remember how far He's brought me - to be grateful.  And I am.

I don't know what is ahead; I don't need to know.  All I need to know is that He cares.  And He does.

Life Lived Well - Adieu

This evening I learned that someone I've known since 1976 passed away in hospital in the wee hours of this morning.  He was 87 years old.

When I first met him, he was just a little older than I am now.  I had a crush on one of his boys - what can I say, he was attractive and I was sixteen! - but he was 20-ish and "too old for me" ;)  and so he introduced me to his younger brother, whom I dated for a little while.  During that time, I got a chance to meet his dad, this wonderful man.  He had such a quick wit and dry humour that I was constantly doing double-takes! 

But it was his heart that touched me most.  I instinctively knew that I could trust him and his lovely wife.  They were the salt of the earth. This man was a living example of a Christian life lived well, doing no harm, doing good, being kind, quietly, unobtrusively.

I'll never forget when I was pregnant with my 2nd child.  It was early in the pregnancy and I had been having morning sickness for a few weeks; I kept getting weaker and weaker, reduced to crackers and water.  This one day I looked at my active 2-year-old, and I didn't have the strength to even change her night-time diaper.  I reached for the phone and the first people I could think to call was this beautiful couple, then in their mid to late 60s, bent over but still willing.  I knew that I could count on them.  They arrived about 20 minutes later.  She busied herself with my 2-year-old and he asked where the vacuum cleaner was.  

Sitting on the sofa, I watched them, and the tears of gratitude were trickling down my face.  I had been totally unaware of how sick I was. Their kindness and my helplessness  made me realize that I needed help, and I went to the emergency ward that afternoon.  They kept me on intravenous fluids for 4 days and on a liquid diet for another day before sending me home.  I had been seriously dehydrated, near organ failure when I got to the E.R.

I believe this man and his wife helped to save my life.

When my husband's father died in 2004, my children kind of "adopted" this godly couple as their honorary grandparents.  Their presence, their constancy, helped our teens through the grieving process; I'll bet they never even knew it. 

We let him and his wife know several times and in several ways how much we appreciated them.  We admired his quick turn of phrase, his quirky sense of humour (he thought in puns and/or in literal terms) and his kindness to any and all who crossed his path.  

There is no doubt in my mind where the real man I grew to love and admire is right now.  I can't help thinking about an old hymn called "My Ain Countree" which says in part (I will use the English translation instead of the Scottish burr), "The hills are flecked with flowers, many-tinted, fresh and gay, the birdies warble blithely, for my Father made them so - but these sights and these sounds will as nothing be to me, when I hear the angels singing in my own country."  

His was a life lived well - to God (à Dieu) - and that's exactly what he's still doing.

Glenda -a tribute

When Glenda was born by C-section in December of 1957, the doctors took one look at her, and knew she would not survive. When her parents were both able to meet with them, they said, "Your child has spina bifida. She has water on the brain, or hydrocephalus. Her head is growing at a phenomenal rate. If it doesn't stop growing, she will die. And if it does stop, she won't live more than a few days. Don't pick out a name. Pick out a casket."

Undaunted, they went to their church family and asked for prayer. The baby's head stopped growing within 24 hours. She did not die. She lived.

She astounded doctors for over 41 years before a rampant bladder infection shut down her kidneys and she died in July of 1999.

Our Angel Unawares.

She accepted Jesus Christ into her heart at a very young age. Her love for Him was evident in her quick smile, her indomitable spirit, and her many acts of kindness to those "less fortunate" than herself.

She was a loyal friend, and a great ally. In her lifetime, she accomplished more for the Kingdom of heaven than many hope to accomplish. She read to shut-ins, sang in church services, talked to people about Jesus, and started a Bible Study in the special care unit of a local sanitarium, to where she moved when she was 18.

Until that time she lived with her parents.

You see her in the photo (upper left) leaning on the left arm of her chair, as if not quite able to hold herself upright. Glenda endured several surgeries in her lifetime. One of the surgeries was to enable her to sit up. The "bifida" in her back was above the waist, so she was not able to sit until she was in her early teens. The surgeons inserted steel rods into her back. One of the rods broke after the surgery (puncturing a lung), and the other one bent. They replaced the broken one with a stronger alloy in a second surgery, but left the bent one as it was. This is why she seemed 'lopsided'.

Whenever I felt depressed, I phoned or visited Glenda. She had the uncanny knack of making people feel good about themselves. She had the gift (so rare) of never taking anything for granted, of living in gratitude.

And when she occasionally got depressed herself, all she had to do was remember the slogan we worked on together: T-O-P. Trust, Obey, Praise. It always worked.

When her time was short, the hospital called. With her family all around her, and her heart rate decreasing by the minute, one of the siblings said, "Let's sing." They sang her into the presence of Jesus, and the moment she arrived, they were singing, "Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me, and in God's house forevermore my dwelling place shall be."

Her favorite hymn was "Lead Me to Calvary." It epitomized her "first love".

King of my life, I crown Thee now;
Thine shall the glory be.
Lest I forget Thy thorn-crowned brow,
lead me to Calvary.
Lest I forget Gethsemane,
lest I forget Thine agony,
Lest I forget Thy love for me,
lead me to Calvary.

A close friend of the family sang it for us at her funeral.

She wore white to meet her Bridegroom.