A college roommate taught me to appreciate music. She emoted the music when she listened, or played. 'Be Still My Soul' was one hymn, of many, by which I watched her be comforted:
Be still, my soul: The Lord is on thy side;
With patience bear thy cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In ev'ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul: Thy best, thy heav'nly Friend
Thru thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Be still, my soul: Thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul: The waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.
Be still, my soul: The hour is hast'ning on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul: When change and tears are past,
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.
It has been a time of great sadness. Anticipating many life changes has moved from exciting to stressing.
Watching our home be scrutinized and fiscally valued by strangers and neighbors has been heartbreaking. What is a home worth? A place where lives are built, a place of refuge.
The thought of leaving my career, though temporarily, causes me tremendous grief. A large part of who I am is defined by being a therapist; someone criticized this as 'an inflated sense of self' the other day when I expressed this concern to them (don't get too mad, they were trying to be helpful). Now that I have thought about it for awhile I can see their point, but I disagree. I am a good therapist and I will miss it. I will miss my office, my chair, my computer desktop, my files of children's drawings, my colleagues, my clients. Mostly, I will miss the opportunities I have had to learn from the therapeutic relationship; I have learned the most amazing truths about God's mysteries as a therapist.
It took me a long time to make good friends after I got married. And suddenly they were there, after many lonely years. These friends have enriched my life and changed me. The distance created by our move will not lose these friends, but the relationship will change and loss will be felt.
I anticipated problems with our neighbors as we neared finality on our future plans. No amount of anticipation could have prepared me to have my character raked over boiling tempers, again and again and again. I feel defeated. Wisdom I would impart is to not worry what others think if you feel good about what you have done. That advice is crap. The bottom line is that it hurts when others hate me, especially when I know what I've done is the right thing. Because, if there is something I can change about my behavior or character, something to apologize for, maybe their hatred would be justified. God's advice is always best: Matthew 5:44 "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;" Know, I am trying.
Hip has been a challenge. I naively thought the challenging behavior was only present at home. It was clear that is not the case when talks of being kicked out of our church's nursery began a few weeks ago. I am rarely the parent who is embarrassed by the child, and this situation is no different. My horror comes from knowing my child is causing harm to others, and severe disruption to the poor teachers. I know, first hand, how tiring it is to work with naughty children, I have empathy. Hip's hitting problem is severe. There have been those who have said, "He's two, it's normal." My comeback: Pornography viewing is also normal, but certainly not healthy and certainly not okay. At home the tantrums rage for hours, I am the primary victim of his hitting. There have been countless people who have said, "You know where they learn that? From the home." My comeback: Do you think he learned to hit when I forced him--no hitting or physical violence on my part, other than holding him down with one arm--to allow me to change his feces-loaded diaper so quickly last week a NASCAR pit crew would be impressed? Because I'm confused. We do not watch television when Hip is awake, we do not use corporal punishment (except the time he ran near our busy road two weeks ago), there is no domestic violence in our home or threat of it, and shouting occurs only when my hormones coupled with neighbor disputes reach unbearable levels (which all things considered has not happened very often, twice I think). Further, Hip is disciplined using a 123 counting method, brief time outs, and a lot of redirection/distraction. Finally, he is privy to undistracted parental (often two at the same time due to L's work schedule) attention 90% of his waking hours. It should be noted Hip is only disciplined with time outs at this stage of his life for hitting or angry destruction because he IS two and how is it his problem I accidentally left the crayons out and he colored on the wall or that he grabbed onto a ceramic figurine that was within his grasp and he dropped it on the tile breaking it?
The purpose of this post is to sort out my thoughts, an attempt to cope positively with hard things. I told my mom, a few months ago, that I knew I was headed into the most challenging phase of my life, thus far. Being a teenager sucked and the only reason that is worse than the issues going on now is that it lasted so damn long! I am hoping this will end soon. Best case scenario--29 weeks (I've got to allow for some recovery time).
