cherie’s remix

Most women I know don’t think of themselves as competitors.  Not that we aren’t, we just don’t call it that.  We’re way too busy competing to put a name to it.  Women, I say, are every bit as competitive as men.  The difference being that, true to our muli-tasking nature, we compete…or at least think about it…on pretty much EVERYTHING.  Men, on the other hand, confine themselves mostly to jobs and hobbies.  Well, and sex, maybe.

Not so simple for the ladies.

Jobs.  Perks.  Salary. 

Whose kids/grandkids are more beautiful, hansome, well-behaved, intelligent.  

Whose husband is more attentive…sensitive…successful…smarter…handier with a drill and screwdriver.

Who’s the best cook.  Who’s house is bigger…cleaner…nicer…better decorated.  Whose car is cuter or more fuel efficient.  Who has the prettiest washer and dryer. 

Who has taken the best trips at the cheapest price.

Whose stories are the funniest.

Who gets to be BOSS of whom. 

We judge our lives…and decide how good or bad it is…based on how good or bad our bff has it. 

Mothers…fathers…husbands…boyfriends…girlfriends…bosses…brothers…sisters…kids.  

Our bodies (Who’s the fattest at the gym?  Which beyotch is the skinniest?).  Plastic surgery (my personal favorite…it’s HARD not to covet someone’s perky ones when God has let the air out of mine).  Haircuts.  Hair color. 

Politics and purses.

Causes and cell phones.

Volunteerism and vacations.

Who got the fastest checkout line first or the best seat at the restaurant.

Even the someone’s free time can piss us off if we don’t watch out.

This constant weighing and measuring?  Not good.  Seriously.

Jesus says the first will be last. 

First is last.

Looks.  Money.  Power.  Prestige.

Last is first.

It goes against our nature.  It’s why Jesus keeps repeating it.

He says this:  “…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”   Mark 10:43-45

If we don’t watch out, we can get competitive about that too:  Girlfriend!  I am MORE beat down than YOU!

We think if we can just be the most indispensible to the most people…full of good works and deeds…plus the best, the brightest, the most socially active, the life of the party, the star…if we can just be THAT PERSON…maybe we can finally escape that scared feeling that we don’t quite measure up. Hidden in our little hearts is that worry that in the end…all the fancy things we done and places we’ve been; all the profound things (we think) we’ve said; and all the people we think we’ve impressed…all THAT will be for nothing when we die.  It will slip away into nowhere, as we slip away into oblivion.

Worse yet…we might realize at the end that we stayed too busy doing things that didn’t matter to God.  While the things that did matter were left undone.

The women who have made the most profound impact on me, without exception, lived quiet, uncelebrated lives.  No designer original gowns.  No coolest ride.  No tummy tucks or trips to Europe.  No claim to fame as Volunteer of the Year.  No power or prestige.  Most didn’t even hold a salaried job.

That’s not to say they didn’t work.  They worked hard.  No question.  Making the most of what you’re given…when you’re not given much…means years of hard work with little or no recognition. 

Faith, family, home, community.  They served.  Day in. day out.  Year in, year out.  Good times and bad. 

With all that struggle, the temptation to lapse into thinking about how unfair life sometimes is must have been overwhelming.  Pretty remarkable that they resisted the impulse to put it out there as a competition.  To ask for sympathy or extras because their lives sucked so bad in comparison to others.  

In resisting that, I’m pretty sure they paved the way for me to go to heaven.  Free from self pity, they were free – FREE – to pass on the lessons they had learned.  First, the easy ones like hospital corners and making a cake from scratch.  Later, the harder lessons.

Sitting across a table over coffee…they listened to my laundry list of woes.  Then shared their own stories.  How to be poor and not mind so much.  The truth about how much control we don’t have of our grown up kids and just how far God will go when we pray.  How to survive abuse and neglect and thrive in spite of it. 

Never did I feel minimized or trivialized or like a loser in a game of one-upmanship called My Crappy Life.  Never.  Instead, they wove their struggles and triumphs into my own.   Loving me simply and unconditionally right where I was…they planted the seed that maybe, just maybe, God would do the same. 

Today is Ash Wednesday.  I know that because the church Tom and I have been attending sent this email reminder: 

 Ash Wednesday Services

  

Lent sounds very Catholic and/or Lutheran.  I’ve never been either one, so there’s that. 

That said, I’m open to maybe finding some value in Lenten stuff…if it’s not just one more thing at which to fail.  If Lent just means giving up chocolate or coffee, and starts playing out like another diet to cheat on OR an experiment in asceticism (which…in reality would just be another diet for me to cheat on) for a month and a half, I’m not really on board. 

Some people write that Lent is really more about what we DO than what we don’t.

I’m interested in seeing if Lent will actually help me to focus on Jesus and what he did for us in these weeks leading up to Easter.  Too many years Easter comes and goes and I’m left feeling like I missed something BIG.  I’ve spent too much time thinking about coloring and hard boiling and Reese’s Eggs and daffodils and decorating in pastels. (God, I can be SO shallow.  I know this thing.).  With too little focus on what’s really going on.

To actually get some spiritual truth from this holiday this year?  That would be an answer to prayer.  The  prayer that goes something like this:  “Halloo??  Remember me? Where did you go?  I’m LOST. (again)  Can you help me find my way back?” 

Immediately realizing that those kinds of prayers can be tricky…I qualify that I’d like to avoid terminal cancer and/or paraplegia and/or another really crappy haircut and/or an unplanned pregnancy (which would be a miracle akin to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, given my age and mood and post-meno status.)

Technically, of course, we’re supposed to let God decide what we need to grow spiritually (ESPECIALLY at Lent…I’m just guessing here), but I can’t help but think that there’s a reason for concern when you pray that stuff.  Especially when you read all the things that brought people so much closer to God. Not that I think God has it in for me or anything, but you never know what he might come up with when you pray for growth.  I’m not telling him how to do His bi-ness (exactly), I’m just asking him to keep an open mind on the subject. There are things I’d rather NOT have happen for my spiritual edification.  It’s a control issue, I know, but I’m a spiritual wimp and it makes me feel like I’ve covered my bases.

Anyway.

I’ve been feeling this tension for some time now in my writing.  A tension between my Smart Ass Self (who just wants to make people laugh and relax a little at the absurdity of life and relationships…well, the absurdity of MY life and MY relationships) and the reality of myself as a Christian and my walk/stumble toward a closer intimacy with God.  A walk which…all jokey joking aside…is immeasurable in its impact on me…because it informs virtually everything I do and am.

Being Christian is who I am…even when I’m not myself.

It’s a terrible thing to lose hope. Really, really awful.   I know this because I’ve done it.  A few times. 

Completely lost sight of who I am as a spirit and as a human being.  Forgot about who I was before, what happened, and who I am today.  Why I’m still here. Sometimes I forget that my life, unconventional as it may be, is still relevant and needed.

God…and our bumbling search to know him…somehow…mysteriously…strengthens our spirits.  Centers us.  Slides his hope underneath our hopelessness.

Humor reminds us that we’re all human.  We all belong.  We all screw up.  We all have our tics and twitches.  We all have our moments of transcendence.  We’re all loved by God.

In the land of blogdom, “they” are pretty specific that once you get some regular readers, they can feel abandoned and even betrayed (and pissy) when you change the focus of your blog.

But, lots of times when I’m stuck with my writing, it’s because I’m stuck on something spiritual.  I don’t blog much about it here, because I haven’t been sure if this is the venue.  I’ve thought of starting a second blog…that’s what all serious bloggers do, I guess.  But I think we can all agree that I’m not that serious. 

All that to say…I’m expanding my foci…at least through Lent.

Sometimes, you’ll hear from Cherie-the-Smart-Ass.

Other times, Cherie-the-Seeker.

And sometimes?  Cherie-the-Smart-Ass-Seeker.

So much has been percolating, percolating in my wee widdle bwain since I snuck away into the long, winter night, leaving my poor blog lost and abandoned. 

Topping the list…ever and always:  I still eat too much.  I still weigh too much.  Exercise still sucks.

Our 401 is still in the crapper.  

The tax man is still looking forward to me being prompt and organized…I’m still looking forward to that happening someday too.

I brag all the time about how I never watch TV during the day, but lately I’ve been sneaking around behind my own back, turning on CNBC almost every morning.  Mostly, I try not to sit down and actually watch it.  I play the “If-I-don’t-see-this-nightmare–it’s-not-really-happening” game where I never look directly at the television screen.  I just walk slowly and nonchalantly past it, pretending like I could care less that 3M stock is tanking out at $40 less per share than last year.  This sorta works for awhile, until the suspense is KILLING me…at which time (after 20 or so trips through the living room in less than 30 minutes), I’m so nutso to see what the Dow is doing this second and the next and the next, that I plop onto the couch and spend the next hour staring slack-jawed and wide-eyed (a lot like Tom watching The Outdoor Channel) at the Dow ticker going down, down, down…

Just like a train wreck.  Don’t wanna look.  Cannot look away. 

Following closely on the heels of my obsessive/compulsive fixation with the stock market is my obsession with the Lowden house redo (which has reawakened this old persona:  Construction Worker/Fast Foodie Cherie who LOVES to grab McDonald’s and/or Hardee’s take out and swing by the Wal-Mart clearance and paint aisles…all in the fervent belief that too much junk food and clearance crap and fresh paint make me calmer, smarter, and a better decorator.

Meanwhile, Tom’s putting the farm into some huge (for us) farm conservation program that has immediate impact and consequence on every anxiety, phobia, physical and/or emotional ishoo I have ever had, hope to have, or imagined I might have.

Plus, I’ve been sick.

Oh, and I turned 55 a couple of weeks ago.  Which made for a great day, but the shine has definitely worn off that.

I’ve been giving considerable (but not intelligent) thought to all this lately…seeing as how I’ve been laying on the couch, blowing my nose, taking my temperature every 15 minutes, dragging to the kitchen to heat up canned chicken soup, and dozing through reruns of Boston Legal for 3 days.

And now…since my fat jeans are now officially tighter than snug (which, as everybody knows, makes you crave ice cream even if you hate ice cream)…I’ve been giving more thought to just what to do about me, my life, and I.

They keep saying that you have to hit a bottom to change.

Exactly whose bottom am I supposed to hit? Just tell me that and I will be so on it...

To top it all off, I just found out that I have totally screwed up my dopamine receptors through years of getting high by overeating Cheetos and Snickers Fun Size Bars and now have the  brain chemistry of a cocaine addict.  So, of course, there’s THAT to deal with. 

I’m  feeling another mid-life crisis coming on. 

Kitty and I are snuggled on the love seat, writing by Christmas tree light.  I used to write my Christmas cards that way.  Back before Tom and babies.  It was the first Christmas tradition I made for myself.  To pick an evening or two after the tree was up, find a favorite pen, a box of pretty cards, something delicious to drink.  I’d turn on the Christmas lights and music, and write, really write, Christmas cards. 

Each one.  Individually.   

Back then, there was no hurry to buy and wrap.  No money for that.  But what I could offer, what I could afford to give, was my time and my writing. 

I haven’t done that for a very, very long time. 

And, it has me thinking about how writing Christmas cards…not the signature scribbling I mostly do now (and this year, not even that)…was a gift that came from the deep inside of my heart.  A gift of time and focus and love, sent to those I care most about.  So many that I care most about don’t get these gifts from me anymore.

And it reminds me that I hope to get better as a writer. Not only the technical part of writing, which needs practice, of course, just like piano or violin.  But the moral and spiritual parts.  Where my writing grows and evolves and I find ways to use it for good.  For God.  To document the human experience with as much candor and humor as possible.  Finding the lessons in the pain or humor.  Uncovering the common ground.  A place where we can laugh at being humans getting older and odder through trial and error.

It seems like real communication…hearing and being heard…can suffer as we get older.  It’s so much harder to stay focused.  To follow the good intention with the good action.  To say what we mean without being small or ungracious.  To do the hard work of removing blame from our conversation.

I see this in marriages all the time.  Mine included.  We forget to listen…to each other and ourselves.  Our tone is shrill or whiney or demanding.  We blame and hammer away at things that aren’t important.  We fall easily into speaking at or about or over, rather than into and with and for. 

Sometimes it hits me…and I actually get it… that I have been in a bitchy mode for way too long.  And I will decide that just for today, I’m not going to gripe about anything or waste any more time thinking about how others (especially my Tom) should change their ways of thinking and doing just to suit me.

I’m not sure I’ve ever made it through an entire day of such extraordinary self control, but I will tell you this…when this is my focus?  Those are better days…for me (and especially my Tom).

The pull to be small and self-involved is one that that never seems to leave me (well, not just me) completely.  But so many times…too many times…we get stuck in the round around…chasing our tails.  Finding fault.  Assigning blame.  Faster, faster, faster.  As if being chief critics makes this a better world for anyone.

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says something like “…and while I was judging myself by my intentions, the world was judging me by my actions.”  I actually think God judges us by both.  How we reconcile our intentions and actions makes the difference between a life of satisfaction and usefulness and a life of something missing.

I can intend to do good for the rest of my life.  But, if I never act on those intentions, I might as well spend the rest of my life with one hand in the potato chip bag watching Oprah reruns for the rest of my life. 

On the other hand, I can do all kinds of good deeds, but if my intentions are self-serving or petty or to mainly to please people who think I should do or be this way or that, I might as well spend the rest of my life with one hand in the potato chip bag watching Oprah reruns for the rest of my life. 

FYI   I’m pretty sure Jesus loves potato chips; Oprah reruns…not so much.

(For you, Mags.  Thanks for calling me out of my blogger-wogging. )