Benz Blog

The Fam and I went out to dinner with some friends from our old church.  They felt the need to tell Jenn and me how awful the new music director is. 

It was my hope that I had “moved on” since leaving Floris.  But their comments lanced a hidden boil in my soul.  It just churned up the anger, hurt and feelings of betrayal.  I am really at a loss as to how to get past this.  While I can blather on about my forgiveness, my emotions still have a strangle hold on me.  Were these friends not so close (like family), I would cut off contact.  There are many people who were central in my life that have already been relegated to my life’s archive.

What is clear is that I am firmly entrenched in self denial.  I have forgiven no one.  If I had, the bitterness would not bubble up so readily.  It is kind of scary to me that I can freely go about my life so long as I do not encounter a trigger.  But that boil is still there.  In the deep recesses of my consciousness there is a bottomless reservoir of anger.

How to rid myself of this malady, that is the question.  Ignoring it has obviously not worked.  I am at a loss as to how I rid my self of this this…thing.  Maybe the reality is I will carry this for years until it is irrelevant.  Somehow I doubt that forgiveness is a pretty ribbon on denial.

…something to meditate on.

I am sitting in the computer room overlooking the park, watching the kids come and go.  Today was a long day.  Ethan had an upper GI test (x-ray with dye in his stomach).  The test was at 8:30.  I expected to get out by 10:30, take Ethan to lunch, and then have some me time (since I was taking a vacation day from work).

Well the test took longer than I expected.  We got out at 12:30, had lunch, went to Target (so I could pay off my bribe) and went home.  By the time we got home, I was mentally exhausted.  I help Ethan assemble his new Lego sets and fell asleep for an hour on the couch.

I spent the rest of the day sitting on the porch watching Ethan play with his friends in the park.  Not a bad day.  But not the day I wanted.  I know it is selfish, but I want to just do my own thing for a day, just a day.  I feel like I am letting myself go to seed and I need time to just work out “things.”  My priorities are a mess at the moment.  I need to recharge.

Today was Mothers, confirmation, Pentecost Sunday.  Too many themes for my tiny brain.  They showed a 13 minute movie from Willow Creek about church history.  I got a little teary.  Then they started the confirmation service, and that was it.  We have a high pollen count today, but that was not the source of my teary eyes.  It is just good to know that when I am gone the church will still keep going, same problems, same joys but different people.

I have always been a square peg in the round hole of faith.  If I lived 1000 years ago I would be burned at the stake.  That is OK, I like barbeque.

Yesterday I got an email from a customer who works at a Christian University in Lakeland Florida (yes, that one).  She was asking for customer service.  In her signature block was this quote:

If you are going through a hard time today, if things look impossible, don’t give up now. Change your perspective and believe that God is working behind the scenes. Put a smile on your face and stand in confidence knowing that you are a child of the Most High God. Stand strong in the Lord today and trust that what the enemy meant for your harm, God will turn around and use to your advantage. He’ll take you places you never dreamed and cause you to rise higher and higher in every area of your life!  (Joel Osteen)

Now I think she meant well and thought she was using this as an evangelism tool.  But I would just love to see how the Lawrd would use it to his advantage if I put a brick through Joel’s ever loving skull (actually, that might work).  Did I offend you?  I hope so.  Because I find this kind of crap offensive.

When I see stuff like this I just wonder if the person has really been faced with real tragedy.  Yes God is always with us.  Yes, he works things to HIS good.  But His good and my good and my general wellbeing may be two entirely different things.

When I see something like this, I infer the following subtext:

Oh, are you going through a tuff time?  Well suck it up.  Plaster on a smile and pretend that you are happy that God is allowing this to happen to you.  Your sorrow is a real buzz kill.  If you just pretend to be happy enough, eventually God will allow you to prosper materially and allow you to donate more to my ever-loving ministry.

Real people face real tragedy all the time.  And there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that you are in pain.  I just wonder what the PollyAnnic bunch makes of Psalms Ecclesiastes not to mention most of the prophets.

“God never gives us more than we can handle.”  Hogwash!  Not only does God give us more than we can handle, I think He does it routinely.  Pain and suffering are just part of life.  I seriously doubt whether He gives a rat patoot whether or not I am successful.  I do believe he wants me to be a man of character and compassion, a man who depends on Him utterly.  Whether I achieve some pulp writer’s lofty ideals, are likely of no concern to Him.

Here is to being overwhelmed and utterly dependant!

So…Yesterday…is over for now. 

Ethan was scheduled for an MRI at 10:30.  Since kids cannot sit still long enough for the test, they have to be given general anesthesia.  So they wanted us to show up at 9:00 to do all the paperwork and pre-op stuff.  We left the house a little after 7.  It normally takes about an hour to get there if traffic is good.  It was not.  Then we got lost….yada yada 9:45.  They were done with the pre-op by 10:30, but we had lost our place in the queue.  He finally got in at 12:15.  The MRI took two hours and then it took another hour to get him awake enough to get a hip x-ray.  Long story short, we missed our clinic appointment.  We have to go back June 3^rd, Jenn’s birthday.  L

Overall the day was stressful, but I managed to keep my cool. 

I did have the following unfortunate event occur.  After the MRI, we went to the waiting room for x-ray.  When we entered the room, there was a lady going off at the receptionists.  She then paced the waiting room yelling comments the whole time.  Her son was in a wheel chair, her daughter was running around.  She ranted for about 10 minutes until she was finally called back.

Though it would have been completely inappropriate, I wanted to go give her a hug.  You see, I have been her.  There is only so much stress people can endure until they snap.  It is an ugly place that no one should have to explore.  When Ethan was 1 and a half, I had reached my breaking point.  While I was civil at home, I was a tyrant at work.  I would flip out at the smallest thing and berate anyone I deemed stupid.  I should have been fired.  And at least 3 directors had asked for my head.  But my boss’s boss steadfastly refused. 

I later got help.  And I am dealing with my anger for productively.  But when I saw that woman, my heart ached.  There is just something fundamentally wrong with a world where some people are sent through the meat grinder and others just sail through.  Though religion can give you some insight, it is not always helpful to those in crisis.  It is like explaining to a person who is drowning that they are dying because of the water in their lungs.  Gee thanks for the explanation.

Were I a better person, I would know how to reach out to others in crisis.  You would think having gone through something like that, I would have some answers.  But really, I am not sure what anyone could have done for me when I was in that situation.  I am extremely understanding, when my staff have issues at home.  But reaching out to a total stranger, that is a skill set I do not yet possess.

Tomorrow we are going to Ethan’s Spina Bifida clinic.  When Ethan was a baby, we had 5-6 specialists that he saw on a regular basis.  Each doctor wanted their own set of tests.  It was Jenn’s full time job just lugging him around from appointment to appointment.  Then there was the dread each time they brought us results.  Occasionally they would say that things were normal, but most of the time they had bad news.  We were going crazy until his urologist suggested we attend the Spina Bifida Clinic she participated in. 

Ethan does not have Spina Bifida, but VACTERL is similar in many respects.  She pulled some strings and we were in.  Now instead of running around town seeing multiple specialists, we go in one exam room and the doctors rotate in.  They do tests in the morning and exams in the afternoon.

Tomorrow Ethan is having an MRI (under anesthesia) and having his hips X-rayed.  Hopefully there will be no news. 

I am a bit stressed though because I get several days dread all in one day.  This too shall pass.

Later.

I am sitting out on my porch as I make this entry.  The clouds have rolled in and a cool breeze is keeping the temperature at a comfortable 67 degrees.We spent the day out and about running errands, watching Ethan’s game and running errands again.  It is nice to just sit on the porch and watch people play at the park across the street.

A blond lady with two Dalmatians is walking her dogs.  A pregnant woman, her husband and two children, a daughter and a son, are moving by.  The daughter has pigtails and is riding a scooter.  She has a red and white flower print sun dress. 

The Dalmatian woman has a daughter playing in the gazebo.  One of the dogs is unwilling to surrender a stick of great interest.

The park has a sidewalk that covers its circumference.  The scooter family makes another round.

One more round and the family heads for home.

Ethan is chasing his friends around the block with light sabers. 

Another family crosses the street for home.  The mother wears a long flowing sari that catches the breeze.

One of my all time pet peeves is guys who do not wash their hands after going to the toilet.  It ticks me off that after I have washed my hands, I have to touch a door handle that some cretin has left his crap remnants on.  WASH YOUR FRIGGIN’ HANDS!

On the other hand…a gold star to anyone who advances the towel machine after drying their own hands.  It gives me hope for humanity.

So just to be clear…no wash = end of civilization…wash = nirvana

I work in a fairly large office complex with retail shops on the first floor.  People are milling about all day.  For every 3 people you see, one or two of them will be on the phone. 

I don’t get it.

No really, I don’t get it.

With the possible exception of talking to my family in Colorado, here is my typical phone conversation.  These are not excerpts, it is the whole conversation.

“Hey.  I am on my way home.  Do you need me to pick anything up?  K, love ya.”

“Hey are we still meeting at the Wing Factory tonight?  Cool, see ya then.”

“Hey, I am stuck in a meeting.  I am going to be 45 minutes late.”

That pretty well sums up my phone conversations.  Now I do text snarky comments to coworkers, but that doesn’t really count as a conversation.

My question is this:  who are people talking to on the phone?  What on Earth are they talking about? 

I am a fairly conversant guy, but conversation is somewhat lacking when you cannot see the other person’s expressions.  I would rather have coffee with someone that mindlessly babble on the phone.  Many of these people are coworkers on a smoke break.  I know what they do and it does not require calling.  Most of them are cube rats.

Maybe I am just a antisocial sociopath.  Is there a support group for the cellular phone challenged?

Every once in a while I have an extremely vivid dream.  Last night was one of those nights. 

I was in the duplex my grandfather owned in the 70’s.  It was sold shortly after my grandmother died.  He lived another 20 years.

But in this dream, he was already dead.  The house however, was furnished just like it was in the 70’s.  He was telling me that he is dead now and I need to give away everything in the house.  He wanted me to have all of his tools (he was a carpenter).  He helped me load up my car.  He gave me some other stuff, but I lost that in the post-dream fog.  But the most memorable part of the dream was when he started giving me all of his guns.  In real life he never owned guns.  He and I shared that conviction.  But in the dream, it was a veritable arsenal.  He gave me two 9mm, a sawed off shotgun and a hunting riffle. 

Then people started coming into the house and going through his things.  I was kind of upset, but he told me it was only natural.  When everything was gone, he told me he had to go.  I told him that I missed him terribly and asked him not to go.  We argued about it for a while and then I woke up.

I tend to believe that dreams are random nerve cells firing off during sleep.  But when I woke up, it was like I had really spent the day with him.  He has been dead for over 10 years now, so seeing him again was kind of cool.