No Regrets

   I've always had a complicated relationship with regret. One the one hand, if all learning happens through reflection, at least a little regret is necessary for making any sort of progress in any area of life. If you can regret something and still be grateful for the experience doesn't the gratitude cancel out the regret? Maybe the problem I have is that regret sounds too negative and too strong a sentiment for major life experiences. I can regret eating pizza late at night or not taking a jacket on a cold day. I'm fine with those. Those are things I can and want to correct.

    I think the problem I have with regretting major life choices, like marriage, is that the idea of going back and correcting those decisions would change way too many wonderful consequences. How could I regret something that also brought me such joy, laughter,  love, and beauty? Isn't the entire point of "all things work together for good" that it includes ALL things? 

    Today is my 62nd birthday. My overall sentiment about life in general is that I've not made things easy on myself, and I know I made things harder for my boys than it had to be. I do regret that. I'd go back and change parts of that if I could but not the whole thing. I think of all the things I've done in my life, and I mean ALL of them, the greatest and most important thing I ever did was teach grace to my sons. You can only really teach grace by example. Words just don't cut it. It makes me think of a bible verse I've heard thousands of times growing up in evangelical church-always before an offering of some sort. Always. Go figure. But I don't see it as a verse about money at all. It's about love, grace, peace, joy, etc... All the important things. Not money.

Luke 6:38 -Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Paul McCartney said it like this: 

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

    My boys are good humans. They're not perfect, but they're full of grace. I experience that grace firsthand every time they hug me, or say "I love you, Mom," or basically just continue to desire a relationship with me at all. So many parents don't have good relations with their children. I am blessed beyond measure on my 62nd birthday, and I doggedly refuse to see it any other way. 

No regrets.

Thanks for reading!

love,

grace

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Thomas Merton Tracks

    It is a truth that real, authentic learning can only happen through reflection. You can't skip that part. I know that. I'm a teacher; it's what we do. 

    So I've finally mustered the courage to start looking back at some of the posts I wrote while I was married to tdub. There are not quite 200 of them which means it would be a pretty quick read if I were able to plow through it all in one sitting. I'm glad I'm not able to do that because there's a lot of stuff there I need to revisit, feel, and process. Sometimes it feels as if another version of me is moving through my body like a wave as I read. It puts me back in that moment, but going back is necessary because when you mess up at anything you have to take time to figure out the why of your mistake so as not to keep repeating it. And I'm not talking about the mistake of marrying a closeted gay guy. I mean, all things being equal, if you're going to marry the wrong person it may as well be a closeted gay guy. I've never had a problem with gay people, even at the height of my religiosity. For the most part, I find them delightful and, due in large part to the religious trauma of my youth, I feel a strong kinship with gay folks. I'm talking about not demonstrating an ability to make decisions in my own best interests as it pertains to relationship. I see now that I've been avoiding the very thing I most need to do if I plan to keep learning, growing, and improving. I'm about to turn 62, but I see no reason to let that deter me from my endeavor. In fact, it's more imperative than ever that I finally figure this shit out. 

     Being back in Duncan with my boys has given me the strength to do it. Go figure. I guess the best thing about Duncan being pretty much exactly the way it was when I grew up here 60 years ago is that it puts me back in that time and place much like reading the blogs about life with tdub puts me back in that time and place. It's a lot. It's been a lot. But I'm getting there. It's like I had open heart surgery as a child and the doctor botched it up. And somehow, in this, choose-your-own-adventure video game of life the rules state that the only way to move forward is to go back, untangle the mess and get your heart, mind, and soul functioning correctly. I don't remember who said it first, but if we're not learning we're dying. Obviously, I'm not done learning.

    The blog post I read today was from July 2006. I felt huge waves of comfort and strength as I read it. It moved me to tears. I may have been living in the middle of a slow motion train wreck back then, but I was always searching for meaning, trying to make sense of things, and basically just doing the best I could in my current state of growth. I posted it less than a month before tdub came out and our marriage ended. It's a Thomas Merton quote, and it resonated with me in a deep and profound way then just as it does now. I have a different view of it now, particularly the Jesus parts, but the words and the sentiment move me still. Thomas Merton tracks. Here it is:

    "My Lord, I have no hope but in Your cross. You, by your humility, and sufferings and death, have delivered me from all vain hope. You have killed the vanity of the present life in Yourself, and have given me all that is eternal in rising from the dead.

    Why should I want to be rich...to be famous and powerful? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me - the hope for perfect happiness in this life - when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?

    My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards...Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in Your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources." - Thomas Merton

    

 As always, thanks for reading! It feels good to write again. 

grace

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"The only way out is through." -Robert Frost

I have so much to write about that I often feel stuck or frozen. I started a post about how my mom served as the church secretary and how that impacted so many aspects of my childhood growing up. But it all turns into a jumble somehow like it needs to cook a little longer before it's ready to come flowing out of me. Who knows. I just know that I feel like I need to be writing, and somehow, hitting publish on these blog posts gives me a sense that I've done something worthwhile. 

The main thing I'm trying to unravel is exactly how the religious and cultural indoctrinations/lessons/experiences I had as a child here in Duncan impacted my ability to be successful in other aspects of my life. It's not about blame. It's about unraveling knots that happened, for whatever reason, and moving forward toward greater emotional health. Living here has literally forced my mind into this place because I'm surrounded by it. Like living at the scene of some sort of accident. It feels like I have no choice but pick myself up and to do it. And that's what I'm trying to do. 

And it's horrible. It's painful. It's excruciating. But the thing is, the fact that it's so painful points me toward the notion that it simply must be done. There's no way forward but to go right through.

So that's what I'm doing. Come what may. 

That's all I've got for now. But I'll be able to hit "publish" and move forward with today knowing that I did some writing. Thanks for reading!

love,

grace

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Deconstruction Sucks. Yippee ki yay.

    

    As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I moved back to my hometown of Duncan, Oklahoma 3 years ago. Duncan is a small town in Southwest part of the state just 30 miles north of the Texas border.  I think it's pretty typical as far as small towns go, but it's not one of those "mind your own damn business" small towns like the one Tim Walz kept talking about during the presidential campaign. Oh, if only. Here in Duncan, minding other folks' business is 2nd nature for some and something of a hobby for others. I keep my head down and, as Tim would say, "mind my own damn business" pretty much all the time. 

    Duncan became my hometown in the spring of 1963 when I was 3 months old and my sister was 5. My parents moved our family here from the even smaller and more rural town of Sulphur, Ok, just an hour's drive due east of Duncan. I graduated from Duncan High School (#godemons) in 1981, and left for college that same year. 

    Flash forward an entire 40-year lifetime and BAM, it's September 2021, and I'm right back where I started. You might think after 3 full years of living life here, I'd no longer be stopped in my tracks by a sudden feeling of panic while driving down pretty much any street. But it still happens more often than I find acceptable. It's like my car landed on the "go back to start" square in the cosmic game of life. How did this happen? How did I end up back here??? What the heck is going on? Is this real????

     While everyone else at any given intersection may be simply waiting for their turn to proceed, I'm also reliving that time my 70s era, candy-apple red Toyota corolla fell into a giant sink-hole at one of the busiest intersections in town, or the time I rear-ended the car in front of me on Hwy 81 because my high school crush honked at me from the southbound lane, or the time I got stranded high-center on a mound of dirt in a construction area that's now considered one of the older neighborhoods in town.    

    My parents were only privy to two of those particular incidents, and I could go on with lots of others. The one where I fell in the sink-hole landed me on the front page of our local newspaper, and the fender bender smashed up the front of my beloved little Richard Scarry-looking car. While I consider these good memories that bring me joy and laughter in the retelling, especially when reminiscing with childhood friends, my state-of-being when they occurred was, as it turns out, not good. Being HERE physically somehow makes them more than just beloved memories. It throws my mind and body back into those moments in a way that feels uncertain and scary as if I'm actually reliving my childhood. 

    I didn't anticipate these feelings when I freely and willingly made the decision to move back here, but here we are. Because of this, I don't get out as much as I probably should. I'm not sure how long it will take or if I'll ever get used to being here, but I can't really worry about that anymore. I just have to do the work, continue the healing, and assume that the turning of time brought me here for the right reasons. 

    I've finally reached the point in my religious deconstruction where I can comfortably and wholeheartedly hold on to some of the truly helpful tenants of the indoctrination I received as a child. One of those is  "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)  I may have a heretical view of a good portion of that bible verse, but the first 6 words are the most important to me. It will all work out for my good, eventually. I do believe that. But it still sucks to go through it.  

    If I showed you a few pics of the families of my two biological sons, including 4 gorgeous grandsons who live here, you'd understand right away what motivated my seemingly irrational choice to move back to Duncan. I'm here for them, and I have no regrets. The healing and deconstruction are just a bonus. Yippee ki yay.  

    In other news, and just to update a bit, t-dub and his husband miggs will be flying in from their home in San Francisco at the end of the month for our full family Christmas. All four of the boys, their wives, and all 5 grandsons will be here. I'm looking forward to it more than I can possibly describe. We haven't all been together at the same time in 2 years, and that's way too long. The important thing is that our family remains, and continues to grow and change just as all families do. And I'm not all alone here in Duncan. I have my partner, bigby, here with me. We've been together for almost 12 years, and I'm so very grateful for him. Particularly his willingness live in Duncan, and his patience with me as I continue the hard work of healing and deconstruction. Yippee ki yay.

More later! 

Thanks for reading,

grace

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