Maturity and emotional temperance
Love and acceptance instead of bullying and control
Gentleness in my hands
The desire to listen and understand
And a mouth that uses soft voices to speak kind words
It's been a long time since I've put anything here, and I've been in limbo whether or not to keep this blog up. But occasionally, things ask to be recorded in a more private space than Heirloom Homestead.
As usual, I don't have much time to write again. I thought I was going to get 20 minutes or so, but in come the others from outside already, with their litany of problems they must explain and try to find answers from me.
It's exhausting. It's exhausting and frustrating and overwhelming to my senses to have this constant diatribe thrown on me from all directions. I long for my own space. Some days, I long to drive off into the mountains, leaving the whole lot of them behind. How can one grouchy person change the moods of three other people for a whole day? I don't know.
I do know that I've been coping in rather unhealthy ways. Instead of trying to influence others in the house in a good way, I let myself get caught in the tide of whatever negative comes up. Instead of being proactive to make the home feel safe and secure for our little ones, I've displayed reactive, knee-jerk reactions, the hallmark of my immaturity, in my opinion. Instead of trying to understand why the house feels like a whirlwind of anger and sadness, and how I might help the person trapped in the center, I've tried to blame that person (whichever it may be that day) for causing it all, and tried to bully or manipulate them out of their mood.
At some point, I have to accept that I cannot control my environment right now. I can never control my environment completely, as long as I choose to be in relationship with others. But especially right now, my environment will be a daily crap shoot.
I also can't control others. Assuming that I am choosing to stay in relationship with others (which I am), I can't control anyone else, but have to let them be who they are. Some of us have the hardest time letting this happen with one of our children. For me, it's my spouse.
The night before last, I had rare time for reflection. And I started writing the prayer above. It has motions, actually - roughly the same as those in The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit that we do at church, except ending on the mouth. Prayers, even oft recited ones, seem to stick with me better when a physical component is added.
In our adult formation class the other night, Father Whittington talked about the continuum of virtue versus vice and how they become habit. Essentially, his point was this: your greatest achievement doesn't happen when you struggle with right and wrong, and eventually choose right. This is much more interesting, perhaps, and can indicate growth, but your greatest achievement happens when the "right" becomes habitual. There is no struggle involved because you're firmly planted in doing the right thing already.
My reactions have become habitual. When I become angry with someone in my family - depending on who it is - my thoughts (my reactive, knee-jerk, angry and hateful thoughts) have become completely habitual. I think the exact same hateful thoughts in the exact same order with the same feeling of fury behind them. The only thing that might change is their intensity. Since I keep repeating them to myself, they somehow become less "blowing off steam" and more "let's consider the reality of this for a bit."
My hope for my relationships with those in my family would be that the reactions indicated in the prayer above could one day become the new habit. I know habits are hard to break, and I know they aren't changed overnight.
But I also know that if you don't try to change them, they can - and will - go on indefinitely.
