Serenity

At one point in my life, every time that I heard someone reference or repeat the Serenity Prayer, I would roll my eyes, or at the very least, get that feeling inside that you get when you roll your eyes. I think that we all know it, but just in case we don't, here you go:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

See? You've heard or read that before, surely. Maybe tacked up in an office cubicle, modified with a picture of someone strangling a cat, or edited to include some witty reference as to exactly what you'd like to do to the person testing your patience. It's pithy, and quotable. It's also, as I think about it more as a philosophical text and less as a pop culture reference, actually pretty deep. So deep that it's been modified and included in 12 Step Programs, the modified version of which I had never read before, and you probably haven't either, unless you've been in a 12 Step Program, or you're a Wiki geek like me.

God, grant us the...

Serenity to accept things we cannot change,

Courage to change the things we can, and the

Wisdom to know the difference

Patience for the things that take time

Appreciation for all that we have, and

Tolerance for those with different struggles

Freedom to live beyond the limitations of our past ways, the

Ability to feel your love for us and our love for each other and the

Strength to get up and try again even when we feel it is hopeless.

This version changes things completely. This is exactly the kind of life instruction I've been looking for, and the lessons are immediately applicable in my life.

There is so much that I want to change, and that I can't. My mind honestly works at the insurmountable things in my life like it's trying to solve a Gordian knot. Accepting that I just can't change them, that there isn't always a bold move to suddenly make them right, is really very hard for me. In my mind, letting go of something is tantamount to admitting that you failed at making it work. It's one of the reasons that my marriage lasted as long as it did. I didn't want to admit that it had failed, even though the evidence was all around me. I need to learn to visualize the weight that I feel from these things as rocks, and to just drop them instead of carrying them with me everywhere I go.

I could be spending as much time battling with these issues as I do because I lack the courage to just change the things that I can, and should. It's easier for me to tell myself that I don't know what to do to fix something than it is to accept the solution that would fix it, because I want a fixed outcome, requiring the serenity to accept that I can't change the outcome. There are times when I will worry at something into weariness, exhausting every possible outcome, just to avoid accepting the fact that I have to make changes, like ending my marriage.

Having the wisdom to know the difference isn't the same thing as the intelligence to recognize the difference. I'm intelligent enough to know, for example, that I can't force some things to happen in my life by my timetable. I can't, for example, force someone to choose a path in their life that leads them to immediately to me simply because it would make me happy. I know that. I'm not, however, wise enough to assimilate that into my day to day hopes and fears. On a certain level, I have this childish need to have my own insecurities and doubts allayed constantly, and I should probably see a therapist about that.

The rest of the 12 Step version is what really drew me in, though. Because I need the patience to realize that not all wonderful things in life germinate, take root, and blossom overnight. Roses may smell sweet when they're budding, but if we pick them too soon, they'll never attain the potential that they could have had if we had left them there until they were ready, yellow, and inviting. I need to learn to appreciate what I have, and not just yearn for what I don't. I need to learn that what I'm going through isn't what everyone else is going through, and that the people around me are struggling with their own problems. I need to learn to forgive myself for the things that I've done and can't change, and to forgive others for things that I'm still angry over.

The loving part I've always been good at. It's one of the reasons that I've learned over the years to be selective about the relationships that I engage in with people. Everyone deserves to be loved, at least a little, but the people in my life that I love, well, I never love in half measures. I do need to learn, though, that the strength to get up again doesn't always have to come from inside of me. I have a hard time reaching out to people when I'm in pain, a hard time admitting that I need help, because it's always seemed like an admission of weakness. When I do reach out, I need to learn when to stop asking for more than someone can give, because the world doesn't revolve around me. Well, except to my babies.

Which brings me back to my need for this whole philosophical lesson in the first place. I'm in a place in life that's unstable. The plans that I had made with the mother of my children about their future have changed a few times. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was, but I allowed myself to think that it could all work out in the end. My faith was misplaced. I'm still not sure what's going to happen, but I know that I need to take steps to take care of it, so that it doesn't take care of itself without my input. My energy needs to be spent on securing what's best for them.

I feel like a man who's been handed a painting by Monet, while his house is in smoking ruins around him. Before I can figure out where to hang it, I need to, well, rebuild my house. Sure, I could just throw up some joists and sheetrock and then hang it on my impromptu wall, but if I don't have a house built around that wall, it's eventually going to fall. As much as I hate to, I need to stop admiring the beauty of the Monet, put it down, and get to work on rebuilding the house, making it stable and secure, a warm and comforting place for my children to grow up, admiring it's beauty with me. It's not going anywhere. It's still my Monet. Unless the deliveryman comes back and picks it up, because it wasn't supposed to be delivered to me in the first place. See? See how my mind works? This is why I need to work on this whole thing.

Next time we'll talk about the classic proverb that begins with "If you love something, set it free..."

Or maybe we won't, I don't know, I've got to shop for sheetrock and lumber first. Does anyone have nails? And maybe a hammer?

On Love, Again

When I was a minister in training, I would almost always emphasize the love of Christ in my sermon studies. Rather than focus on the post-mortem structure of Peter and Paul that give most conservative ministers license to condemn everyone under the sun to Hell, it was important to me that we remember that He socialized with the undesirable, and that He gave love to those who were judged as unlovable by everyone else. One of my favorite passages in the NT was a definition of what love should be.

^{1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4}Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.

You may have noticed that my last rambling diatribe of a post has been removed. I removed it because, as soon as I posted it, it felt wrong. It felt self serving, and self centered. It felt as though I were putting my love on display for all to see, and saying "Look! Look at what manner of man that I am, giving all and being repaid with sorrow!"

(edit: I have republished that post. Revisionist historians always bothered me.)

At the end of the day, whether I sleep alone or not, whether I weep or laugh, whether I have peace or my mind refuses to allow it, my life, and my love, are the result of choices that I have made. There is no room in agape for "but...". Love is patient. Love is kind. Love doesn't boast, and it isn't proud. It isn't self seeking. It isn't easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. My last post was the reflection of something that was not patient, that was not kind. It was a boast. It was proud, and self seeking. It was angry. It wanted to keep record of wrongs. It was not protective, it had lost trust, and hope. It had failed. This is not how I love.

I try very hard to be honest, and to remember how fortunate I am. I have the love of an incredible woman, who only asks me to give her agape in return. To give her patience. To be kind. This should be easy for me, because this is how I love.

I am not, unfortunately, a strong man. I frequently despair over my weaknesses. I am going through one of the most difficult periods that I have ever experienced in my life, and rather than face it head on, as I should, I whine about going through it alone. There are widows in third world countries trying to find a way to feed their children on less money a month than I make in a day. There are good, hardworking people going through trials in their lives that make mine look like a walk in the park. I should be grateful that I have what I do.

I have four beautiful children who love me more than anyone else on the face of the earth. I am at the center of their universes. I have a family willing to move mountains to help me do what's best for them. I have 6 friends who love and support me, because when I choose friends I choose the right people. I have a great job, and managers who work with me on trying to figure out what it is that I want to be, and how to get me there. I have the freedom and the resources to allow me to plan a trip to see the most amazing woman on the face of the planet, and she makes as much time for me as she can when I do. I have an incredible woman who completes me, and all that she asks me for is time, and patience.

Who am I, to complain? I should be grateful and glad, to have so much. That is how I should love.

On Love, and Happiness

In the past, I've been rather coy regarding my happiness, and the cause. Or at least, I thought that I was. In hindsight now, I think that it would be obvious to all who read my previous posts that the happiness that I spoke of was in fact love. While my last post was titled "The Last Post", I have in fact been struggling with the situation since.

I am in love with a woman who is unavailable to me. I first saw her 16 years ago in college, standing alone on the quad, obviously waiting for someone. I tried an unbelievably corny but original pickup line. "You know, if you're waiting for him now, he'll keep you waiting forever." It was the only time that a pickup line has ever worked for me. She was the first woman that I really, truly loved. The first woman that I ever proposed to. My first lesson in what happens when you stop paying attention, and take someone for granted. We lost touch for almost 15 years. When I began my journey back into freedom, I looked for her, because she was the last woman in whose life I felt that I had truly made a positive difference. When I reached out to her, I hoped to hear that she was happy, that I had indeed made a positive difference in her life. Her story is her own to tell, but chance and circumstance conspired to bring us back together at a time when we were both in pain.

The Greeks have several words for love. The two that we most commonly would identify with are agape and philia. Agape is unconditional love, commonly reserved for reference to the love shared between spouses or family members. Philia is brotherly love, commonly used when referring to the affection between friends. I mention this because, when I give someone agape, I love them with all of my being. There are few things that could bring me to break that tie with someone, dishonesty being paramount, and the giving of that love has been very rare for me.

I have loved no one in my life like I love this woman. I can tell you her favorite author. I can tell you her favorite book by that author. I can tell you what her favorite band is, what the side projects of the band members are, and what bands the members came from to form that band. I can tell you who her favorite baseball team is, what her favorite football teams are (pro and college), what her favorite car is, what her favorite comfort food is, what her favorite adult beverage is, what her favorite cologne is, what her favorite candy bar is, and how she likes her tea. I know where she likes to be touched, and how she likes her massages. We've decided what to name our dog, and our child, if we should decide to have one. I will spend over a third of a day driving in order to spend 15 minutes with her, then turn around and drive back. I call her before I get out of bed in the morning, and I listen to audio on my phone of her telling me how much she loves me before I go to sleep. I want to wake up next to her and go to sleep with her every day for the rest of my life. She has been my everything, and I want her to be, because she is amazing.

I would like to say that this love is not unrequited. Because of the nature of the situation that she finds herself in, I'm limited to talking to her while she's at work, when I call, and she has time. I'm limited to hearing from her via email while she's at work, and when she has time. I'm on her mind, though, she tells me, even when she can't communicate with me. She's coming someday, she says. She just needs time, to find the right time to break away from the comfort of everything that she's known for the last 14 years and make an incredible leap of faith. My solace in the off hours is to read her Facebook status updates, and watch her banter with a man who tells her that she's blackhearted and judgmental, and that she ruined his life. It's been 3 days now, since last I've heard from her. It will be at least 5 before I do, and that's if I'm lucky.

I know. I know how it looks. I know how it feels, on the bad days and the good. I've tried to look for someone else to fill the void. At the end of the day, though, no one can take her place. She is my puzzle piece. When I close my eyes, I see the light of love that fills her eyes for me, and I know that I could no more turn my back to her than I could stop breathing. Agape. Unconditional. Even when conditions aren't always what we would like them to be. Because that's the way that I love.

I create those conditions for myself, though. I let them control me. By letting my anxiety, my low self esteem, and my impatience create a feedback loop that pulls me down ever further, I move further and further from the positive place that I should be bringing myself to. I have to learn to recognize that I can do nothing more to have a positive effect on the outcome of the situation that I find myself in. If who I am is enough, and if the situation that she's in hasn't made her leave by now, I can't be "more" of that person and make her decide to come sooner. I can only make it worse by trying, and can produce no positive outcome at all through the sheer amount of worry that I go through over it.

Several of my friends have counseled that I should stop trying to find my happiness through my relationships with others, and instead try to find my happiness within. That until I can find a way to be happy alone, I will never be happy with someone else. I don't know how to do this. My waking thoughts are occupied by what I could be doing differently, what I might have done wrong, how I could make her happier. One of my friends has told me that I need to quiet all of the inner voices and listen for my own, the one giving me the answer. I'm afraid of letting go. Afraid of focusing on myself. Afraid of what the answer might be.

Besides, for now I have plenty of other things to think about. My children, first and foremost. They need me now more than they have ever needed me. They should be my everything. There is a real possibility in the near future that I may need to take them. To find a way to give them a stable, responsible, and orderly home. To shuttle them to school, to find a way to pick them up. To be everything that they need me to be. I only hope that I can be. I only know that I will never give up on trying. Because that's the way that I love.

The Last Post

I started this blog fresh from what I thought were a liberating series of changes in my life that would lead to a brighter, happier future. This may still be true. What I hadn't expected, at the beginning of that road, was just how long that road would feel. I had intended this space to be a place to share my insight into how wonderful life really is. The truth, I've found, is that life is not inherently wonderful. Life is a series of choices that we make, the moments in between echoes of consequence. There are times when those choices are poorly made, and the moments feel heavier than lead between.

I had expected that by leaving the situation that I was in, I was leaving behind my unhappiness. I had thought that I was ready to claim my happiness. Unfortunately, my happiness isn't ready to be claimed, and I continue to carry the source of my unhappiness inside. There are life lessons in this, I know, about attainment, desire and fulfillment, but I'm not ready to learn them. Right now, I feel like a man dying of thirst, carrying a cracked vessel along my journey. The flowers along the side of the road may be beautiful, but I'm too weak to appreciate them.

My journey isn't over, far from it. I just have no more wisdom in me, not that there ever was much that I would claim. I'm feeling more Amadain these days, for so many reasons. This space was meant to be a record of the positive things, of my good fortune. There are positive things in my life, surely, and I'm still fortunate. I'm just too parched to recognize them. May your own journey be full of moments easier to recognize as good, and may you be wise enough to notice and appreciate them. You'll be wiser, and more worthy of them, than I.

On waiting

My life seems to have been placed on pause as I wait for several things to happen. Not a static pause, placed on hold, but a dynamic pause. The distance between one breath and the next, the silence in the tempo of a heartbeat. I wait for one event to occur so that I can begin the next. While that may be true of everyone on a metaphysical level, unfortunately it has tangible meaning for me. I wait for a discharge to my bankruptcy, so that I can begin the process of my divorce. I wait for the divorce, so that hopefully someday I will feel the burden of the change that I've forced my children through lifted. I wait for the day to come when I'm sharing my life with the right woman. I wait, and I bide my time. Not with the grim outlook of the condemned man that I used to be, counting the hours until I could be released from misery, but with the hope and anticipation of a reprieved man, knowing that I have a future, and that joy is in it.

Unfortunately, either habit is unhealthy. Rather than living in the now, and realizing that I have all of the tools, all of the material for happiness and joy in my life, I put my hope for joy in the aftermath of future events. "Someday, I will be happy, but only after this happens, and this happens, and this happens." No, if I take a deep breath and stop looking ahead, and start looking at now, I realize that I am happy now. I have the love of those who are closest to me. I have my health (in large part, discounting my current sinus infection), I have the ability to work, to contribute to society, to enjoy the small moments of my life. I am, indeed, an incredibly lucky man. Life shouldn't be defined in what we anticipate to be our greatest successes, or our worst failures, but rather in the moments that we choose to make memorable. By taking this breath, and typing these words, I create a record of this moment. The music that I write to, the room that I write in, the events of the day, all crystalized in memory because I choose them to be. The littlest of moments, by becoming the memories, alleviate the need to wait. In engaging the now, and letting the past and future sort themselves out according to plan, we may find more pleasure, and less worry.

On Anger, and Bad Days

"You're afraid of going back to the house, aren't you?"

This question, asked with a giggle by one of my children, was what led to the culmination of a very bad week. The mother of my children had recently begun having her boyfriend over for sleepovers. I had, and still have, no problem with this. She's human, after all, and needs companionship, like we all do. I did, and still do, have a problem with her having the man sleep in her bed while my children are there. Especially, as was the case last weekend, on Fathers Day.

I recognize that I can't control, or dictate morality, to anyone else. They have to make the decisions that they make because they believe that they're the right decision for themselves. As a parent, however, I believe that these decisions must take into consideration the best interest of the child or children in your care. Having someone you've known for less than two months, and that your children have met once or twice, sleep in your bed while your children sleep nearby, seems irresponsible to me. I wouldn't do it, and I asked the mother of my children not to do it, the week before Fathers Day. She agreed.

This is important to me. In a world challenged at every turn by moral dilemmas, I find myself looking for the simplest answers around me. When I ask something of someone, and they agree, I believe that they will honor their terms of the agreement. It seems simple enough to me. "Will you please not let your boyfriend stay the night while the kids are here, at least until the divorce is finalized? It sets a bad example." "Okay, I won't." Simple enough, in my eyes. Imagine the sadness involved on my part, then, when I was told by one of my children that he had spent the night, and woke up in her bed, on Fathers Day. That he had then come back, and spent the night again after I dropped the kids off on Fathers Day. I was hurt beyond words. We had an agreement.

This past Tuesday, I spoke with her again, and she made no effort to apologize for lying to me and breaking our agreement. I let it go, because I recognize that I can't control her morality, can't make her decisions for her. She asked, instead, that I get to know her boyfriend. Give him the chance to win me over, man to man. I've always hoped that whoever she ended up with, I could have some form of friendly relationship with. My early experiences with this man precluded any hope that I had in this case.

Without becoming specific to a degree of personal intrusion, I will say that when I first spoke to him, he threatened me, because I wanted to Google his name for the safety of my children. We spoke again, and while he eventually gave me his name, he also gave me a lengthy discourse on how lucky I was that he wasn't physically near me, because I had angered him so greatly. I listened to a rant about my character, and my inadequate qualities as a provider, and a father. I listened to these things from this man, and I let it go. Afterward, I made a point of avoiding the house when he was there. I had no desire to meet this man. No desire to get to know him. Last week, I asked the mother of my children to at least have him out of the house every other day, so that I could visit at the house with my children. She agreed.

Last night, on a night when I was supposed to have time at the house with the kids, she told me that we would need to go to the park, because he was at the house. Another agreement, broken. We argued for a short period of time about why she couldn't keep up any of our agreements. She had no adequate reasons, and I gave up the argument, in favor of spending time with my kids. My beautiful, precious children, who went on to tell me about how they spend their days with John. How they go to the store with John. How they love John, but not as much as they love me. I was defeated. While I work, to provide for them, to give her money with which to feed my children, and while I pay all of her bills, she and this under employed stranger get to spend their days entertaining my children. I avoided the house while he was there, to avoid confrontation, to avoid an unpleasant encounter, giving him time to steal away my children.

Out of nowhere, near the end of the visit, one of them uttered those words.

"You're afraid of going back to the house, aren't you?"

I asked my child where they had heard this. "John." I asked their mother why she would let this man say such things to my children, without coming to the defense of their father. "Neither of us knows what to think." was her response. Because the event and its repercussions are still too new, I won't go into detail regarding the rest of the evening. I will say though, that my child knows now that I am not afraid of this man. Unfortunately, in the process, I may have ruined what could have been a happy, healthy relationship that my children and their mother had with someone who made them happy. Instead of dealing with this situation in a constructive way, I gave in to my anger and dealt with it in a destructive way. Granted, the man was speaking ill of me to my children, with no defense from their mother, but I'll have to grow to expect that. I'll have to stop looking for cooperation from her, because we're not working toward the same goals. That saddens me, because I realize that it only hurts our children, but I can't make those decisions for her. I can, however, choose not to let the anger control me, and be the man that my children need me to be.

On SSRI's and hard times

Due to my own incompetence, I ran out of my SSRI a week and a half or so ago. Those who have been prescribed SSRI's, like Effexor, know how effective they can be. Those who have come off of that particular form of medication know how difficult that can be. During that period of withdrawal, I found myself drawn into drama over the safety of my children. There are few things in life that I take more seriously than the happiness and security of my children. While I believe the drama to be resolved, I was saddened greatly at the amount of deception involved. While unfortunately I can't say that I was surprised at the fact that it went on, I was surprised at how much I allowed it to hurt me.

I have, through the course of this path that I have put myself on, tried very hard to minimize the amount of pain that the mother of my children went through. She is, after all, half of their world, half of their happiness. Happy parents make happy children. While I will continue to believe in this, I don't believe that I can honestly make myself believe that she plans to extend the same courtesy to me. I accept that. It is, after all, the road that I have put myself on. Even so, I have cried more today than I have in a very long time. I really had hoped that I could keep a friendship with her that would make co-parenting easier.

I took one of the Effexor as soon as I left the pharmacy, and the nausea is already kicking in. I have struggled more with loneliness and with doubt over the last week and a half than I have in months, and it isn't a pleasant place to be. I hate that I have to medicate to get through this, but I've come to realize that if I don't, it will only continue to get worse. I look to a day when I won't need to chemically prop up my happiness, but unfortunately, I haven't reached that leg of my journey yet. For now, I look not to the thunderclouds above my path, but to the flowers beside it, and I try to remind myself of the important things.