It's 4:30 a.m. Welcome to My Brain

So, it's 4:30 a.m.ish and apparently my sleep is done for the night. My head is full of thoughts and it has been anything but a restful night. We have had storms which resulted in a 7 year old in my bed, closely followed by a dog throwing up on my bed. Attempting to go back to sleep now would be futile, so I decided to unburden my brain.

Please bare with me, because I kind of know what I want to say, but I have no idea how it is going to jump from my brain, to my fingertips to this blog. I guess we all will be surprised.

To start with, I got called "passive aggressive" yesterday. Now trust me, I have been called worse by better, and names usually just slide off my back, but for some reason, this stuck with me to the point that I woke up thinking about it as I cleaned up dog puke. Usually, if something sticks with me this long, I am struggling with the fact that either there is a grain of truth to the accusation or it is so far out in left field that my brain is trying to process how someone could even think that about me, let alone say it.

It had to do with a post that I made yesterday. The fact is, even as I write this, I am not sure how the post ended up on my facebook page as I don't remember seeing it, until someone messaged me about it. By the time I went and looked at it, it had quite a few comments and in my comment back, I stated that I didn't even know that I posted it. Of course the post had to do with all the craziness going on in our world currently and someone called me out and said that me saying that I didn't remember posting it, was passive aggressive. Maybe because I have lived around, and known those that were passive aggressive and couldn't stand the thought of being clumped into such a group, it kind of made my skin crawl. I have always considered myself a lot of things, but passive aggressive has never been one of them. Whether I am conversing with people one on one or through social media, I always try to be very direct and straight forward. I don't usually shy away from the tough, unpleasant stuff and I try to leave people knowing exactly where I stand on just about any subject. It kind of turns my stomach to think that I might come off to someone in a way that I kind of find icky in others. Then again, I am not responsible for how others view my posts, my thoughts or my opinions. All I am responsible for is my intent, staying true to myself and being as honest as I can be in all things. So if someone sees me in a way I don't find flattering....oh well. That is their business and not mine. I guess, now seeing that in written word.....I am good with it. Was that too passive aggressive?

The other thing that is going on in my brain right now and nearly suffocating out any "normal" thoughts, is all that is going on in the country/world today. It seems to be a mess of missiles coming from all directions that seem to keep exploding on social media and in the news media. There is so much that it causes ones head to spin and makes it nearly impossible to focus on any one event. This it appears, is the theme of 2020....Confusion, Deception, Corruption, Distraction and Misconception. 

We seem to be a world of complexities right now. Nothing is easy or simple if you look at it on the surface. Everything seems to have layers and to do the research or focus on just one thing distracts from all the other things going on in the world. There is to me a great feeling of smoke and mirrors, as if a puppet master is setting a bunch of fires everywhere so that we are too distracted to see the giant inferno that is about to take us all out. Melodramatic? Maybe or maybe it is exactly on point. So how do we survive? How do I survive the garbage this is causing in my brain?

My mother was a brilliant woman. Sadly like most children, I did not appreciate her brilliance until I was old enough and wise enough to know that she was not out of touch with the world, she just simply had more experience in it than I did. She used to tell me to "keep it simple." When everything was chaos and it felt like there was too much or an overload, she would tell me to find the simple core and stick to that. Life organically is simple. It doesn't get complex until humans try to improve on that which doesn't need improved on. Then we just make a mess of everything.

So what is the simple core? It is finding the positive in the negative. It is realizing that none of us can fix the world, but we can take it to the least common denominator....ourselves, and fix us. We can live our individual lives simply, quietly, positively and within the bounds of what we know is right and true.

I have been thinking a lot about that lately. How do I find the simple core with all that is going on around me now? The important thing is to stay true to me. It is easy to get lost in everyone elses beliefs. It is also easy to question my own values and morality when I am inundated from every direction with the negative and the propaganda of the current times. Facts are though, the truth remains the truth, good remains good and evil remains evil. It doesn't get any simpler than that and veering from those three facts only puts layers of confusion and misdirection in the mix.

In my heart and my soul, I know who I am as a human being. I know my positives and my negatives and I know what I as a person need to work on to improve myself and my little part of the world. I cannot let others who don't know me, tell me who I am, how I should or shouldn't behave or that I should feel a certain way contrary to what I know to be true and good.

Right now, I live in a world where good and evil seem to be at war and the two have been vastly confused in the eyes of many. People are so immersed in what they want to believe that the truth doesn't phase them. Simplicity is under fire because the simple core is truth and we have fallen victim to liars and lies. What's worse is the old saying, "Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see," has become "Believe nothing of what you hear or see." We live in a world where lies fall off the tongue of those who govern us and our world of technology makes a lie a proven fact with the touch of a keyboard and little computer ingenuity. We follow evil and proclaim it god, while we trample and blaspheme God as if our very souls were invincible to hell. We claim hell doesn't exist and yet we aren't smart enough to realize that what is going on in the world right now, may just be a G-rated prelude to what many have to look forward to in the after life.

We have become a world of narcissism, disguised as activism. No longer do we care about our fellow humans, we are all about self. Everyone has an agenda and at the highest levels that agenda is money and power, and we the people have been nothing more than an experiment to see how scared we are, how easily lead we are and how quickly we will trade "security" for our rights. If the last few years have taught us anything it has been that as a whole, we are terrified sheep who believe that we will be taken care of if we let the government have their way with us. And the worst part is, the money and the power didn't even have to put up a fight. We handed them our freedom without batting an eye. Why? Because we lost ourselves. We forgot that as a country we were a work in progress, not perfection. We forgot that we were all human beings...none above the other. We forgot all those that had fought and died so that we have the freedoms and rights we have. We forgot what it felt like when Pearl Harbor was bombed and again on 9/11. We have lost our strength and our bravery and the spirit which brought us to this country in the first place. We have traded all of this for apathy, ignorance and "security." We quit being proud Americans and became ashamed of who we are because the media and the money and the power told us we should. We quit using our intelligence and allowed social media to do our thinking for us. The bottom line, we are quickly becoming the history horror stories we used to hear about. Remember when you learned about the Hilter regime and you asked yourself, "How did the people not know?" We should know. We are being told. We just aren't listening.

So I take it back to simple. I cannot, as one person change this world. I can however, stick to what I know to be true, right, moral and good. I can keep my social media very small and my news media non-existent. I can block out the smoke and mirrors and live my life as positively as possible. I can consistently work on doing the next right thing and I can quit listening to the money and the power that tells me right is wrong and good is bad. I can stand my ground and hold to my convictions as a human being, a Christian and an American.

Well, WOW! Just wow! Yes, that was all in my brain. No wonder I can't sleep. I imagine that many of us have similar brains right now. I urge you, like myself to also keep it simple. The reality...there is strength and power in blocking out the complexities and getting down to the simple core. There is also a good bit of peace in doing so, and who among us can't use a little peace right now? 

Sighs, Control and the Next 50 Years

Sigh.......

Yep that is where I am currently at. I am not quite as melancholy as the sigh might indicate, moreover I am at a crossroads and trying to muster every bit of energy I have to do battle with.....myself. 

I was looking back through my blogs at all the "changes" that have happened throughout all of these years. One thing I noticed is that life just seemed to happen to me and I kind of just allowed it to leave me dazed and to knock me off my axis. Oh yes, I blustered and blew about it and at the time did even take steps to control the chaos that is often my life, but at the end of the day I might as well have had WELCOME written across my forehead as I was little more than a doormat for my life and the people in it.

Much has happened in this last year that has shaken me to my very core. Who knew that when I was served with an eviction notice that it would not be the worst event of the year? I know I was certainly shocked as my life went into hyper speed with new and literally terrifying daily updates. My life felt like I was in the drivers seat of a car without breaks and I really wasn't sure if I wasn't going to crash and burn before all was said and done.

I am nothing though if I am not resilient. I was able to put the brakes on my life and stop the crash and burn. I was also met with some truly difficult facts about who I was as a person and who I wanted to be going forward. Strong people don't allow others to dictate their life choices or allow themselves to be actively manipulated or walked all over. Apparently, all the people commenting to me on just how strong I really was, were dishing out nothing but FAKE NEWS and at some point I had bought into the hype.

The reality is, in small pockets of my life, I am extremely strong. In anything having to do with David, his life, his health and his home/security....I am the David to the worlds Goliath. Sadly, that is where I think my strength and my ability to handle my own world end. Rather than be strong with the rest of my world, I found myself being controlling.... and who controls? Those of us who feel absolutely out of control and in complete chaos. The very definition of.....ME! In fact, if you look my name up in the dictionary......

When my latest life update occurred, so did a lot of realizations about who I am, where I have been and where I plan on going as I move forward. In fact, there were moments when I questioned if "forward" was even a possibility. You will be happy to know....it is....because I am making it a possibility. I also realized that I am tired of life pulling it's surprise attacks and trying to change me. Granted, there are many things in life I have zero say in and zero control over (i.e. other people, freak accidents, the fact that Larry Hagman died and they will never bring back the original Dallas), but what I do have some say in and some control over is my life and how I act/react to situations and what I will and will not allow in my life.

While all of this on the outside looking in seems pretty normal and some are probably scratching their heads and wondering why this is such a revelation to me, the truth is......I have been on the inside looking out for so long and just simply so accepting of the unacceptable, that for me.....this is a true revelation.

Of late I am learning the true meaning of words such as "acceptance," "detachment" and  "forgiveness." I am learning not only their meanings but also how they work in my everyday life and I can honestly say it is helping second by second. It's a good thing too as my life is about to leave behind the slow steadiness of summer and propel it's way into the beginning of school and the onset of fall. Even saying that I can feel the anxiousness well up as I think about the uncertainty of the future and all that I think I need to accomplish. I am no happier though if I sit here and focus on the past and try to make sense there. While I am a huge believer in the fact that you have to acknowledge your past before you can successfully navigate your future, thus far.....my future hasn't always been so successfully navigated, so I have decided to try something different. I have decided to live in the present, take advantage of the moment....whatever it has to offer and leave the past and future to themselves as controlling, fixing or changing either one of them is completely out of my skill set.

Let's be real, this living in the moment, acknowledging the moment and appreciating the moment are quite frankly hard, as I am not wired to think like that. What I have noticed though, is the more I focus on the here and now and what I can control/fix in my own life, the less I focus on others and the more I stay out of other peoples lives and give them the opportunity to control/fix their own. Crazy....right?

So....yeah.....this is pretty sighable stuff as I make the choice to move forward as a better me and work on controlling only that which I can control (me) and stop letting the world, circumstance and others control me. This maybe the thing that actually brings on the true change that I have been searching for all these years......and not a moment too soon. After all....I am 55 and I plan on getting the next 50 years right!

The Power Over Control

Okay....so I admit that I am just the teensiest bit controlling. Fine....I would control everything from the weather to Jay Leno's monologue if I could, but in my defense.....it is not completely my fault. I come from a long line of control freaks...so I believe that I am genetically inclined to this behavior. It is one of my more "un"lovable qualities and one that believe it or not...I spend a great deal of time working on. Believe me....it takes a lot of time and energy to try and control everything in your hemisphere....and when it comes to having the last word.....you just know that is gonna be something I have to have. As much havic as this little flaw imparts on my personal life.....it is nothing compared to what it has done to my spiritual life.

"Let go and let God," was my mothers favorite saying. She too loved to control all in her kingdom....but somewhere along the way, she learned that somethings are completely out of our human control....and more importantly....you simply can't control God. I too am fighting to learn these lessons. I am finding that the older I get....the less control over anything I really have....(although I am still quite good at demanding the last word), but in all things that really count....the only true control I have is the control God allows me.

My spiritual education about just how little control over things in my life that I really had....began with the premature birth of my youngest son. As he lay between life and death day after day...I realized that I had zero control over whether he would live or not. All control was out of my hands....the only one in true control was God.

When I came home to find my husband dead....there was simply nothing that myself or any other human for that matter could do to change this situation. Once again....God was in control....and I was a control freak....with absolutely no control.

Finally.....I think the realization of how little control I really have in this world came to me when my mother was sick. Cancer turned my mother from someone who had to control every situation.....to someone who could easily...."Let go and let God." She became a true child of God.....happily turning her illness, her life, and her heart over to Him....and willingly accepting His will for her....not the other way around. For me....it was another spiritual life lesson that once again brought home the fact that....there was absolutely nothing about the situation that I could control.

I think it was just a short time after my mothers death....when I was feeling very "out of control" about life in general....that I began searching for something that would return my world (and control) back to me. I spent some time doing some major soul searching and looking for an answer(s) that I may have overlooked. Finally...after much searching and even more praying.....one day in a quiet one on with God it came to me. In all these situations where I had felt so totally devoid of control....I had something much more important. I had power. I always had the power right there at my fingertips....I had the power to pray. I had the power to let go of all that was out of my control....and like a child....let God handle it all. (Thus my mothers lesson in learning to be a "true" child of God.) I think it was then that I realized that where control does nothing more than fill your life.....power actually fills your soul....and when you have power....then you really don't need control.

If I am completely honest....control still tries to rear its ugly head in my life on a daily basis.....especially when my son goes without a belt and I can see his underwear, when it rains on my picnic....or when Leno isn't funny, but I have also learned that I have the power to ignore my sons fashion choices, to bring my picnic inside, and to turn off the television....and more importantly I have learned that I have the power through prayer....to turn it all over to God. Don't get me wrong....I still have the "last word" issue....but I am merely a work in progress....so for now.....we will be satisfied with baby steps.

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