Wow, what a run the last 30 days or so has been. Where I started out the year trying to live in truth and in the light; in humility and in service, as usual, someone sees it fit to throw their wrench into my works. In my mind, I have crashed my car into the offenders and run them straight over. I have rang their doorbell, only to have them answer and I rush in and tackle them to the floor, beating them senseless. In one of my best mind-revenge plots, I set fire to their house while standing laughing on the lawn. But, alas, I have no time for jail time, so those scenarios remain unplayed, unrehearsed, even. Rather, in dealing with the circumstances, I have looked to land here, and tell my tale in sarcastic, caustic tone, to vent the emotions. Many times, my fingers landed on the letters to make up the words, phrases and sentences to describe the characters and their traits, but in doing so, my digits made clamor, the tips hurt...I struck the Mac Air keys with such angry force, I startled myself.
You can't do this. This is not how you said you'd live. He who asks for protection cannot fight another's. Literally, it came to me in the last hour of my birthday: a beloved book fell from the shelf. When I reached to pick it up, my fingers grasped the dog-eared page that was a message I desperately needed to hear.
From Iyanla Van Zant's Acts of Faith:
The moment we have a negative experience, we get stuck in what was done and how it was done to us. We must learn not to take life so personally. People are not really out to get us. Events are not waiting to befall us. We are all moving to get where we want to be. As a result, we will sometimes step on each others' toes. When we find ourselves in a conflict or confrontation we must know how to love ourselves out of it. Love means recognizing fear as an operand condition that sometimes makes us do and say things we really don't mean. Love means opening our hearts and minds to our best, regardless of what is going on. Love means not attacking, but supporting, not defending, but seeking clarity. Love means knowing that, in the end, we will all be okay even if it means we have to give up a little of something. Let us learn to give up anger and fear by replacing those things with love.
--I am loving you and me out of this situation.
On this day, the summer solstice, I give all the faith I have unto my love, my love supreme, to guide me out and away from the situations, scenes and swindlers who continue to try to steal my joy. And you should do the same.
