My Friend's Boyfriend

A girl I know left her husband for another man... a fireman.  She got skinny and hard-bodied and had hot, fiery, passionate sex and they traded effusive exclamations of undying love for each other while having heated love-making fests.

Then he stopped calling and texting.  He couldn't handle the intensity of their relationship or her need or his feelings of being tethered... whatever.  But then he would show up again a month later wanting and expecting everything to be just as if they could pick up where they left off.  Only, my friend couldn't reconcile his words and his actions, so she had to break up with him.

She is in counseling and going to 12-step meetings and working through her grief and poor decisions.  She was feeling good and on her way back to strength when she noticed a man who had been sitting in 2 of her weekly meetings all along.  He is at least 12 years her senior and suddenly she is in love again.  He is a "beautiful man".  He makes her soul "light up".  They are both "open and available" to love.  He is "safe" and for the first time she can truly love and be loved.

On the one hand, I kind of roll my eyes: it is SOOOO Jr. High.  She said all this same stuff (but different) about the fireman.  Now she has beautiful old man and it's all new and good and lovely.  What about husband (and father of her 2 kids)?  What about fireman?  And how safe and good and open and available can they be when they are both still SO broken??

On the other hand, I am JEALOUS beyond measure!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Even if it is pretend and Jr. High, I want to be with someone who makes my soul light up. I want to be "open and available to love" and be with someone also who is.  I want to feel "safe and secure".  I want a fireman or an old, beautiful man.  I want to be skinny and hard-bodied and have hot, fiery, passionate sex and trade effusive exclamations of undying love while having heated love-making fests.

I am TIRED of living in an alcoholic marriage and always being afraid and always being bitter and always being alone and always being tired and always being abandoned and waiting (but never ready) to be abandoned again.  I just want to indulge the fantasy of love again.  

I see people with happy 2nd marriages and am envious... I want to believe that could and would (and will???) happen for me.  But I confess, I am frightened that no one will love me and that I will be alone.  But is that a good reason to stay with Mr. M?  and is it even true?

Devotion 4:6-7

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”- Philippians 4:6-7

PEACE. We all want peace. Peace and quiet, peace of mind, peace on earth, keeping the peace, making peace, peace offerings, and even 'rest in peace'. The thought of peace probably resonates with us as human beings because God designed us to long for His peace. 

And Scripture tells us how to get it.

Think of all the things you are thankful for. We can start with the basics: the fact that our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, and our brains think. Work our way up from there: Trees. Clouds. Snow flakes. The beach. Ocean. Babies. Music. Then get personal: My best friend, my job, cream soda, my little brother. When we function from a place of gratitude, we can’t help but begin to see things in a better, more hopeful light. We come “glass half full” kinds of people.

It is in this spirit we are told to come ask God for what we need. We don’t need to be stressed. We don’t need to wonder if He hears. We don’t need to be afraid. We can just come to Him with thankful hearts and ask Him and trust that He knows what we need and what is best for us. When we do this, His peace – a peace we can’t even begin to understand – will protect us.

Then it all comes full circle. When we come to Him with a grateful heart, we will be given His peace to guard our hearts. When we have His peace dwelling in us, we will not need to be anxious and worried. When we are filled with peace and we are not anxious and worried, we will be even more able to focus on our gratitude for who God is and what He has given us and done for us. We can then approach God in prayer with a peaceful heart filled with thanks.

Therapy Day 5/20/08

My 20th wedding anniversary is coming up SOON... I was feeling profound sadness about this and brought it into therapy this morning.  

Happy Mother's Day Hollywood Moms!

All of us had Moms at some time or other;  Bad ones. Good ones. Working ones. Stay-at-home ones. Present ones. Absent ones. Tall ones. Short ones. Fat ones. Skinny ones. Rich ones. Poor ones.  

All our Moms were different. 

And yet most of us were also "raised" by some of the same Moms, in some way, shape or form.

Did you grow up with any of these Moms?

*********************************************************************

Harriet Nelson along with musician hubby Ozzie and two sons, were regarded as the icon of the ideal nuclear family and were the only television couple allowed a double bed until 1969... way to go Harriet!

Sure she was a tad flighty... but Mrs. C was remarkably hospitable to the "Fonz", an adult man with no job hanging out with teenagers.

In her high heels and pearls, June Cleaver still managed to keep an impeccable house and to keep Ward from being too hard on the Beav.

Lily Munster didn't bother cleaning up cobwebs, but she was a true "sandwich generation" caring for an aging father while still mothering young son, Eddie and taking in their strange niece ("one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong").

It was a wonder Samantha & Derwood Stevens allowed meddling mamma Endora to ever come around... even on Mother's Day!!!

Musical mamma, Shirley found time to raise five kids while riding around in a psychedelic bus as the lead singer for The Partridge Family.

Hard-working and feisty, Florida Evans managed to kick some "Dy-no-mite" J.J. and Janet Jackson butt.

Caroline Ingalls was good old-fashioned common sense. Who didn't dream about having a stable and oh-so-sensible Ma & Pa of their own?

G'night Olivia Walton. G'night John Boy.  'Nuff said.

OK... so maybe they don't stick out in the TV landscape of most memorable Moms... but raising kids in the stone age couldn't have been easy.

Probably not the most likable Mom on TV, but single-parenting a troubled speed addict and the future Mrs. Eddie Van Halen all by yourself would make anyone a little cranky.

How did she manage 3 wily daughters and 3 mischievous step-sons sharing a single bathroom, a busy husband, a fairly large house, dog Tiger, Kitty Carryall, and music group The Silver Platters?  Oh yeah... she had a full-time servant!!!

Edith gets the award of "Best Mediating Mother" it was no small feat keeping the peace between Archie, Gloria and Meathead.

Elyse Keaton cooked meals for her brood while looking over blueprints in the kitchen... (and who did Tina Yonkers look like anyway?  Was she the milkman's???)

Crass, blue collar, loud, overweight, overbearing, crabby: Rosanne, the quintessential American Mother???

Attorney Mom Claire Huxtable was able to keep a stern look on her face while bumbling yet wise Cliff joked, rolled his eyes, and pursed his lips through many parenting moments making everyone but her laugh.

Eating disorders, teen pregnancies, homosexuality, sibling rivalry, cutting, dropouts, back talk, abuse: Preacher's wife Annie Camden's family sure had its hands full of "real life" drama.

She's married to Homer (DOH!) and is mother Bart... she makes the Mom hall of fame just for that.

If your mom was as helpful, involved and encouraging (Not!) as Marie Barone, would you live next door?... Or even in the next STATE?!?!

Um... 

They're sure not Harriet, June, Carol, or Claire... 

but they sure are...

Well, 

let's just leave it at that:

They're sure not Harriet, June, Carol, or Claire!

TV Moms, you kept us company late at night when we were babysitting or when we were home sick or even on restriction (if we were allowed to watch TV).
We watched you on one of our 13 channels.
We fought our brothers over whether to watch you, Starsky and Hutch, or CHIPS.
We moved around bunny ears to tune you in without static.

You yelled and slammed.
You weeped and laughed.
You were bad influences and good influences.
You dispensed advice and offered comforting speeches.
You solved all our life problems in 23 minutes plus commercials.
You made us laugh and made us cry.

Thanks for years of entertainment!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY HOLLYWOOD MOMS!

Therapy Day 4.29.08

I want to have an affair.

This has nothing to do with therapy.

It came upon me later in the afternoon.

Perhaps it is because of all the stuff I am working on in therapy that is bringing up to compulsion to be out of this alcoholic marriage and be in a relationship with someone: the Coach, Mr. M's friend P, Soccer friend J, men on Match.com, and I am sure there are others.

I am envisioning tousling their hair and joking with them and having a nice, peaceful life.

(For the record - even though there IS no "record" - I really don't want to destroy someone's marriage and family and life, so I really would not have an affair with a married man... it's just that I want to BE a wife and BE married and so married men look just like what I want, but of course any man who cheats on his wife is not a man I'd want.)

Anyhow, my friend T told me something today she has wanted to tell me for YEARS... she felt like she could finally tell me because I am in therapy and will not take it personally... YIKES! What does that say about how I have been???

Speaking of therapy, I felt sad and anxious today and it took me a while to GO there and sit there and FEEL it. In the end, it was all about Mr. M again/still. And it was also about how much I want people to like me and accept me and want to be around me and how I can't open up and let myself out and people in... I just want to "collect" friends (the way i do with stationary (hoarding). And then I talked about how I want to (but don't usually) push people to see if they will abandon me or cave in or be too weak to handle me. And so I told Dr. (Greg? Therapist? What do I call him?) that I don't think I push him because I don't want to know if he will cave in. He said he thinks I push him by not wanting the session to end. I can't decide how I feel about that. I have mixed feelings: anger, hurt, embarrassment, shame. I am angry because it is his job to know when the session ends and starts, not mine and so I count on him to end it when he needs to. I am uncertain because IS that a way I push him??? I don't think so... but maybe a little bit because I want him to care enough to make an exception? But if he made an exception, I think I would view that as caving in? Of course, hurt and embarrassed because that is how he sees me and I do not want to be seen that way.

Me #1

I ADORE stationary... I am afraid to use it because then it will be gone and I won't have any more. 

So really, I am a collector of stationary... 

I just hoard it.  

I am a stationary hoarder.

Proverbs 31:30

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”- Proverbs 31:30

Although it is true that “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, I find myself often wanting to always be honey when the truth sometimes lies in vinegar.  There is nothing wrong with compliments and kindness. But there is a thin line between compliments and flattery, between being kind and being a people-pleaser. Scripture is clear about the difference. “Charm is deceptive.”  This seems more a challenge than a condemnation. Can I strive for more loving truth and less deceptive charm?

When I am in line at the grocery store and glance over at the newsstand, I see 87 magazine covers showing me what beauty is and is not. Perhaps it’s the glorious model already back in her pre-pregnancy jeans even though her baby is just 9 minutes old.   Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe it’s the pop star photographed in her bathing suit looking like a *GASP* size 10 while the tabloid headline screams that she is obese. Even if we don’t pick up those magazines and read them, they still creep into our subconsciousness.

There is nothing wrong with being beautiful. In the Old Testament, It was Queen Esther’s beauty, that God used to save the Jews.  It’s the value we place on it, how we use it, and what other areas we neglect when we focus on our beauty that are more God’s concern.  What is beautiful to Him is a woman who fears the Lord and finds her confidence in Him.