Sharla Dawn Gorder

I’m a mess.  A loving, good-intentioned mess.  But a mess nonetheless.

Last week sucked.  Well, actually, it wasn’t so much the week that sucked as my attitude about the week.  It was, as all weeks are, a sequence of seven 24 hour periods with things happening—“good” things, and “bad” things, and neutral things.  Actually, they are all neutral things, I suppose, until I get out my label gun and start judging.

And last week my label maker was stuck on “bad.”  It started out with the untimely death of an important professional relationship.  Then a very dear new friend, whom I adore, kind of disappeared without a trace from my life with no explanation. Then I got the call (actually, a text) that my oldest son had fallen ill on a remote beach outside of Managua Nicaragua and was desperate to get home.  Later in the week, my feelings got hurt because Facebook wouldn’t stop reminding me that I had been left out of an event that was very, very important to me.  Then, I heard that the Big Bang Theory was being cancelled.

See, my week sucked.  I was a moping mess all week. I became distressed and depressed.  I obsessed over the minute details of every correspondence I had had with my, now estranged, work colleague.  I imagined that the friend who had cut off communication with me had been abducted, and couldn’t return my texts (the only logical explanation).  I fretted that Myles had contracted the deadly Norvirus.  Or maybe Zika—which was actually less alarming, because even in my heightened state of irrational worry, I was pretty sure that my son was not pregnant.  The joyous people on Facebook celebrating an important milestone while I watched from my bed, I imagined, were happy I wasn’t there.  (That song from kindergarten kept blaring in my poor pitiful head—“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms…”) And how in the world was I expected to cope with weeks like this one without Leonard and Sheldon and Penny and Amy and the rest of the gang to lighten things up?

See, it was bad.  So bad.

Then, Facebook gave me this.  Myles (now safe back at school) posted it.

“Kindly let me help you or you will surely drown said the monkey putting the fish safely in the tree.”  Alan Watts

And I laughed for the first time all week.  I am that monkey!  I am sooo that earnest but clueless monkey.  In each of these “horrible” situations, I did not have enough information to justify the strong emotional responses I was indulging.  And though I really think I know what is best for you, little fish, sometimes I am dead wrong.

Then Facebook gave me this, from a glamorous movie star:

“When people walk away from you, let them go.  Your destiny is never tied to anyone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people.  It just means that their part in your story is over.” Julia Roberts.

You mean I don’t always get to decide how relationships progress or end?  No, and I don’t necessarily get to choose the punctuation either—Is this a period or an exclamation point?  Or maybe it’s just a comma.  That would be nice, a comma would be best, but it’s not always up to me.  But whichever way, I do get to decide to love anyway, and to value these people for the busy, often clueless monkeys that they are too.  I get to make the choice to think and speak of them with generosity and kindness.  When I look at it like that, it’s so much easier to follow another bit of Facebook advice:

“Since brokenness is the way of folks the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself.”  Glennon Doyle Melton

But perhaps the best bit of advice I’ve ever received came not from Facebook, philosophers, movie stars or famous writers, but from my sister-in-law, Val, years ago.  It was parenting advice, but it translates really well to most relationships.  During a time when I was struggling with some issues when the boys were teenagers, she asked me, “What do you know to be true about Myles, about Taylor?”  And when I thought about it, I was surprised to realize that I actually knew quite a lot about their characters, their values, their motivations.  I had lived with them their entire lives.  I knew who they were.  It helped me to calm down about their choices, to really focus on who I knew them to be.  They would make mistakes.  I’d have to let them.  But I knew who they were at the core, and I needed to chill out a little and give them the respect of trusting that they would find a way to line up their behaviors with their values in the end.  And they have.

And though I couldn’t apply this bit of advice to my new relationships—I don’t know enough of the back story to discern their true values—I can and should be very eager to give my husband, my kids and my tried and true friends the benefit of the doubt every single time.  I know Myles’ character.  He is competent, resourceful, and he knows how and when to ask for assistance.  He was never in any real danger.  And my friend who didn’t include me at her event, this time, is kind and generous and truly loves me.  I know this about her.  I can stop eating worms.

And it was just a rumor, y’all.  The Big Bang Theory has not been cancelled.