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.

What Now?

My favorite game to play with people has always been “questions”. Basically it consists of me asking a million and one questions until my nosey apatite is satisfied. When I had sleepovers with my childhood friends, I would make everyone, (I was nosey and bossy) write down questions and put them in a hat. The game then obviously consisted of you answering the question you drew out of the hat. As I have gotten older that game has progressed into what can be a relentless beating until I am happy with the answer. It is not, however, a one-sided game. I am more than happy to answer the questions I am asked. Being an open book has always been one of my best and worst qualities. I will answer pretty much anything asked of me, honestly, except one very simple question, “what is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?” I will usually say, “I fell cheering during a game once,” or, “I spilled a cup of hot coffee all over an elderly lady waitressing one day”, and while those instances weren’t fun, I don’t get embarrassed over things like that at all.

                If I were to answer that question honestly, which I guess I am doing now, the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me, and seems to continue to happen to me, is my standards. The seemingly ever- descending set of standards I have for myself, and the people I allow into my life. I have had my share of crappy friends (who hasn’t), but why it takes me so long, and so many heartaches, and disappointments,  to get to the point where I have had enough; enough embarrassment and humiliation to remember I matter, and I need to be done, boggles me.

                I think about this a lot; I pray about it a lot. My question (of course there ’s another question) to God is always the same, how did this happen? When did this happen?  I look back and can’t find Freudian insight into where I was neglected or abandoned, or where my needs weren't meet and I became dependent on someone else meeting them. I was raised with the best example of a woman I could have asked for. Dependency and vulnerability outside of what is endearing in a person wasn’t modeled for me. My mother was incredibly strong, and able to admit weaknesses, but she didn’t tolerate disrespect from anyone at the risk of not having someone in her life. There was a time that neither did I. There was a time when I considered myself the strongest person I knew, and although I was forgiving beyond what was necessary at times, I was okay with that. I owned it as a part of who I was, and it made me feel good to know I was following the path Jesus laid before me….

                What scares me, what saddens me, is that that ability and genuine desire to forgive, has somehow shifted into my accepting what treatment I’m handed, until I reach a breaking point of feeling completely disrespected, demeaned, embarrassed, brushed aside, or the worst out of all of them, afraid to even look at myself in the mirror because I am so disgusted with that I am allowing to take place in my life. I find myself saying ridiculous things to justify another person’s actions. In relationships, “well, he doesn’t hit me or call me names, I wouldn’t tolerate that.” In my friendships, “well, I know my dad just died but she has a lot on her plate so it’s okay she was nowhere to be found.” Why? What purpose does it serve to have people in my life that are counterproductive and don’t seem to appreciate the position anyways? At some point we all have to grow up and stop choosing who we meet for coffee based on wanting to have a date for prom and friends to sit at lunch with. I am not at an age where friendship is entirely based on proximity, and whoever sits next to me in fourth period English is my best friend that year. Boyfriends should not be chosen based purely on the height requirement. I am blessed, beyond blessed, to finally have found a support system of friends that set the standard higher than I even imagined it could be, but I am not so lucky in the relationship world.

                I don’t want to berate the relationships I have been involved in ,or demean their character anonymously because some of them were incredible people and at one point or another in our journey together showed me what it means to be in a healthy, loving relationship; but most of them have been, quite frankly, a complete waste of time. I hate when I hear people say, “Well, they taught me what I don’t want in a relationship”. Really? Did I need to be cheated on to learn I don’t want that? I know the divorce had a larger impact on me than I admitted, or maybe I'm just now realizing for myself. However dysfunctional a marriage between two young people can be, at the end of the day, I really, really wanted us to make it. He was a horrible partner. He drank and lied and cheated and spent money he didn’t have.  He allowed me to work three jobs, go to school, take care of the house, and the dog he wanted that I didn’t, all while driving an hour and a half from a military base to do it. I realize no one deserves to be treated like that, but we made a promise before God to love and honor each other forever, and one of us took that seriously.

                The divorce, well, I guess more so the marriage completely broke me down. The eating disorder was the easy part of those years for me, and it is so difficult for me to look back at the treatment I accepted. I tell myself all the things I would tell my client, people treat you the way you let them, you give people the power to hurt you, etc. etc. It is different when you are the one involved in the whole sloppy mess. That is something I need to remember as a therapist, and it is something I try to remember as a person. I guess at some point in the recovery from the devastation that was that divorce, I let my standards for what is acceptable and what isn’t take a complete nosedive. I will justify it all by saying, I’m busy, I’m pursuing a career, I don’t have time to offer more of a commitment than I already am, but that’s crap, you find the time when you find the person worth finding the time for. Maybe I haven’t found that person, or maybe I have and he hasn’t found me. All I know is, as hard as it might be, as difficult and lonely as it can sometimes feel, being with someone who doesn’t put you in the same position in their lives that you put them in yours is WAY lonelier than having no one at all.

                Maybe it’s time I revert back to myself for that relationship, maybe I need to date myself and remember what it is I am worth before I cheat on myself with someone less deserving again. Maybe those amazing friends that make every single day better deserve the effort I put into wasted space put into them. Maybe I should call my mother right now and thank her for not only showing me what it is like to fall, but that it is entirely possible to get back up, stronger and more ready than before. Maybe I should pray, and ask a different set of questions. Questions like, “how do I move forward from here?” A little less, “Why?” “How?” “When?” and a lot more, “What now?”

The Finish Line

I was not the pretty girl in class. I was not always the smartest. I was not the fastest, the nicest, or the best dressed. I had tons of friends, and tried to be nice to everyone, but my own insecurities and issues built a wall around me that was often perceived as snobbiness. I didn’t go to parties and I wasn’t allowed to date. I had cheerleading, and I was a 4.0 student. As graduation got closer, most of my friends were planning summers full of concerts and barbeques to attend before they moved away to college. I got a job and prepared to start the local community college- I had no plans beyond getting money in the bank and getting myself through my bachelors program. I was focused and excited, but I was not prepared to accept life outside of academic success. I wasn’t the popular girl having a difficult time adjusting to being a small fish in a big pond suddenly; I was an insecure girl who had validated myself through grades and winning cheer competitions, only to find myself sitting in a classroom full of smart kids with the same 4.0 I had.

I got a job waitressing. My tip money went to a new shirt to wear to the club and gas money to drive all over Southern California with my friends. I had freedom and took it for granted…deciding my parents had no clue what they were talking about up to this point in my life, and I had been a victim of communist brain washing. Saving money? Pssh. That’s for the birds. Health? Sleep? Not for this know-it-all. Basically, like most kids my age, it took me one year out of high school to go from a 4.0 student to academic probation, I was in credit card debt and had worn myself exhausted and bored with seeing everything I had seen. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Then I met a boy. I fell ridiculously, recklessly, blindly in love with this boy. Needless to say, the cliché continues and I married said boy. Two and a half years later I packed everything I owned into my Chrysler and moved back home. I took the dog, he kept his girlfriend. The insecure girl was back, this time with an eating disorder and someone else’s debt. I felt like a shell of a person, and to be entirely honest, out of all the things I’d lost being with him, my dreams were the hardest pills to swallow. Where did the girl with all the ambition in the world go? Where did the girl who listed journalist, lawyer, veterinarian, and singer (I can’t sing), all at once mind you, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up disappear to? Who was I and what was I supposed to do now? The divorce destroyed me. I didn’t say it out loud. I got really good at pretending. I was hurt, beyond hurt, and betrayed, and I was embarrassed to admit I missed a man who had treated me so badly as much as I did. I was ashamed I was getting divorced, and the innocence in me was officially gone.

I just muddled through life. I waitressed and continued to hang out with my friends. There were good times. I started to laugh a little more and dated again. I carried emotional turmoil everywhere I went, but at least I was getting out of the house.  I missed him still, I was still ashamed and hurt, but I was treading water like hell trying to get back in the race.

I went for an interview for an internship yesterday. I got the position. I am beginning my internship for the completion of my Masters degree Monday. My Masters. I don’t know what happened. I woke up one morning and told my mom to meet me at Chapman University, I was finishing my Bachelors degree. That was five years ago. Now I have a matching Masters to hang next to it. I will be starting my second Masters next year, and maybe I’ll go for my doctorate one day. I have plans to own a business, and have worked hard to surround myself with a support group that builds me up and lies down with me when I fall. I have a God that I stopped running in embarrassment from, realizing He was with me all along. I have gone through therapy and read books and had endless conversations with the people that love me, and that is why I am here, sitting in the same Starbucks I have been studying in for eight years, realizing the finish line is in sight. It’s here.

I don’t have a tragic story full of obstacles I’ve had to overcome. I have parents that divorced but remarried, I have insecurities that led to an eight year eating disorder, but I have strengths that helped me overcome it. I have a job that has blessed me enough to go to school, and I have relationships today that nurture me.

When I was going through my divorce, I stood in front of the person I had given everything I absolutely had too, and I asked him how. How could you do this to someone who gave you what I gave you without ever asking for anything in return? He looked at me and said, “Well, if someone is dumb enough to give it to you, why not take it right?”

Right.

Except this time I was dumb enough to give it to myself, and by God’s grace it worked out. See you at the finish line. It’s been awhile, so in case you don’t recognize me I’ll be the one on the other side of it.

Belonging

How many people do we belong to in our life? How many times do our hearts open- close- then re-open themselves to an old love? Start a fresh journey with a new love? The thing that intrigues me the most… is I loved them all the same, yet so different. I love my mom entirely, with all of my being, and I belong to her.  My dad and I fought the battle every day to get to the place where we are now, and I belong to him, yet, I belong to my mom? My heart feels completely full when I think of either one of them, but when I think of my Jesus, my sister, him, and even the hims before him, it feels the same way. I belong, or did belong to all those people.

I have asked myself so many times, can we really love more than one person, soul mate kind of love, in our lifetime? For the longest time, usually to comfort myself through a break up, I would tell myself no, that there is only one true love, and the rest was practice...but how can that be? It’s not, I can’t believe that. I have been lucky enough, more blessed then I can ever comprehend, to have gone through my life thus far with an amazing collection of best friends. Most I am still friends with, some I am not…and whether we don’t talk anymore because we out grew each other, or because we made the conscious decision to go our separate ways, for the season(s) they were in my life, I belonged to them.

We are not supposed to have regrets, and for the most part I don’t. I subscribe to the ideal that God has a plan for me, and my sinful nature guided me off that path more times than I’d like to remember, but God always met me where I was at, and readjusted things from there. I have fought a bloody war, and I am grateful that there haven't been more casualties. I am not okay with losing one friend, let alone the number of friends I have, but what upsets me more than coming across old pictures or an inside joke now and then, is the little piece of my heart they took with them…the loss that comes with no longer belonging. Where this is all going, if it is going anywhere at all, is that the loss of those friends seems lonely, but I love the friends I have now so much I don’ know where I would find any room to love more.

I look in his eyes and I know. I just know. It doesn’t take away from the fact that I knew then too. There were a few I didn’t love, even if I thought I did, but there were some I did, and for the short time I was in their lives, I belonged to them…..

My dad told me something a few weeks ago that hasn’t left my mind since…. We had an honest discussion, well; I had an honest listen, to him talking to me about the divorce. It’s a touchy subject, as it should be, and we haven’t had much dialogue about the topic since it happened. I have struggled since the day the decision was made to end things, with an overwhelming amount of emotion, most of which has been guilt for putting my family through such heartache. Being responsible for hurting someone(s) you love, someone(s) you still belong to, is the hardest thing I have gone through. I can deal with anger, I almost wish for it to make things easier, because to love someone, still, but know you have to make a decision that is best for you, that will hurt them, there aren’t enough tears to cry. The second my dad brought the guilt up, and how I need to release it…give it to the God I thank for forgiveness and grace every day, I began to cry. This is my dad, the dad I belonged to until I married someone and belonged to them for a short while, only to end things resulting in me not really belonging to anyone (except my mom, Jesus, my sister, my friends- get it?) … and he’s telling me to forgive myself….then he says, “it’s okay Megan, you think with your heart not with your head, you always have. It’s who you are.”

It’s who I am.

The thing is my heart doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my mother, my father, my sister, my Jesus, my best friends, and him….. The greatest commandment of all is to love like Jesus loved. We have become a people that view putting others before ourselves as a weakness. It’s me...me...me...” I’ll love you as much as I can but only if it isn’t at a sacrifice to me...” Ugh. There is a lot of back and forth I don’t get involved with, I don’t do soap box, I don’t do debates, but this is one thing I am adamant about. True joy, pure and true joy in its most natural form, comes from loving others, doing for others, giving to others. My heart hasn’t belonged to me since I was old enough to use it, and the problem (for me) does not come with figuring out how to grow up and take back my heart, to think for myself and only myself, but to find a balance between thinking with the heart I have left, that belongs to who it belongs to now, and not letting the pieces of my heart that were given away to those I used to belong, to damage me. Make me a cynic. Lonely.

I have loved more than I have done anything else, and I have not always done it perfectly but Lord knows I tried. I don’t just love a little, I don’t even know how- I give it all, everything, every part of me to belong to every part of you. I guess what I am wondering, what I still haven’t quite figure out, is how I can love so entirely the people I belong to now, when there is still so much of me belonging to those that aren’t here loving me anymore. What a humbling position to even be in.

Home for the Holidays

There’s this couple that live in the corner house on my block. The first time I saw them was a couple of weeks before Halloween. They were outside together putting up their decorations, which sadly, blew away the next day.  Thanksgiving rolls around, and there they are, dressing up a scarecrow and sticking fall flowers in their flower pots.  Two days before Thanksgiving I had my house completely decked out. I thought I was the first person to have my Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving had its turn, but the couple on the corner had their colored lights on Thanksgiving night.  It is my first time decorating my own home, and besides a wreath my mother made me and an ornament I got for Christmas a couple of years ago, I had nothing. My best friend and I spent a day, and a lot of money, roaming the aisles of every convenience store in my area. After losing our mind, okay, after I lost my mind in one store, we had to caravan our carts across the parking lot. There are few times, especially with the stress of life in the past couple of months, that I get to just laugh. Laugh like when I was a kid and would spin in circles until I was dizzy with my sister in the backyard, but this was one of those moments. Every time I walk by that tree I think of Carolyn and me trying to hold onto these carts with the wind blowing us all over the place. Those are the memories Christmas is made of, and thank God we allow ourselves to take a step back from diets, bills, rush-hour traffic, and chores to enjoy life, even if only for the few short weeks of the holiday season. I don’t know when we became a society that is in such a hurry we need the excuse of a holiday to justify not taking life so seriously, but I am glad we at least have that much. I walk by my tree every morning, a little disappointed I am so busy with finals and working to have time to sit on my couch and enjoy the twinkle lights and the candles burning….

That’s why I like this couple so much. I like to make up stories about people I see a lot but don’t know, and I have decided this young couple is living in their first home, enjoying their first set of holidays as co-inhabitants of a home they will look back on one day and say, “remember when we spent all that money on those Halloween decorations and they blew away the next day?” ..Or, “remember how small that house was and how we would bump into each other even standing in the kitchen together?” Thank God for small houses and the love that overflows them. I grew up in a small home, my sister and I shared a room, and there was one bathroom to the four of us. I was the happiest girl in the world when we moved into the big house my senior year, I got my own room!! However, I wouldn’t trade the years laughing in bed with my sister or doing my make up in the bathroom with my mom for anything in this world.

I was getting my usual holiday, red toes, pedicure yesterday, enjoying my coffee and listening to everyone talk about their holiday plans and what they were buying whom. There was an older guy next to me, and his granddaughter was on the other side of him. He was one of those happy- all- the –time people, you know? He was smiling and greeting every customer and worker that walked by his chair. When his pedicure was finished, the nail tech asked him how he felt. He said he felt wonderful and that he mostly came because he wanted to create a memory with his granddaughter, one that they “could look back on later and laugh at”, then he said, “This is a good memory.” I cried, instantly. I would give anything in this world to have my grandfather here to get a pedicure with, purely just to create a memory we could laugh at later. Thank God for family members to make memories with, maybe those family members have left us sooner than we would have liked, maybe time and anger have combined to create a rift so huge it appears irreparable right now, but thank God there are some, for all of us, that we can look back on and say, “that was a good memory.”

These are the things that tie us all together. These are the memories, and the day to day activities, that put the same smile on my face as the girl behind me in line at Starbucks has on her face during this time of year.  She probably didn’t just spend an afternoon scouting Target aisles, caravanning four carts full of ornaments and lighted garland, but something has happened in her days leading up to the holidays that has made her smile. The couple on the corner, in a small house in the middle of Adelanto, the man at the pedicure shop, excited to spend 13 dollars to sit with his granddaughter for forty minutes, just the two of them, Carolyn and I trying to balance wrapping paper rolls in an already full cart, they’re all special, and rare, moments to the people experiencing them.

It might not be much, but its home. Home for the holidays, at least for now, if not the rest of the year, its home.

NASA

Three days after my parents brought my sister home from the hospital; I came to my mother in the kitchen and  said, “Remember when you brought that baby home and I didn’t like her?” That’s all it took. Three days of holding out until I surrendered to being completely infatuated with my sister. She is three years younger than me, but from the way I talk about her you would think she was ten years old. I realize she is an adult, but hard as I try, I just don’t see her that way. I see the little girl posing in trash cans and with our dogs because our parents made the mistake of giving us idiots a disposable camera. I see the girl who had to have her stuffed animals lined up perfectly on her bed. I could write a sweet, emotional blog about her, but I do that every other blog. In honor of our relationship- I think it would be more genuine if I told it like it is.

Court was nine years old, in third grade and growing a little too big for her britches (I’m the older sister I can say that). I was twelve and we were outside doing our weekly Wednesday chore. Raking up the dog poop and taking out the trash. I hated this chore because, well because I hate poop, but also because she was so much smaller than me so when we would carry the trash cans to the street I would have to do all the work. My side would be tilted up because I was actually carrying it, and her side was so much lower the trash can would hit me in the ankle the entire walk down the driveway. I would always yell at her to pick her side up and she would always get mad and twist her determined little face up. She would grab the trash can with both hands and try to lift it up as high as she could. It was never high enough but dang it if that little girl didn’t try…. We were usually both so irritated about this chore we would start arguing instantly. This particular Wednesday was windy and cold. We decided to use our technique (we had a few) where one of us held the snow shovel (my sister) while the other one (me) raked the dog poop onto it. Court was getting mouthy (once again, I’m older so I can say mouthy) and she made me mad. One minute she was running her mouth, and knowing her she probably hit me with the rake, and the next minute I took the entire shovel and threw it on her. She went screaming into the house and to this day I laugh hysterically every time I think of her running and yelling, “She threw poop on me mom!” My mother actually believed me that the wind did it, and for once in a million fights, I actually got away with something.

I was eleven and my sister was eight. Our Dad worked nights and would sleep a couple of hours in the day, then get up till my mom got home and he could go back to sleep. My sister and I were on the same track, so we were off for six weeks every few months together. By the end of the first week we were over each other, so although we had no one else to play with and had to get along for the sake of boredom, we would fight like crazy. One day she made me mad over who knows what, probably a debate over watching Where in the World is Carmen San Diego and Saved by the Bell, so I told her I as running away. I packed six dollars and three pairs of socks in a back pack and made it to the end of the walkway before she came outside after me, crying and begging me not to go. The second I saw her sad face it was over and I was making sure my sister wasn’t sad. Ninety percent of the time growing up I was the one making my sister cry, but the second that she did, I would do anything in this world to make her stop, I still would.

My sister was a freshman and I as a senior in high school. She came home one day and said this girl, who at one time was her friend, stole her shoes and she saw them in her locker. My sister has no problem confronting anyone, about anything, but the fact that she had handled the problem for herself didn’t matter to me. I went up to this 80 pound freshman girl the next day at school and in front of all her friends started yelling at her for stealing my sister’s shoes. I told my sister about it later and she was entirely un-amused. She let me know she had already handled it, and I let her know I didn’t care, she was my sister and I wasn’t having that. Then she made fun of me for being a loser senior going after a freshman. But that’s what my sister doesn’t understand; I would go after Goliath for her. If those were my shoes I would have convinced myself they weren’t, I would never confront someone for myself; but I will for her, even if she doesn’t want me too.

I remember little memories from growing up with her all the time. We have our own sense of humor, our own ebb and flow that comes from years of sharing a room and a seatbelt in our dad’s old truck. Whether it was good or bad, big or small, scary or fun, we did it together. Our age difference put us in entirely different spots in our life once I hit junior high, and we haven’t met back in the middle yet; but I have the best memories of our elementary school years. She was my best friend, still is. She was always pissing me off, I would put together a stage set for whatever play I was making up, and it never failed; by the time I got the stage set up she was bored; when it was my turn to be the customer instead of the order taker, she was over it; I finally get to be the teacher and she doesn’t want to play school anymore. We would be coloring or playing with our dolls, or “prank” calling businesses by calling them and asking them what time they open, and she would say, “I am going to go get a drink,” ten minutes later I’d find her in the living room sitting with my dad. She annoyed me, she never wanted to share her clothes with me, when her friends came over and I talked to them she would get mad; but she is my best friend and favorite person in the world.

It is my turn to drive her crazy. I text her every other day telling her not to drink and drive (she is on her way to work), asking her to eat with me (in the middle of her day), making her talk to me and tell me all about her life (I stopped by unexpectedly and she is in a hurry to get ready for work). I know I boss her around. I am bossy, and over-protective, and defensive, and much more “second mom” than “older sister”; and it probably drives her crazy, but she has no idea what it’s like to be the older sister. To worry about your baby sister who isn’t a baby anymore. To know the stupid mistakes you have made and things you have put yourself through, and how you would give just about anything to protect her from that.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, but if it’s anything like being an older sister it is an unconditional love that makes room for forgiveness, respect, and a whole lot of annoyance. She may be old enough to fight back now, to put me in my place when I need it, but to me, she will always be the blue eyed baby sitting across the table from me, making up commercials to each food item on our lunch plate, while our dad slept. Just me and her, in our own ebb and flow, talking away about who knows what. And then- I punch her. The end.