The right to take up space

Some time ago, I was watching a comedian on television do his routine.  Comedians are sometimes the only people who can get away with telling truth because they tell it in a funny way (they hope). This comedian's name was Greg Rogell, and the line I remember most is when he started talking about golf and golf caddies. "Golf is the only sport that comes with a slave." He then started to demonstrate. He held his microphone like it was a golf club, made the classic golf swing with it, and then dropped the mike on the floor and walked away.

While that was funny, Mr. Rogell was also highlighting an attitude that exists not only in golf, but in everyday life.  Some people, for reasons that still mystify me, have a really hard time with the simple concepts of saying Please and Thank you.  If someone puts themselves out to help them, especially if that putting out is physically or psychologically hard for them, you'd think that "thank you" might be on the list of things to say.  Treating people with courtesy, respecting their personhood, would seem to be a basic skill.

But no. Instead, such people are more likely to find fault with something else that same person is NOT doing, but which they never said they expected. Since different people have different priorities, it is impossible to read minds; expectations need to be stated at the outset, even if it might seem like a no-brainer.  For example, I'm more of a sit-and-visit kind of person; the housework can wait.  For others, housework is this huge thing and they can't sit and visit until it's out of the way. So my sitting and visiting is like laziness to them, perhaps even inconsideration. Yet their refusal to sit and visit until the housework is done tells me that things and appearances are more important to them than friendship and spending time with people. Dishes don't have feelings. People do.  

And yet, who is it that apologizes when the topic comes up? Typically it has been me - because no matter which way you slice it, for whatever reason, I usually end up looking like the one in the wrong... and I have been cow-towing to guilt trips my whole life.

All of my life, I have been fighting for the right - taken for granted by most - to take up space in the world, to be appreciated, and to own my own feelings and opinions without being told (verbally or non-verbally) that they are insignificant. Or wrong.  Or whatever other negative adjective you might want to use.  I'm uncomfortable with confrontation, and my natural response is to withdraw or feel bad for friction existing between people - even if I'm not one of those people. The fact that it exists makes me feel and act guilty.  I lose sleep. I get far more upset for far longer than I need to. Often, I feel like if I screamed at the top of my lungs to be heard, nobody would listen anyway; even if I have something important to say, a large part of me doesn't believe anyone will pay attention to it. 

Photo "Businesswoman Asking To Stop" by imagerymajestic at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

Maybe (and I know that this is a rather big logical jump for some) maybe a big part of it has to do with the fact that I'm under five feet tall. Not being taken seriously because of my height, not having my short legs taken into consideration when doing tasks that take an average-sized person about half the number of steps it takes me, and being twitted (or laughed at) for something over which I have no control, is one of those sore spots with me, because I've had to put up with it all of my life.  

People do it without thinking of the consequences, and they think that by doing so they are funny, or somehow superior.  As if it is by some accomplishment of theirs that things are easier for them (when it is simply a fluke of DNA), they criticize (or laugh) and tell me to keep up. (By the way, these are the people who treat me like a slave without saying thank you...)  Or they laugh and tell me to stand up (when I'm already standing.) Or they worry out loud (like someone did once), when I drop a few pounds, that I'll "disappear."  One person even looked past me and asked where I was ... pretended he couldn't see me.

Ouch!  That behavior and those kinds of statements convey dismissal of my existence and (knowingly or not) they are an attack on my worth.  They reduce all that I am down to what I look like on the outside, and they fail to acknowledge accomplishments that a regular-sized person would be proud of and never would expect to have called into question. Yet it happens to me all the time! Because of that patronizing "I'm better than you, and you don't even have the right to exist" mentality, this kind of belittlement (no pun intended) really hurts. 

In the past, I wouldn't say anything when people treated me this way (or worse yet, I would try to laugh it off), but all that succeeded in doing was (a) send the message that I was okay with it, and (b) make my resentment grow and grow so that finally, I would explode - and not in a nice way.  Someone would invariably get hurt.  And then I would end up looking like the bad guy.  After all, they were "only having fun." Or worse yet, they considered their fun-loving nature (read here: cruelty) to be part of their personality, and took my affront to their unthinking behavior as a personal attack against them.  Suddenly they were the injured party.

Wow. What is worse, I would beat myself up for weeks, months, sometimes even years, for something that at the source, had more to do with someone else's thoughtlessness and insecurity than it did about my reaction to it. It's what kept me in abusive relationships with some people for far too long.

So I'm looking at things a little differently now.  I am telling myself that I have a right to take up space, that my feelings and opinions matter and are valid, and that I have the right to tell someone who is behaving like a jerk toward me that they're behaving like a jerk.  I have the right to expect an apology from them, (not the other way around) and I have the right to require them to be accountable for their actions, to realize that they can't just say any old thing they want to and to blazes with the consequences.  I have the right to be angry when that happens, to work through that anger and to take the time that I need to do that fully before moving past it and on with my life, with - or without - them.  

Maybe someday soon, I might even act on those new ways of thinking. 

Stranger things have happened.

Living Grief

My dad had a stroke in January 1989, when he was 63. I was 28 and had just learned that I was pregnant with our first child. Neither he nor my mom knew that I was pregnant.

The stroke changed him; it changed who he was. He'd always prided himself on not showing his emotions to anyone else. He lost about half the use of his left arm and leg, which was bad enough, but what he lost most was his emotional control, and his ability to sing. Slowly, over the next three years, he lost more and more of his memory. My children never knew the man that I knew growing up. I grieved that they'd never benefit from his wisdom, or hear his comedic timing when he told a joke, or see him "in action" when he was pranking one of my uncles or acting the fool with people who came to the house.

Mom and Dad - 1984

 
In fact, I felt abandoned - like I had lost my father when he had the stroke - because before me was this man I didn't know, in many ways the very opposite of the one I knew. He was impulsive, unreserved, would blurt things out no matter where he was or who he was with. 

It took me several months to work through the sadness I felt. And then, one day, my mother got sick and had to be hospitalized for a couple of weeks. She was afraid to leave him on his own and she asked me if I would stay with him. 

So I did. 

In those two weeks, I determined to get to know the man in front of me, to know what he was like.... and I learned that there were things about this fellow who used to be my dad, that I never knew about my dad when I was growing up. I learned how soft-hearted he was; he would burst into tears if he was moved. I appreciated how frustrated he was that his body wouldn't do what he wanted it to do, that his voice couldn't make notes anymore - he had been able to sing, rich deep bass notes. He could enjoy good music still, but that he couldn't sing the notes tore at him. I remember just stopping him as he was berating himself for not being able to get dressed after he used the washroom, and I just reached down without looking and buttoned his pants and buckled his belt for him. The gratitude in his eyes is not something I'll forget.

I learned that he could cook!! He always let my mom cook when I was growing up. He had the most wonderful belly-laugh and he laughed .... a lot. And his love came shining through. All those things I thought I had lost were still there. They just took a different form. Those two weeks gave me a gift: the gift of my father without all the defenses he put up over the years to hold himself in check. It showed me what he was really like inside, and truth be told, I liked this guy just as much as I had loved my pre-stroke dad.


As time went on, though, my mother began to suspect that he had a memory problem. 

He'd always had a problem remembering people's names; we used to joke about him calling someone "Whassisname" ... but this was different. Someone would ask a question and he'd start to answer, get confused, and look to my mother to get direction. She'd answer the question for him. 

Finally, because he wouldn't make an appointment for himself with a doctor, Mom made one and took him in. It was October 1, 1993.

The doctor asked him three questions: 
(1) Do you know where you are? (after looking around ... "Uhhh, hospital?")
(2) Do you know what day it is? ("Wednesday...")
(3) Do you know what year it is? (He looked at my mother. He didn't know.)

The doctor sent him for an immediate CT scan. It revealed that he had widespread brain cancer. Inoperable. He had a matter of weeks left. 

They set up a hospital bed at home and for a month he stayed in that bed using a bedpan. Then he developed a bedsore and was admitted to hospital. To palliative care. 

From that point, he went downhill fast. I visited as often as I was able. My mother almost never left his side. 

Week to week, I could see the deterioration as the cancer continued to spread unhindered. He lost his appetite. Pain - deep, nerve pain - wracked his body and the doctors prescribed morphine. He lost weight. The pain was so bad that he would moan and cry out for his "Mama" - who had died in 1974. He regressed. He didn't recognize his children. It was so very hard to watch ... the only parent I had that I absolutely knew loved me unconditionally ... and I saw him slipping away and there was nothing I could do to bring him back. 

I knew that he was nearing the end. The morphine injections weren't doing the trick so they put him on a slow drip. Gradually they increased the dose. 

I grabbed his hand and held it, about four days (as it turned out) before he passed away, and I told him the story of the first, last, and only time he had taken me fishing. I told him how he had taken me in the boat, how he put the bait on the hook, how he taught me to cast and to "set" the hook in the fish's mouth, and how he taught me to reel the fish in. And then how I strutted back into the house and told my mom that I'd caught the biggest fish. "You never took me fishing again, Dad, and I don't blame you. Not one bit. And I just wanted to apologize to you. I'm so sorry, Dad." 

He smiled at me, looking at me like I was some kind soul he didn't know but appreciated nonetheless.  "Tell me another story," he said dreamily.

Those were the last words I heard him speak. 

I never wanted him back after he left. Not if it meant that he would go back to being in that much pain. The first image in my mind when I learned that he had passed was of him striding confidently through a meadow of flowers, swinging his arms in the prime of life, singing in that deep bass voice at the top of his lungs with all the joy I knew he had in him - happy and free of pain.
 
 ~~~~~~~~~~~

They say that time heals all wounds. In a sense I guess it does. At least the callouses get a little thicker. I won't say that the hurt goes away, because it doesn't. At times it is just as fresh as the first day. There are times I want so much for him to hold me in his arms and tell me one more time that everything is going to be okay. I miss him so much! 

I comfort myself now with the fact that the granddaughter that never knew him, the one who told me how much she wanted to meet him someday because I'd talked about him so much that she thought she knew him, is now keeping company with him. It helps a bit to know that they have each other to spend time with, while we wait to join them. 

For us it will be a lifetime. For them - they will have just gotten there when we arrive.

"Just me" is enough

I am enough.

It's become a slogan of late. And sometimes - sometimes I need to remind myself of it.

I wonder sometimes whether I really make a difference by being "just me."  My contribution seems so infinitesimal compared to those who are older, younger, smarter, taller, richer, skinnier, more popular.

I need to remember that "just me" is enough:

• when I look in the mirror and wish I had a thinner body and/or nicer clothes,
• when I feel like people look past me at someone else who has those things,
• when I wonder if anyone really notices any of the good things I do, 
• when I am tempted to change who I am to fit in, 
• when I think that I'm too shy/ sensitive/ fearful, and even
• when I watch TV and see advertisers try to tell me that I don't smell good enough, don't look young enough, and won't be loved if I don't use their product.

I'm not saying that I don't need help. In fact, I know that I do: all kinds of help. All I'm saying is that if I believe that I need something more, something artificial, to make me feel more worthy, then it's time to reexamine my priorities. 

I need to be honest with myself. That happens when I look myself in the eyes in the mirror, and remind myself of Polonius' wisest (and last) words given to his son Laertes, "Above all, to thine own self be true; then it shall follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." (Hamlet)

The Love Difference

Sometimes we can tell the difference.  Most times we can't, at least at first glance.

We do it all the time.  We have it done to us all the time.  People hide from each other to avoid talking about the private things in their lives.  Rather than have anyone think we don't have it all together,  we pretend it's all good.

Okay, sometimes it IS all good.  Fine - it happens.  And sometimes when we are suffering, we don't want EVERY person to know we're having a bad day - or a bad year.  I get that too.  Like one comedian said once, "You know who cares way less about your problems than you do?  Ever'body."  There is something to be said about being selective regarding with whom we share our innermost feelings.  I think the Good Book warns, 'Cast not your pearls before swine.'  


But there comes a time to be honest - not only with ourselves but with God and with others too - particularly those closest to us, the people we trust.  For some of us it is our families.  For others - family is the last place we want to be that open, and with good reason.  


One of the things I have always dreaded doing is a 'forced friendly.'   It happens in ice-breakers and team-building activities at work, or on Sunday morning at church when someone suggests we all go shake hands and greet each other.  Very few are ever honest at those times.  With notable exceptions, the smiles are fake, the handshakes insincere. And everyone, if the truth were known, is hiding his or her pain.  

The ones I cherish are the ones who break through the insincerity barrier. They are the rare treasures: open, unencumbered spirits, the ones who I know really love.  There is no guile in them.  No hidden agendas.  No masks.


Like yesterday morning.  I'd been to church, was heading out of the building, and had gotten into the car just as my hubby drove it to the door.  

I was just getting into the car when one of those rare people, whose smile reaches his eyes, came over, greeted us, and shook our hands through the car window. I know that this man has the kinds of problems that might make someone else in his position bitter.  Yet he has allowed himself to be broken and to open himself to others.  He has allowed himself to be known, warts and all, to everyone. And everyone who knows him ... loves him.

As he stooped and shook my hand through the car window, he looked straight into my eyes.  I could see the love in his eyes.  It moved me, touched a spot in me that had been dry and dusty, and refreshed my spirit. 

It is possible to look beneath the surface, to cut through the facade.  It is possible to be real, to love ... sincerely.  


Thank you, my friend, for showing me your heart; you have no idea how much I needed to see it.  I pray that I can be as true.

Shoulds and Oughtas

Ever said "fine" when someone asked you how you were, even though you weren't?

I have. Lots of times.

It's taken me a long time to figure out why. It's fear. Fear of rejection, fear of judgment, fear of not appearing as spiritual as someone else, fear of ... being real.

I grew up in the church. My first words weren't words; I tried to sing. My mother was a Sunday School teacher. Every time the church doors were open, she was there; I used to say I had a drug problem (she drug me to church, she drug me to Sunday School, she drug me to church suppers, she drug me to Ladies' Aid and Women's Missionary meetings, she drug me to choir practice and prayer meeting and all kinds of church events.) And everywhere there were people who expected me to be the perfect little darling. I knew all the right words to say, all the catch phrases. I lived in the land of Denial. And it wasn't Egypt. (Okay, bad joke.)

After my teenage rebellion, Jesus rescued me from my reckless behavior. But surrounded again by the atmosphere of the church, and embracing its call to a better life, I was sadly ruled by the great Should and its close cousin Oughta. And their alter egos, Shouldn't and Mustn't. Ughh. So controlled, so afraid of stepping outside the boundaries placed on me by everyone around me. Spouting all the Christian catch words that made those who weren't saved look at me like I had two heads. Carrying a five-pound Bible in my purse. Being obnoxious about my faith. Nobody in my sphere of "influence" gave a rat's behind. They wrote me off as going through a phase from which I would easily recover and then I'd be back to the same old person they knew. And they wished I'd hurry up about it, because if this was what Jesus was like, they'd just as soon go shopping.

I was so bound up in those shoulds and oughtas, shouldn'ts and mustn'ts, that I didn't even know who I was and couldn't enjoy just being alive in Jesus. For decades!! Spinning my wheels, in overdrive with the parking brake on, wondering why I didn't get anywhere, stressed out about my family and all the world around me, thinking I had to save them, I had to tell them, I had to be the one to fix them. After all, time was short.

God was even more desperate - to deliver me from that horrible existence. It was never His intention to riddle me so deeply with guilt that I couldn't enjoy His presence. He never meant for me to take on His job (that of convicting people of sin and bringing them into the Kingdom). He just wanted me to be free. And He was willing to do anything to do what He does best and has been so faithful to do every time: rescue me.

Let me share with you part of my journey, the part of it that alerted me that there might actually be a place of bondage in my life. It was before I even knew who I was, perhaps around 2004. I stumbled across a children's book by Max Lucado. It touched me so very deeply. And it was part of the preparation that God put in place that would kick into high gear over 4 years later.

The book was called "You Are Special." Click here to read a blog entry that includes the text of it.

Maybe, just maybe, you need to read it today.

... to be continued....