Tag Archives: love

Procrastinating & Reflecting

I should probably be scurrying about like Mrs Tiddlemouse fussing over the state of my house and trying to get it all tidy. I do not have it in me. We live here; it’s clean enough for us; I will give the bathroom a once-over tomorrow before guests arrive and make sure we don’t have any dirty rags hanging out around the sink.

Tomorrow, we host our annual Family Birthday Party which for now is focused on the younger ones. As they mature, I hope to keep the annual summer party alive with a growing focus on the family as a whole. Mine and Love’s wedding anniversary is in July, and a while back I heard of a family doing a “family birthday party” on the parents’ anniversary and that stuck with me. We did become a family in July, after all; it’s worth noting and celebrating. For now, however, we are enjoying throwing a big celebration for the kids, whose birthdays span the summer months.

Love went out to acquire some balloons (we are so prepared, ha ha) and my job was to . . . clean? But it’s almost 10pm and I plan to be up early and I got distracted on the internet like any genuine elder millennial, so here we are.

Aaaaand, the party has come and gone, and the only snag was not ordering enough pizza. We should have gotten thirteen and instead we got . . . eight. The year before we hadn’t planned on having food and decided last minute to get pizzas, only to have them arrive after most of the guests had left. I did not want a repeat of leftover pizza for days, so I overcorrected by . . . a lot.

Anywho, the kids had so much fun they were sad that it was over; we hosted over fifty people; my mother-in-law’s slushie machine was a huge hit; we got to see some people we hadn’t seen in ages.

While I am not a party person, and I don’t seek out large gatherings, I love seeing people enjoy one another’s company. Most of the people at the party were engaged, talking with people they didn’t know and catching up with those they did. Very few people got their phones out unless they were taking pictures. Everyone made themselves at home. It was amazing to see people from all different communities all participating in a celebration of our children.

Love and I believe our children worth all the fuss, but I am still moved by how many people showed up for them. We are unbelievably blessed, and our children are growing up in a shower of love and blessing. It is almost incomprehensible to me.

Heading out to church now . . . Thank you for reading. This blog exists because of people like you who take the time to read my silly musings and tell me you enjoyed reading. Remind me to tell you all about how a unicorn job fell in my lap last week. Until next time . . .

Delicate Flower

Something I think about too often is this time when my supervisor told me that I am a “delicate flower”. She was not trying to compliment me. This supervisor routinely told me that I was making her job harder, that she didn’t understand why I was hired, that all I did was make mistakes and that in this job, mistakes are not allowed. “You are just a delicate flower,” she sneered; “I know you go crying in the bathroom when I give you any criticism. I don’t even know what you are doing here.” When I finally got the courage to ask for a transfer from the person who actually hired me, the Operations Officer, she wondered if maybe there was a language barrier.

A language barrier. Sure. I shrugged and said, “Whatever it is, I don’t think I can keep working here if I have to work for her.”

I wonder often if I am just too sensitive. Do other people just hear criticism like that and “take it on the chin”? Do they respond with, “Okay, I will stop making your job harder and never make a mistake again,” with a little rueful, penitent smile? Do they fire back with something about how difficult it is to work for such a particular person?

I have received criticism without batting an eye. I don’t always take it personally when people make unflattering observations or comments about me. I have been a liar, adulterer, murderer-in-my-heart, envious, ungrateful, disobedient. I am not someone who walks around believing that I am in any way a good person, or even always a well-meaning person. Criticism doesn’t make me fold.

What makes me feel like a delicate flower is raised voices. My fight-or-flight kicks in pretty quick when someone around me is yelling, insulting (calling names), using exasperated tones, or threatening. My ability to think rationally, even to the point of understanding what the person is saying, vanishes. As I have gotten older, my ability to steel myself against verbal assaults has diminished. I don’t know if I have ever been the type of person to laugh while someone else is clearly having an intense moment. That has been the case as long as I can remember, but what is happening lately is this lingering sense of I am not okay, long after the yelling has stopped or I have left the situation. My mind swirls with fear. I do not feel safe.

Over a year ago, someone went berserk on me in a parking lot for hitting their car. The kids were all talking and I was distracted and all I was thinking about was getting parked so I could just stop for a moment and CRUNCH. Ooh, that was bad enough, but the person whose car I hit was sitting in it and she was livid. I think too often about that. I am more careful in parking lots, quick to hush the kids, afraid not just of hitting someone’s car, but of what the person might do. The kids probably remember this incident, but they aren’t scarred by it. I am.

I am not scarred in the sense that I replay the scene or constantly fear someone yelling at me again; I am scarred in the sense that I don’t trust myself to be okay if someone does. That may seem like splitting hairs, but the difference is staggering. Fear of someone yelling is focused outward. I can scan for threatening people and avoid them. I can drive more safely in parking lots. What I am afraid of cannot be avoided. I am afraid that I am not a strong person. I am afraid that I make things worse by reacting to anger instead of choosing to respond to it. I am afraid that something is terribly wrong with me, broken inside me, and I am terrified that there is no way to bind it up or heal it.

I don’t know if these are words fit to be shared. I just know that this is what kept me silent yesterday when my husband was asking me to please just talk to him. I spent years whining and acting like a victim. I don’t need to go on and on about how unsafe I feel in my own skin, having these sensitive ears, carrying this too-tender heart. I do not need to make much of me.

So in hopes of rescuing this post, I will answer my fear with what I know to be true: there is One who binds up and heals my brokenness. Fortunately/unfortunately, He refuses to do so by making me strong. His strength is sufficient in weakness. I may live the rest of my life practically blacking out when people yell at me. That doesn’t make me less safe, because my safety doesn’t come from my own coping skills. He is near to the brokenhearted. No matter what my broken internal alarm system is screaming, I know that He is near. And I do not have to tolerate abuse. Refusing to stay in a room where someone is yelling at me isn’t weakness. Do I really believe that? No. Should I? Yes, one hundred times yes. It is not weakness to leave an abusive situation, regardless of who the abuser is.

Maybe I am a delicate flower. But it doesn’t matter, really. Whatever I am, or was, I count as loss compared to the surpassing knowledge of knowing Christ. He is continually forming me, and I can say with great joy that it is better to be a delicate flower in His hand than a strong rock apart from Him.

Walking this out may take a lifetime. But the truth remains: God is good. His strength is perfected in weakness. All my hope is in Him.