brenda’s thoughts, watch out I’m Christian

“You got out of a bad relationship because it was bad,

but you are still resentful and angry

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You got out of financial debt, but you still can’t control the desire to spend on frivolous things

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You got out of a bad habit or addiction, but you still long to try it just one more time

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You said, I forgive you, but you can’t seem to forget and have peace with that person

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You told your unequally yoked mate that it was over, but you still continue to call

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You got out of that horribly oppressive job, but you are still trying to sabotage the company after you’ve left

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You cut off the affair with that married man/woman, but you still lust after him/her

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You broke off your relationship with that hurtful, abusive person, but you are suspicious and distrusting of every new person you meet

(you let the devil leave his bags)

You decided to let go of the past hurts from growing up in an unstable environment, yet you believe you are unworthy of love from others and you refuse to get attached to anyone

(you let the devil leave his bags)

When you put the devil out, please make sure he takes his bags!”

Don’t you just love friends,

I do

Mark 9:23

“EVERYTHING is possible for him who believes”

Some of you are swimming neck deep in your troubles

You’re just hoping and praying that no one notices

Occasionally you’ll get pulled under from the burden, from exhaustion

You work with all your might to get back to the surface

Then look around, hoping again that no one noticed

Someone dose know what you’re going through

You know

And it’s tearing you up

It’s tearing up your relationship with your family

It’s tearing up your relationship with your friends

It’s tearing up your relationship with God

When I was in college I worked to get my lifeguard certificate

One of the things they taught us was that a person can only pull themselves back up to the surface two times

If they go under a third time

That’s it,

They’ll drown

So we had to save them before they went under that third time

How many times have you gone under

How many more times can you pull yourself back up

There is help

There is rest

There is peace and hope

God is waiting

Run to him now

Cry out to Jesus

By Melody Beattie

And I’m in a group for co-dependents

Maybe I can learn how to keep a man

Or not pick the wrong one

Or just be happy with me the way I am

You know I got out of the group for depression cause I figured I was doing so well

But if you’ve got a problem

Any problem

You need to stay in touch with a group of people who can relate, listen and help

Cause you never know when you’ll be tempted or slip or just plain fall on your face

So anyway it really felt good to talk to women who get it

And tell me things like

“You just gotta pray”

“And turn it over to the Lord”

“He will take care of you”

Also

Tonight after I picked dood up from work

He told me

“Sorry for saying a bad word”

Really

I don’t know what’s going on in that sub shop but I think it has something to do with alien cloning of human DNA

I’m not complaining though

One of the girls at the “cottage” was talking about “how it feels when you’re trying to get what you want without bothering anyone else” (a discussion on maintaining your own boundaries or being a people pleaser. I highly recommend any of the series of books written by Dr. Henry Cloud or Dr. John Townsend on the subject of boundaries.)

I understand this concept well. I said, she said, we said that “it’s like when someone walks into the kitchen and someone else is cooking scrambled eggs and the person says to them, “I don’t like scrambled eggs. Make mine fried.” And then walks away without a thought about how the person feels about cooking eggs in any particular way. Then another person walks into the same room and sees the same person cooking scrambled eggs and though they don’t like scrambled eggs either they’ll eat the eggs because they don’t’ want to upset anyone, but later they will dwell on the fried egg that they missed out on.

Of coarse there are many degrees of people between these two. If you’re not a people pleaser then you might not understand how much anxiety can be generated from their own lack of ability to say what’s on their mind.

It’s ironic that people pleasers while feeling over burdened by their desire to ‘not rock the boat’, which is a lack of honesty, are actually the ones who are responsible for their own feelings of hurt, deprivation and misunderstanding

Went to the lake early this morning. The mist had risen off the water and just hung in the air. A couple times it sprinkled but mostly it was still and peaceful. Even the usually noisy and territorial Kingfisher was quiet. Like dragging a finger through a still wet Monet landscape my boat affected the surface of the water. 

I was fairly alone on the lake. Three fishermen, one who stayed on shore, puttered around searching for fish and watching me, whether it was out of curiosity or annoyance that they watched I could not tell.

The water was as reflective as my thoughts. I haven’t been impressed with the way I have dealt with the girls at the house. I’m not sure what to do to fix this, either. 

Earlier in the month I had met another kayaker on the river. He was an older gentleman who had been paddling for some years. His strokes were subtle, almost invisible and yet effective. He was a work of efficiency as he paddled back up river. I knew I had found a new role model as I beat the water into submission with my own paddle.

I want my work with the girls to be as unobtrusive as this man’s paddling was to the water.

“Finally made it out to the woods”, I say. “So they’re still in the same place”, my mom says, as if the woods were a collection of living organisms instead of a single geographical location.

I’ve taken up the observation of a new species. I am working (night an day) at a kind of halfway house for recovering addicts. A paradox: a species so set on individual (and global) self-destruction while simultaneously compelled to compassion for it’s own frailty.