Iced Coffee Chat: Whatever Bubbles Up

 

Yes, I know.  We just chatted and here I am again.  I'm desperate to talk to someone and you, dear ones, are that someone. 

   

Perhaps it is the result of the decluttering.  Perhaps it is the abatement of momentary drama, followed by a spate of life worries.  Perhaps it is just because a new season is upon me personally...My mind has been spinning.   It chatters away all day long, and into the wee hours of the morning before I finally shut my mind off and rest for a bit.  Lately, I've been chattering away to John, too.  True confessions from years past, true stories from childhood and things that puzzled me as a young woman, as a middle-aged woman who was learning to trust and love in a wholesome way.  It's almost as though I've unblocked a channel that needed to be opened.  It makes one a bit leery of what else will come bubbling up as I continue on this journey to let go of things.

Leery...but not about to stop.  

Fortunately, there are no nasty surprises to be found. There are no latent memories. Just hurts, heartaches, anger and fresh knowledge of self.  You know...small things like that!

I wanted to share a few of those things with you.  Several years ago, you may recall, we attended a Messianic synagogue, we grew very close to the Rabbi.  Too close, I say now, in retrospect.  We were close enough to be hurt very badly.  

So, I'm driving along in the midst of nowhere about two weeks ago and I came across an all too familiar sign for the synagogue hanging on yet another church's roadside sign.  In chaotic seasons there were always changes afoot, sudden ones, that were reversed soon after and resulted in chaos for many people within the congregation including the sudden dismissal of folks.  It was one of the things that threw us off balance and which ultimately led to our stepping away for a brief sabbatical before the ultimate break came for us.  

I felt as though I'd been confronted by a ghost.  Oh, the number of emotions that rolled over me after seeing that sign!  One particularly painful day when the break-up of friendship and membership had just barely begun, I drove down that same road crying my eyes out because of an incident that occurred during a service. I was horrified and terribly embarrassed, but it wasn't my pride that hurt.  It was that I'd hurt another, someone I considered a friend, and I'd been unaware of the offense until it was made public before others.  I apologized immediately, right there in public, very sincerely and humbly and I left the synagogue in great distress.

On that same crossroad, where the synagogue sign now hung on the church marquee, I began to weep, John called from work, as he usually did when service was over.  I told him what had happened and how horrible I felt over it.  He was outraged.   It took me a few moments to realize he was angry at the other person and not me.  He had been there the previous weekend, recalled the episode and knew that only half the story had been told.  The half that made me look bad. Well, it was just the beginning of misunderstandings and problems.  Ultimately, we decided that we could only go forward if we took a sabbatical time and went into prayer and study and sought God.

We did.  And the day after we officially returned from sabbatical, we had a late-night phone call requesting a meeting the next day and we were dismissed.   It was an answered prayer.  That answer hurt, but it was answered prayer.

It brought home a truth I know very well. 

It's called "Forgiveness" not "Forgot-ness".   I have long since forgiven the person and the hurts caused.  I could see God's hand on the circumstances at the time as painful as they were.  I can still see that handprint to this day.  It was the answer we needed, not what we wanted, but what we needed.

But what kept hurting us wasn't that we'd been cast away.  It took a year before John could even make himself walk into another church.  We chose to remain Messianic, and we traveled far to attend a synagogue.   It's a small community really, the Messianic community. People travel far and wide to attend different synagogues.  We'd see familiar faces now and then.  And always that person would sidle up to us and whisper, "I'm a really good friend of x's...and he's real good friends with a lot of people here...It's a shame y'all left his synagogue and we hope there won't be trouble here..."  It happened more than once.  The implication was always that we caused a problem and that was why we'd left our previous synagogue.

We always remained quiet and smiled and pretended we hadn't heard the full intent of the statement. The person always insisted to others we'd wronged him, and we'd left in a snit, when in fact he'd come to our home and told us at the end of the visit, Go.  

No...I must tell it more truthfully. It wasn't quite that simple.  There was a request that John do something that we both felt strongly wasn't right. We both said so immediately. Then John refused.  That's when the ultimatum was given.  "Do this or Go."  And at the door, as he left he turned and said, "Don't tell anyone I was here or what was said."  Well.   We never felt we could ever be a part of any other synagogue because people within kept us at arm's distance. We're not forward sorts.  We don't demand leadership positions.  We'd offer to sweep a floor or put tablecloths on a table and were told briskly, "No.  We have it handled."

I was thinking of that on our way to church the next day.  I imagined being followed into our current church home and having the same insinuations made. And having the lovely friendly people we know now start to hold us off at arm's distance and never let us be a part of anything.  It angered me.   On the way home from church, I told John about the mini trauma I went through in my head.  It began as a, "What if..." scenario where we were confronted with that ugly moment in our current church.  I told John, a little too passionately, as I was emotionally wrapped up in my own fantasy of hurt, outrage and anger, "I've made up my mind if ever we have people confront us as they did then, I'll tell them the truth, rather than try to protect his reputation!"  

Obviously, I still had some emotions invested in that situation and I needed to let go of something more.  For me, that something more was to understand that I had the right to be honest about what occurred.  I had the right to stop being a victim and to stand on truth.  I had the right to stop protecting someone who was a liar and who wronged us.

Standing on truth...well it's not always someone else's lies that lead us to where we are, is it?  In other situations which have bubbled up lately, other hurts from the far away past, I've been confronted with my own half lies. lies to myself.  I've had to own my fault, to own my lack of integrity, to admit my lies about why I chose this path or that.  I'd justified myself all this time.  Hard fact, there is no justification.  I made choices, wrong choices.  I see now that there is no justification for wrong.  No matter how much we want to absolve ourselves, we have to own our lies, little white lies and deep secret lies if we are to move forward in life.  

Sometimes outside situations bring up these realities.  What we've gone through in more than one situation in our family has confronted us, confronted me personally, over and over again.  It is not my place to call out another on the lies they've told to others and to themselves.  But I must acknowledge as I stand in silent judgement (and I am judging) of another that I have to own who I was.  And through that acknowledgement I can give some slight portion of grace to another.

It's taken me years to acknowledge my own lies.  It's taken me years to gain enough courage to admit that I lied.  Who am I to confront anyone else and demand they acknowledge they lied right now as they reel from the heartaches and hurts they must face?  The truth is, it's too much.  It's too hard to look at the whole sorry and sad picture at once.  It's better to look at it now in part and later in whole when we have healed from the trauma we dealt others.  It is.  Or we'd be so overwhelmed with our own guilt and pain we might never stand upright again.

It's not that I want to go through all of these things.  It's just that they have bubbled up to the surface.  I did indeed stop digging down deep in self-analysis a couple of years ago as I said I would and I've spent a relatively peaceful time, aside from outside situations that aren't mine to own or claim.  And I've been at peace within myself for the most part these past few years.  But like bubbles in a boiling pot, sometimes these things begin to do more than simmer, and bubbles come to the surface. They burst and splatter and hurt. Then they must be dealt with and not ignored, or they cause further problems.  

My seasonal sadness is upon me.  We went for a drive one evening, solely for the purpose of getting me out of the house and away from my own thinking.  I looked at the scenery about me and noticed that trees were sporting a slight tinge of color change.  Not the yellow shriveled look of dry weather and heat that we might have at times. We've had plenty of rain. 

These are obvious seasonal changes.  Grape vines turning a soft gold.  Golden rod that is tinged with the green gold look of swelling buds.  Leaves that are scarlet and lime and golden tucked in amongst the summer green.  Lengthening shadows.  Grass that is growing more slowly. Ground temperatures that are noticeably cooler come evening.  Water from the faucet running cold after a night of sitting in the tank rather than the lukewarm water we have in deep summer.   

I look at the calendar and realize it's not too soon.  It's about the right time for things to begin to dwindle and slow down.  It's about time for an old season to die and the earth to prepare itself for a new one.  A life, too.  A life, too.

I nearly let fear eat me up and spit me out recently.  John occasionally watches a vlogger who deals exclusively with social security.  This man predicted that the program would be dead broke come 2032.  We never planned to live solely off Social Security when we retired but you all will recall that with the pandemic came an economic crash that drained retirement funds, investments and such.  Not that we had a lot of investments, but we did have the retirement fund.  

By no means was it a large retirement.  We invested more heavily in paying off our home and debts, in purchasing the best quality items we could, doing some costly routine maintenances on things, and upgrading things like putting on a metal roof, underpinning, and such, in the hopes of making things last for the long haul.  This home, has, from the very beginning, been meant to be a home for our latter years, though we have lived in it since our middle years. 

But due to the circumstances, we determined we could manage on Social Security.  Fast forward to the unreal inflation rate of everyday items. You know all the things we consider as 'living' expenses.  

Fast forward to today when my grocery dollar, which is the same amount presently that it was 15 years ago, buys perhaps half what it did five years ago.  And in order to manage that rate of inflation this has meant I work harder than ever to make my own rather than buy loads of things that are already made which have tripled or quadrupled in cost.  

We've fretted over our main vehicle which is currently sitting at 230,000 miles.  We've been very careful to do all maintenance on it and keep it running smoothly.  How much longer might it last?  HOW can we afford a car payment of any amount?  There's no room in the budget for a car payment. 

Anyway, given all the usual concerns, the recent spate of increased fees, taxes, insurances, food, and how tightly we must control our budget, the idea that we might have only 8 years of Social Security set me back.  I looked hard at our savings accounts, at our retirement funds and realized if we were stringent, we might, MIGHT eke out another four years of living following the demise of the Social Security system, provided inflation halted entirely for the next 12 years.  Talk about wishful thinking!

And that wouldn't include any medical insurance...What if we weren't in good health?  

I kid you not when I say that I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that caused me to feel wretchedly ill.  I have been staring at our finances ever since.  Looking over the checkbook. Looking at the balance in savings.  Debating every single expense.  Truly considering whether or not a food scrap should go into the compost or the dog pan once I think I've gotten all the good out of it and wondering if perhaps I might get one more use before either is an option.  I've considered if I should go out and seek work.  I've considered if I should light a fire under John to take the part time position he was told to come apply for.  I've considered whether my kids could throw a few dollars our way...No, of course not.  They are in the middle of rearing families and facing far greater expenses than we are because they are starting out.  

I'm done.  I am DONE.  I won't stop being frugal or stop being thoughtful about our finances, but this truly does come under the heading of "THINGS I CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT" and the subheading, "TRUST IN GOD".  Because honestly what else can I do?

And of course, the moment I get my head squared away with all that, John decides we must have a 'money discussion'.  Of course we should have one!  Of course, we need to keep abreast of what is going on in our financial life.  My only complaint is that it came at a hard time mentally for me.  But you know what?  Having finally got to the point where I knew I had no option but to trust God, I remained calm and unflustered and sat listening to him quite peacefully.

I spoke up only after he was finished and told him everything about where my thoughts had been the last few days.  I told him of my fears and of the realities of our current budget and the struggles I have trying to figure out how I can fit more into a budget that has been altered and mended more in three months than I'd normally have to do in three years.  I pointed out that there were whole categories of concern I simply cannot make our funds stretch to cover.  And I suggested quietly that we seriously reconsider our current needs, forget our wants and simply figure out how we can live on what we have.

We spoke honestly about how lovely it was last year to not consider every single penny as we'd done for years. We took money from the sale of the town house, and we put half in savings.  The rest we spent. The bulk of that went on the renovations we did.  We have NO regrets about the spending we did.  We bought items for our home that we had needed to replace for years.  The bathroom renovation wasn't frivolity.  It was looking ahead at the future and what we could do to manage in our home for the longest term.  Ditto with the kitchen.  We bought the big upright freezer with the same idea.  We had work done on our well that was necessary and that was a fairly big bite.   We know that we spent wisely, and we agreed that we have zero regrets.  

And if we had all that money back, and the universe halted and inflation stopped entirely, we might eke by five years or six instead of the four I was optimistically considering. Work done on the house to make it more comfortable for our senior years or one year of living expenses.  I'll take the work on the house.

We never can look at our concerns and leave it there.  No indeed.  We must start to look also at all the blessings.  That car with 230,000 miles?  It was given to us.  This house we've worked so hard to upgrade for our senior years was paid for by the grace of God.  

And that's what sustains us when fears want to eat us alive.  We start to remember the blessings; we repeat them over one by one and we shake our heads in wonder at how things have come about.  

The same God is still in charge, I told John.  And that gives me peace.

Now I shall end.  I've talked entirely too long.   

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