Step 3?

Someone tell me how to make amends.  I spent $260+ on clothes, shoes and a shelf.  And a few other things.  I knew how much it was and I knew I had to talk to B about it, but he got to our check register first.  He was furious.

$260 is a very large sum of money for us.  We have little to live on for the rest of the month, for gas and groceries.  (We have a lot of food in our larder, don’t send us grocery store coupons.)  He wants me to return as much as I can and make amends.  He wants me to clean the house.

From what I read on AA webpages, making amends needs to be something linked to the offense.  Returning the goods or repaying the $260 are good examples of making amends.  Asking “what can I do?” is not a good example because it shows the offender doesn’t understand the nature or depth of the offense.  B wants me to scrub the house.  I am doing it, but I am neutral.  I’m not doing it because I want a clean house.  I honestly don’t care one way or another if the house is clean.  I’m not motivated by love.  I love my husband but I am not cleaning to make him happy.  I just feel nothing about this job.  It’s true I’ve spent about an hour on the computer when I could be scouring the shower floor, but my knees were hurting.  And I hadn’t looked at  facebook all day.

He was very very very angry last night.  He didn’t sleep well and he was still angry at me when he left for work.

I thought we had arrived at some understanding.  When I go on a spree (and this won’t be my last) I move blithely through the store, picking out things I like and things I think I should have.  The later is the danger, because I don’t want to take those things back.  Sure, I’ll return the things I just like, but the things I need, like the $6.99 swimsuit, are different stories.  I got a lot of pants 70% off and I do not want to return them.  They fit me, unlike much of the other clothes I have.  And it’s only $14 I’ll get back.  It seems not worth the trouble to do so.  I am really not myself when I’m shopping.

When I come down from the high, I feel really guilty.  I am ashamed at what I did.  I am convicted that not lying is not the end of God’s instruction, but deception is also condemned over and over again.  I hide the things I bought.  I take off the tags.  I seek out more.

There is an embossing plate collection that I have a 50% coupon for.  It’s ten plates, and plates are usually $4.99.  After the coupon, they could be $1 each.  I want them.  I think I need them and have to have them.  I know I am wrong!  But the drive is in me and I almost feel desperate to own it.  I try and think about how I can get the $10.  Can I return something so I have the cash?  Can I take money from the community change drawer?  (If you have ideas, just let me know.)

I don’t know what I’m going to do next.  I have to go this afternoon to return the shelf and some clothes.  It won’t be enough, I know.  I won’t be “allowed” to buy anything for a very long time.  I hate being treated like a child.  People say that B can be controlling, and it’s true, but I think part of it is trying to manage a mentally ill spouse.  He doesn’t know anyone else who has a wife with bipolar, and 90% of bipolar people’s marriages fail.  He and I both are committed to our marriage.  He needs support but we’re not going to drive an hour + for a support group filled with a bunch of sick people either (a) feeling sorry for themselves or (b) 300 pounds because they take Seroquel and use it as an excuse to drink a milkshake everyday. I was on that path and want to stay as far from it was possible.

Sigh.  I wish I could fix things, and I’m sure that I can, but I’m not going to do as good of a job as possible.  I won’t blame it on the mania, I’m just too selfish.

a beautiful brother.

My brother is on the cover of Men’s Health this month.  Well, not exactly, of course, but they look alike enough that friends are calling.

I wanted a sister and when my brother was born I asked them to send him back.  We fought a lot.  My mom basically ignored it.  She wouldn’t hear our petty arguments and jealousies, except when I purposely made my brother cry by saying mean things to him.  He would cry; Mom would call out, “Malakoa” angrily and I would respond, “I didn’t touch him!”  What a jerk I was.  Luckily we made it to adulthood relatively unscathed.  Now we are one of each other’s best friends and know we can bounce things off each other that no one else could understand.  ”Is mom being crazy?” “Are these shoes out of style?” and before we both married, “Well…  what do you think?”

But back to his beauty.  What ever your opinion about Tom Cruise is fine, I don’t care, but he’s known to be hot, and when my brother was young everyone said he looked just like him.  Devastating.  He curled a little fet-lock in to the front of his hair every morning.  I thought it was bizarre.  I never knew how to take care of myself until I was in my late twenties.  Some how it came easily to him.

When he moved to L.A. to go to school, a man once asked him for an autograph, mistaken for either a guy from Dawson’s Creek or 90210.  When we went out people stared at us, trying to figure out exactly who he was.  (My best guess, maybe they were staring at the toilet paper attached to my shoe.)

We know that “Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain”  Surprisingly, this didn’t puff my brother up like it would someone else.  My grandmother was also a great beauty.  She looked like Gloria Swanson when she was younger, and says she had a better body than the waitresses at Hooters.  (I did not request that information).  As she got older and looked more like a grandma than a movie star she took it hard.  My brother didn’t take too much stock in it because he didn’t want that to happen to him.

The second part of the verse is this:  But a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised.  I am not the kind of girl you’d point out as being ugly, but am more “cute” than “beautiful”.  That’s fine with me for now.  But in all those wishes for a sister, I never thought about what that would mean if she were born this great beauty and I was born myself.  I was eighteen before I realized that would be so.  If I think about it, when I went to concerts where my brother (did I mention he’s a musician?) played there was a look of letdown when I wasn’t Cindy Crawford.  I honestly didn’t think too much about it, but I know if I had a sister like that, whoa!  I couldn’t stand dealing with that.

Which brings us to the next question:  Am I a woman who fears the Lord?   I honestly hope so, but can’t say for sure. Maybe Mr. Malakoa or some of my Bible study cohorts could tell you better than I.  I  can be charming, but I try to be more open than charming.  I don’t think transparency goes with charm and I make every effort to be transparent.  I think before I became a Christian I was quite charming, if I remember correctly.  I used it to get whatever I wanted.  I try not to do so now, but it is so effective!  And it is deceitful.  Without saying a word, sometimes, I promise things that I have no intention to deliver.

So that’s me for today.  The moral of all this is to be balanced in self-assessments so the second half of your life is a huge disappointment, and don’t be a jerk like I was (am.)  Not great writing today, but we’ll get back to ‘normal’ (hah ahah ahahahah) later this week.

Wishes

I wish I could tell you that I was going great and that you could be too, but I can’t.  We have been traveling, I have been stressing and I haven’t been exercising, like, at all.  I store my pills on top of the refrigerator at my parent’s house (which is where my little family is for the holiday) and something happened that caused them to fall on the ground and spill everywhere.  I found (we found) most everything but the cogentin, which is designed to get rid of side effects.  If I miss it I’ll just be a walking zombie.  That’s all.

Got in to it a bit with a friend, one of my favorite people in the world, in fact.  She said in her blog that she knew that God wouldn’t give her more than she could handle.  I think that’s untrue.  If any of you, and I know all of you, have struggled with everything we struggle with, in your soul you know you’ve been given more.  She quoted 1 Corinthians 10:13. ” No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” Wanna midrash it? Love ya! xoxo.  I love that verse, but that’s not what it means.

I wrote back:  I would love to. That verse is clearly talking about temptation. While he is working through you and around you and all about you, temptation may come your way and you will be able to resist it. That is the promise. If you are tempted there is a way out of that temptation, not that you are able to handle even the temptations thrown upon you – you will be able to get out of them – Not that you will not get more than you can handle. xxoo right back at you!

Does any of this help you?  It’s helped me in the past, I hope it helps you.  Some how revelations lose some of their sting after a while.  I just try and remember that when I hear this “God won’t give you any more than you can handle.”  Yes, he can.  Yes, he has.

I’ve been vomiting intermittently and my breasts have been very tender.  It’s times like that it’s hard not to imagine a little girl, maybe named Anna Lynn or a boy named Aaron.  There is no baby though, Mr. M’s vasectomy was five months ago and his doctor has never had a lapse.  It’s good, of course, we don’t need another child, six years younger than our first.  Exposed to all sorts of meds and born to a mother who is a whack job.  Small knows about my miscarriage, sweet little Isabella, and how she would have had a big sister.  I told her I wasn’t sad anymore.  And she said, “because of me?”  And I said, yes, because of you.

I almost didn’t write that.  I know not having a baby at the holidays can be even worse than usual.  The babies are dressed in precious little outfits.  People send family pics specifically to offend you or make you jealous.  Friends your younger sibling’s ages are bulging with unexpected pregnancies.  Does it ever end?   One year, shortly after I received the news that we were to have no more children, I was holding one of my brother’s friend’s newborns.  I wanted to throw it.  I didn’t realize how much it would hurt, or why these feelings would plague me.  It was only later, days later, even after a call to the psychiatrist who wanted me to go straight to the emergency room, that I guessed why it hurt so much and how I could hate this baby so much.

I have a friend who spends holidays at the coast.  She had an alcoholic father and has never had children.  She didn’t marry until late in life and her husband was agoraphobic.  He literally never went anywhere.  Any way, she was too sad coming to family events and feeling completely alone that she skips the whole thing.  I’m not recommending that, but it might be a way to cope for a year or two.  You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

Lead us not into Temptation

I know a lot of young Christians who believe Jesus has washed them free of sin and they won’t be self-seeking, they won’t drink too much, they won’t be led astray by sexual sin. Ultimately they fall in to what they believe to be an unforgivable sin, they think if they are really Christians they wouldn’t do that and end up either leaving the faith or feeling incredibly guilty.

One thing that was hard for me to grasp was Jesus’ experience with temptation. He was very hungry, and was offered the chance to do a miracle to give Hi something to eat something to eat. It appears like He responds immediately: and perhaps He did, but He may have taken time to consider His actions. He knew He would not sin, but He must have really wanted to do it. And for our sake He didn’t.

It’s not a sin to be tempted; the sin is doing the thing you should not do. I was once in a situation that I knew was wrong and I frequently told God that if I was put in that situation I would do it. I got put in that situation. I fell very hard and didn’t understand why.

If I had regularly read the Word, I do not believe I would have gone through with it.

Even if you don’t struggle with your moods, like I do, there is a great temptation to despair. It’s normal, however difficult, when you hurt, to maintain hope. When hope is gone, however, it’s easy to ask for more, it’s less easy to believe that the hope will never come. David called out over and over again and he left like he had not received an answer. He said:

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.

Romans teaches “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” He’s not talking only about a non-Christian’s life, he’s talking about all of us. Why do I think this happens? So God can express His mercy and love and to prove His goodness beyond what we can ask or imagine.

Better men and women have fallen harder than I have, and will continue to do so. David seduced a married woman. When things became complicated he arranged for her husband to be killed. He was forgiven. So are you. It’s that simple.