Turning Points

Ted:  "It's funny looking back on it now -- I was so sure Stella was the one, and when she left me, I was sooo devastated.  But you guys got me through it.  Now the painful part's over, and I've come out the other side a little bit stronger!  You know, I hardly even think about her anymore... that's what time does, I guess."

Lily:  "Ted..... the wedding was yesterday."

Ted Mosby, Architect :)

It's funny, but I think about that scene a lot.  It's so me... writing about all I've "learned" & hoping if I know the right things to say, it will allow me to totally fast forward through the difficult parts of really learning the lesson.  (Which always come anyway, then I just look stupid for having been too positive and preachy in the beginning.)

I still roll my eyes when I read some of the stuff I wrote in '07, but I know I was absolutely sincere at the time.  I can think of several smaller things where I've done that - (including weight loss revelations and my breakdown at the beginning of this year, taking a blog break for all of 9 days, then genuinely thinking the worst was over and I'd moved on and was stronger for it. Not so much.)  I'm so aware in the big moments that my reaction matters -- it's this "fork-in-the-road" idea that my whole future will be affected by how I handle it, and I sincerely want to be a person who takes the right path and learns from the hard things.  And let's be honest, I want to avoid the pain associated with real growth and change.  So I feel pressure to 'claim' what I believe is God's path before my heart is really there.  And it usually makes me look and feel silly.  And worse, I think it cheapens and discredits what I have to say when the testimony is real later on - when I have fully come through something and truly learned from it.  And I hate that.

So instead of forcing an emotional, positive, inspiring, Scripture-filled epiphany post... I'm going to pause and be honest with myself that I'm not there yet, probably not even close.  And God does not pressure or expect me to be!

And what I'm feeling will probably get worse before it gets better.  But it will get better someday.  So that's enough for now.

“I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door... and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”  

"Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away and disappear. I know that's wrong because it's my responsibility, and I know that things get worse before they get better because that's what my psychiatrist says, but this is a worse that feels too big... It’s much easier not to know things sometimes... because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn’t stop for anybody." 

“I think that if I ever have kids and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that, because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have, good or bad.  ...It's okay to feel things.  And be who you are about them."   

~Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower