Time Will Tell

Was listening to H.O.T. and this song title seemed very appropriate. Lyrics? Not so much.

I completely have a case of the Mondays. I’m so frustrated with how today has turned out that I was ready to lace up my shoes and easily run a 5K. (and by “easily run a 5K” I mean “angrily run a 1K”) Then it dawned on me that my inhaler is empty and that running probably wasn’t very wise.  So instead, I sat on my couch and cried to decompress.

As badly as I want to get out of my neighborhood (and possibly Clarksville), I want my for my mom to get out that much more. She has done so many great things in this community and it is never appreciated by the people she does things for. It breaks my heart and it reached such a point today that I was too upset for words.  She spends countless hours trying to put together programs for people who don’t show up, and fielding phone calls from Washington, lobbying for people who don’t respect her. It’s mind boggling. More than that, it’s upsetting. She deserves better…so much better.

God designs all our paths, but my mom’s path seems extraordinarily rocky, and I often question whether or not that’s fair. Does my mom do everything right? Is she peaceable with everyone? Of course not. No one is. But she does so much good that is unseen and I’m always wondering when she’ll be properly rewarded. If it was up to me, she’d be far away from here working to her heart’s content for people that want to be actively engaged and involved. Unfortunately, it’s not up to me.  Time will certainly tell how all of this plays out. I’m hopeful that it has a happy ending.

 

Love and Peace or Else

I LOVE me some U2. I’m a much bigger fan of their earlier work (War is their best album. Yeah I said it. Joshua Tree is a close second. Yeah, I said that too), their newer music continues to inspire me.

After writing yesterday’s blog post, all of these emotions sat so densely on my heart, it was nearly suffocating. As I went into my devotional time this morning, I was completely unsure what to expect. But I was expecting something. And boy oh boy did God deliver. He pulled a Bernie Mac and punched me right in the throat. It was hard to breathe, hard to function. It just sucked in every way possible.

And all because He wanted me to make peace.

I’ve been watching Crosspoint’s series “Anything but Ordinary” this week as my devotional study and it’s just been on point. But the lesson I watched today. Oh goodness…

Have you ever been dealing with something someone did to you and God nails you as if you did something? I literally paused the podcast and said this to God:

It was so perfect how God nailed me it was nearly absurd. But as I watched the podcast, God was exposing some things in my life I thought I was really over, and some new things I hadn’t realized were there. I’m very laid back and I abhor confrontation. When something goes down, if I don’t think it’s really worth getting into, I’ll bite my tongue and walk away to keep the peace. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do right? Apparently, not so much. Keeping the peace is so radically different from making peace, and avoiding confrontation hinders us from reconciling relationships.

As right as I feel in how my stepmom treats me, it isn’t about being right. It’s about being reconciled. It’s hard to mend those frayed lines of communication if I keep ignoring them. So I’m going to try again. I’m going to reach out to her and do my part to fix things. What happens after that really isn’t up to me, and that’s the scary thing. Something so powerful that was taught in the podcast is that peace making is not the same as peace achieving. Despite any grand peace making effort I put forth, we might not be ever fully reconciled. How crazy is that? But it’s life. So as scary as it is, I have to take that leap of faith and reach out again. Que sera, sera, right?

 

No Money

Pretty decent track off of a pretty decent Kings of Leon album. Listening to Come Around Sundown after a crappy day makes the day a little less crappy.

So as a person that continually has little money due to not having a job, the thought of coming into a nice stipend from school is pretty exciting. I’m taking some of that nice stipend to go to Florida and visit family. Y’all know how I feel about my natural family, so this is kind of a big deal. Plan A is to go to Miami and see my favorite Uncle. Plan B is to go to Jacksonville and see my favorite brother and his parentals. (A very large part of me is counting down the days until I have my own place and I bring him up to see me, but I digress.)

Jacksonville seemed like a nice little Plan B, so I can work on restoring relationships and mending fences and all that jazz. Because try as I might, that never really works out as I plan. So today, just because, I emailed my stepmom to check in and say hi. I debated with sending her that email for two days. Our communication line is severely frayed, and sometimes I wonder why it isn’t severed completely, and then my dad and my brother pop into my mind.  But I sucked it up and I put on a happy face and emailed her. Who knows, maybe this time it’d be different?

It wasn’t.

Her response, was as follows (edited for brevity):

Sometimes I wish that you would have given yourself the opportunity to explore your horizons on this end. But it’s your decision now and only you know what direction you want for your life.  … You are given opportunities that when missed, don’t come around again. So start thinking about that and let us know how you plan to move forward.

From the outside looking in, this sounds like a well meaning directive issued from a loving parent to a slacker child. But considering I hear this speech everytime  I talk to her (with the speech getting more and more condescending each time) all I hear is this:

You are a big disappointment. Why are you wasting your life being jobless in Tennessee when you could at least be doing something here in Jacksonville? 

Give me something I can believe in,
Give me something then walk me away,
I’m a waste of time,
And all in all waste of a living.
Waste of a living.

I don’t know how to adequately express that my life isn’t so bad, and that I don’t need to rate myself against her measurements of success. I thought I did before, but I guess it doesn’t matter. So I stared at the email and tried to think of a nice response. And I could come up with was this:

No, I didn’t actually put that in the email, but I’m now considering it. I mean REALLY? How can someone who makes no attempt to get to know me or find out what I’m doing with my life here in Tennessee actually be qualified to tell me what I should be doing with my life? No matter how well-intentioned she means to be, it still bothers me to no end. But the even better question is this:

Why do I care so much to feel like I have to validate my choices to her, or to anyone for that matter? I don’t have an answer to either question, unfortunately.  Until I learn the lesson in all of this, I guess the lines of communication will continue to fray.

 

The Force of Gravity

Hands down my favorite BT track (not the original, the Tiësto version of course), and yes it’s mostly because my former boo JC Chasez does the vocals. It’s a great track.

This past week has succinctly identified the pattern of 2010: ridiculous ups, even more ridiculous downs, emotional flatline in between. Yesterday alone even summed it up more succinctly.

Here’s how yesterday was supposed to go down: spend the morning baking various goodies for my most awesomest cousins, go to the movies with my awesome baby girl Jada and her family, then meet up with said cousins to exchange gifts. Here’s how yesterday went down: baked the goodies, had a minor but irritating tiff with my mom, went to the movies and saw Tangled, felt sick, got a message from my cousin that her sister was in the hospital, stayed up the entire night talking to my cousin and looking at cancer treatment facilities, go to sleep at 1:30, toss and turn the ENTIRE night.

It’s just all too much right now. So much craziness has been going on the entire week and I don’t know how much more I can take. And the crazy thing is, none of the craziness has happened to me directly! It’s happened to all of the people I hold very close to my heart. I’ve tried to be the strong one for all of them and now I’m wondering who will be the strong one for me? I’m so numb that I can’t even pray. I can truly feel a barrier between me and God and I don’t know how to get around it. And I desperately need to get around it because people are counting on me, and I’m counting on Him.  I did not want to spend my Christmas holiday flying to fight the force of gravity. But gravity, it seems, is working against me.  This is not what I wanted my holiday to be. But all I can do is quietly hope. It’s truly all I have left at this point.

It’s a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. – Lamentations 3:26 (MSG)

 

My Little Brother

This is me and my little brother JaRon. Today is his birthday. Just seeing pictures of him makes my heart bleed terribly. I don’t have many regrets in my life, but a big one that I have is that I couldn’t spend more time with him.

Distance sucks.

The last time I saw JaRon is when the family came up here for my graduation. We had the greatest time together. We played Guitar Hero, we talked about sports, we played silly games, we just hung out. It was very great for me because I forgot all about the nearly 14 year age gap between us and just let loose.

He has such a great heart. After Patrick & I broke up and I moved out, I was talking to him and he tried his hardest to console me. He loved Patrick to pieces and was excited at the prospect of having an older brother. Patrick even game him a video game before the went back to Florida. But JaRon was so amazing, just saying “I’m really sorry it didn’t work out with you and Patrick.” Those few words meant more coming from him than it did the other adults who were tying to give me advice.

Today is my brother’s birthday. He’s 11 and doesn’t look it at all. His foot is already bigger than mine. He’s gonna be a tall dude. I dunno where he’s getting the height from. He is super cute like his big sister though, and incredibly smart just like her too. He’s the total package.  Once I have the resources (and car!), I’m fully intent to redeem the time with him. Anyone will tell you that I’m not the biggest fan of my blood family for too many reasons, but JaRon is my heart and I’d do anything for him.  I have a couple little brothers here that I claim, but JaRon is my blood, he’s my favorite little brother. I only hope to be a good big sister that he can look up to.

So to my wonderful little brother, JaRon Ivey Weatherspoon, Happy 11th Birthday. I love you!