Those Oh-So-Subtle Manipulations

The past couple of years I have noticed several words, which I like to refer to as "churchy" words, that are full of truth and goodness and solid wisdom---but people often apply with the wrong motivations....

to manipulate.

Only Broken

A couple of months ago I was typing a draft about how I fear happiness just as much as sadness. Sadness, though unwelcome, feels familiar and expected. Happiness seems to be the deceitful houseguest, the one who is welcomed with open arms, delighted by its arrival, yet steals and maims while he is there, leaving the members of the home with the realization that happiness simply picked them up to drop them to a deeper low than ever before.

We all feel life
is a disappointment sometimes.
Life is a disappointment right now.

The kind of disappointment where even happy memories are marred by pain. The kind of disappointment where thoughts of the future bring the loss of not only what might have been, but what almost was. Overwhelming feelings of deep disappointment---promises taken back, a wedding dress that will remain in the back of the closet, flowers and cards and notes that are smashed into the bottom of the trash, confused feelings of betrayal, a feeling of wandering in a desert with no oasis. A jumbled fear that, for some reason, God has doomed me to not be permitted certain blessings.

Life breaks us.
And, right now, I feel broken.

Abiding In Pain

I walked through the door with a bit of trepidation, but still was not fully prepared.

My last living grandparent is in the Alzheimer's wing of a nursing home, where my family and I now visit her, instead of in her old white house in my hometown. My dad had suggested I swing by her house to see if there was anything meaningful to me that I would like to keep, since her house would soon be sold.

I walked through the screened-in porch where my cousins and I used to sit on the front porch swing, singing as loudly as we could. I turned the front doorknob, stepped inside. Then stopped. I'd already known some furniture had been moved out. I was prepared for the usual cardboard boxes and disarray that clutter a building about to be vacated. I wasn't surprised by the musty smell of a house no longer lived in. But I was not expecting what I saw to the right of me---