Today’s the day I have chosen to start to stop avoiding Life.  

Now don’t get too excited - that likely means something VERY different to me than it means to you.

Every day I snooze my alarm once or twice (three times on a bad day). 

This wasn’t true when I lived with Kari.  I used to jump out of bed on work days, ready to get going and contribute and make money for my family, and continue building a life.  

As I see it now, the root problem that led to the demise of the marriage between Kari and I was the Spiritual Divorce that occurred not long after the wedding ceremony.  Spiritual Divorce following Marriage is not rare I’m sure, and although I personally and professionally believe that Spiritual Divorce is likely very common, especially for those who come from problematic  family systems, it still shocks the hell out of me to read these words.   

What is a “family system” you may ask? Per usual, I’m flummoxed.  I shouldn’t be.  It makes no logical sense why I should feel as overwhelmed as I typically do when asked a question that I “should” know as a professional.  And sure I could go on a rant right now about the tTruth of rReality:  We’ll very likely never know anything for sure.  Possibly until we’re dead.  Possibly we won’t even know then.  

As I said sometime in 2021 to a particularly formidable client of mine as the cherry on top after delivering a Full Bucket of Ice Cold Water in the Form of tTruth to her, “Them’s the brakes.”

And the potentially gGood news about this particularly aAwful information is that if we’re left her on an Empty planet full of fForms waiting for Categories and Constructs and Labels and Languaged Reality, we might as well co-Create Construct something gGood.

I talked to my ex-wife today.  Over FaceTime.  After sixty days of no contact, she let me know that her grandmother died less than a week after we had our last communication in April.  After seventy days of no contact, we decided to try being Friends.

Why did I decide to extend friendship to her you might ask? Well, I’d sure like to tell you.  

But I don’t know.

Do you know?

Does anyone know for sure why they do anything?

Or how much choice do they have in deciding to do it?

Now - what’s this - is it an interesting tangent? Or a diversion? Purposeful evasion? All of the above…Both/And

An astute friend of mine, following many pandemic-infused months spent utilizing her escapist strategy of choice, reported the observation that the phrase, “But I had no choice!” is uttered by at least one of the characters on 85% of the criminal/murder/justice shows she watches on television.  She wondered aloud to me why this might be so.

Why would the writers of these television shows want to give the message that we have no choice? Is it a conspiracy? Is it a Collective Experience of Unadmitted Powerlessness?

Thoughts that sound like the echoes of the Version of me that was a smidgeon more of a martyr than I am today trickle or slither or push or float through my brain/mind/consciousness/soul?

So many unanswered questions.  So many similar concepts.  Might they all fit together in some way that will one day culminate in the creation of the most heart stoppingly beautiful mosaic you’ve ever seen?  Sigh, I sure hope so.

Is it Codependent? Or is it Caring?  In Codependents’ Anonymous, the literature makes the distinction between Care-Taking and Care-Giving.  See how important word choice is? And definitions? And concepts? I turn into such a grandiose fellow when I start talking about the English language.  Man, I have some pride over that time I won the WHOLE STATE in the 11th Grade Honors English State-wide Literary Rally.  Now this pride shrinks a bit whenever I mention to myself or others that the state I won was the state of Louisiana.  I had the privilege/fortune/luck that my parents could afford to put aside their hatred for one another enough to agree to work together to pay my way through private Christian school all the way from preschool through high school graduation.  Bible class every day of my entire education until my freshman year in college.  I learned a lot, both from the Lutheran (Missouri Synod) and the Southern Baptists. And from my mom.  My mom is a devout Lutheran who never goes to church.  One time when I was old enough for it to make an impression on me, she told me about her musings regarding the potential metaphorical nature of the Bible.  She taught me her view about time - “Who says one day doesn’t equal one thousand years through God’s eyes?” she asked, explaining how she perceives the creation story existing both/and with evolutionary theory.  

Jesus was presented to me in a really great way.  I dig my version of Jesus.  A friend of my grandmother’s gave me a card to celebrate my confirmation in the Lutheran church when I was 12 years old.  On the front of the card was a shepherd kneeling down and reaching out the crook of his sheep herding tool over the side of a ravine.  One sheep, caught just in time by the crook, looks up at Him with Gratitude and the Love I imagine a person looks at their father with.  I’m lucky enough to have that as my original mental picture of who Jesus really was.  

Another thought that has a whiny quality of self-pity to it.  3 seconds.  Breathe in.   Breathe out.  Let it go.

I took a 15 minute walk this evening.  My watch got all excited about it.  My watch was like, “Wow, is this really happening? We’re actually going to move around as if body movement has anything to do with health?”  I gave my watch a dirty look and the sarcasm ceased.

“Who’s powerless now?” I said to my watch.

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