Staying Stuck

I was driving to work today, reflecting on reading I had done in my Bible before leaving for work, and Psalm 106:25 (“They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord. “) kept coming to my mind. It made me think of different people in my life that spend a lot of time complaining, making excuses and justifications for why they stay stuck in the situations they are complaining about, but do not take the advice they are given, do not try the suggestions people give them, and most importantly, do not go to the Bible they follow and find the answers in the best possible place to find them.

                As Christians, at one point or another we all turn away from the answer God gives us, because it’s harder, or it’s going to cost us a luxury we don’t want to go without, but eventually, we all realize that doing it our way only cost us greater in the end, and we turn back to God for guidance…but them some of us don’t. I am nowhere near innocent when it comes to this, I won’t get anywhere if I don’t take the hard way, but one  thing I can say honestly, is I don’t complain while I muddle through, and I have eaten crow more times than I count.  It isn’t watching people I love struggle through hard times that frustrates me, it’s listening to days, months, years even, of the same problems being complained about, and not a single step has been taken in a different direction.

Problems don’t fix themselves. Weight doesn’t lose itself,  homework doesn’t turn itself in, car payments won’t pay themselves, these problems are in our lives every day, they won’t go away without being replaced by new ones, but the solutions are as available as the problems. Sitting and complaining about the same thing, all the time, isn’t going to get things done any faster.

Remember in school when you would have to write an opinion paper, and part of the assignment was to include arguments you thought someone would have against your opinion, and then counteract those arguments with statistics, etc.? I feel like I am listening to people write opinion papers about their lives out loud. “Problem, problem, problem….solution, excuse for why solution won’t work….. problem, problem….why solution worked for everyone else but wouldn’t work for me……problem”.  There are times we are in the depths of something destroying us and we truly do not know how we are going to overcome it, and there are times we know exactly what we need to do, but we won’t do it.

Go to God for advice. You can’t lie to him, you can’t justify, and manipulate, and re-word things. You can’t make excuses with Him, all you can do is admit you’re lost and ask to be found. The key to this, however, is you have to actually act on it. At some point, going to God over and over again for the same problem, doing nothing proactive to change things, isn’t crying out, it’s complaining.

This is coming off as harsh probably, but it’s the opposite. To sit back day after day and watch someone(s) you love self- destruct, to watch them live a lifestyle that is self-defeating and robbing them of living life, not just making it through, is hard. It is frustrating and scary and saddening but at some point, something in you shifts and you go from being compassionate and caring, to protective and angry. It is natural to lose patience with someone you love when you care more about their getting better than they do. It is frustrating when you listen to the same excuses time after time, wondering when it is going to occur to this person, “I’ve said this to her before”…. It is frustrating to exhaust every option you can think of: kindness, tough love, yelling, crying, laughing, walking with, walking away, walking toward…. And still watch this person tread water. I am not at all, in any sense of the word, saying it is easy. Life is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be that hard either. We have a tendency to make it harder on ourselves, and then complain about it, but at some point, we begin the walk back up hill. It’s not about comparing how I got back up the hill to how you’ll get back up; it’s a matter of taking that first step. Period.

This is not coming from a place of having had it easy my whole life and not understanding problems. I have dealt with my fair share, and for every problem I was handed I created two of my own, but I have overcome obstacles. I have gotten on my knees before God more times than I can count and asked for help. I have been humbled over and over again, and as soon as I get comfortable enough to put my feet up, something knocks me on my butt again. I don’t stay stuck. I may not be a lot of things but I am resilient. That is why this feels that much more frustrating- because I know exactly what you’re up against. I know exactly how lonely it feels stuck in the pit, and how overwhelming it feels to crawl out. It is irritating to no end, to have someone come to you because they know you’ll understand, but when you don’t enable them like another yes-man, all of a sudden you don’t know “what it’s like to go through this.” Correction, I don’t know what it’s like to go through this without going to God for guidance. Only difference.

I guess what I am getting at, is at some point we have to stop grumbling in tents, or coffee shops, treadmills, work spaces, and listen to the voice of the Lord in our lives. We have to stop listening to our friends tell us to leave our husbands because things aren’t what they used to be, and go before God to help piece back the puzzle. We have to stop disrespecting our bodies, then grumbling in the tents about bad we feel, listen to God’s voice telling you to honor your temple.

It’s easier said than done, I get that. I more than get that. I just think that ignoring the solutions so that we can continue grumbling about the problem’s end up being much harder.

All You've Got

“Don’t compromise yourself- in the end you’re all you’ve got “– Janis Joplin

                I get where Janis was going with this, and considering she made a career out of doing exactly what she wanted when she wanted, it isn’t a philosophy I’d argue with her. What’s sad, is people really, at the end of every day, feel this way. When they lay their head down at night, despite how many people might inhabit the very same home they are sleeping in, they feel alone, and entirely responsible for themselves, making themselves happy, carrying themselves through the hard times, working through problems and life’s struggles alone.

                I get that this is a society that rewards self promotion, a society that is all about me and how I can achieve things on my own, I don’t need anyone’s help. It is considered a weakness to ask for help, and whether it costs you a marriage, friendship, or family time, climbing that ladder and having stuff to show for it outweighs saying, “sorry I can’t stay to work that overtime tonight, my kid has a soccer game”.

                I get it. I am working on a second masters, I want a career as well. I would be lying if I said I didn’t sacrifice to get through school. Often times I had the attitude that if people really loved me they would support me; but when people walked away from me because I wasn’t available for coffee, it hurt like hell.

                I expressed that hurt. I was okay with saying I was hurt by the fact I had lost friends because I was working towards a dream I’ve had since I was kid, but I know there are people who would think this was weak, that this was immature or made me look needy or dependent. No, this makes me who I was created to be. I believe in God, but whether you choose to believe God’s word is the absolute truth, or you prefer to follow what science tells you, it has been proven we are created as human beings with a need for connection. We are created to connect, and need that connection from others. Studies have been done to show married people (happily married) live longer; people with a large social circle get sick less often, do better at work, suffer from depression less. There is something to be said for the statistics that show when someone loses the partner they have been married to for 50 or more years, they go soon after.  Because we need to fulfill that need inside of us to be connected to other humans.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I want to know I have my God to go to for anything at anytime, to be loved unconditionally by him, and know that no matter how I feel at the time I am never alone. I want to know that I can call my mom for any reason at all and she will do whatever she can, whether I need advice, money, or a kidney, to help me. I want to know I can gather my girls up on a Friday night to grab a bite to eat and laugh the week away, so I can let go of enough stress to face the week ahead. I want to know I can love someone, so entirely it scares me, and have them love me back.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I don’t want to go through life having no one there to correct me when I’m wrong, to tell me when I am being a complete jerk. I want to know I have people in my life who can kindly tell me I’m in the wrong and need to correct myself. I want to know I have people in my life to be honest with me and tell me when I am setting myself up for failure, when I am repeating a mistake I should have learned from the first time. I want people in my life who love me enough to smooth my rough edges, even if it’s going to hurt me to hear it. We’ve become a society that turns our back to these types of people in our lives, and then we complain people are fake. 

                I don’t want to be the girl who says things like, “I don’t like girls, and they’re drama”…. I love my girls. I love that I have women in my life who understand me, who have my back and believe in me, who are content to watch me shine and happy when I am there to watch them get their turn. I treasure my friendships with those women with all of my heart.

                I don’t want to be the girl who is so jaded from past relationships that I don’t let myself love again. I don’t want to go the rest of my life involving myself in relationships that only scratch the surface because I’m too scared to have my heart broken again.  It makes me sad that having your heartbroken, being cheated on or lied to, is treated as such a death sentence. Friends will encourage their friends to divorce their husbands before they will tell them to pray and work through it, not to give up on the man they loved enough to marry in the first place. We don’t want to go to our friends anymore and say, “I’m crazy about this guy”, because we don’t appear to have the upper hand that way. I’m okay with being head over heels for someone, I’m okay with admitting that when I love it’s with all I have and it has gotten me in trouble in the past. I will gladly admit that I trust people until they show me otherwise and unfortunately this has caused me some disappointment in the past. I give in to my need to be with another human being, and when I find someone that I connect with, someone whose name gives me butterflies when it pops up on my cell phone screen,  I run with it; and when they let me down, I heal, and I move on.

                I worked hard to earn my degrees, and I am right at that exciting point in my life where the world is ahead of me and I am equipped with what I need to grab hold of my dreams and make them a reality, but I love my family, and I won’t follow any dream that takes me too far away from them. People scoff at that, they think I’m nuts for looking for jobs that keep me in the same state as my parents. I don’t care. My parent’s themselves tell me all the time that this is ridiculous, to go where I want to go. I won’t do it, so they can tell me to, and like many other things they’ve told me to do in my life, I won’t listen. I need to know I can drive to my mom’s house and sit at the dining room table while she cooks a meal when I need that home cooked mom food. I need to know that I can go home and walk into my old room and feel who I am again. I need to see my old dog, and goof around on their computer, and harass my sister, because it reminds me that no matter how far away I feel from myself sometimes I have a home, and I am needed there. No career is worth losing that to me, and I am okay with admitting that. I trust that God’s plan for my life involved me being close to my family, and that’s why I was given a family to love so much.

                Be yourself, yes, but in the end let the people in your life share in who you are, because when that’s all you got, you don’t need anything else.