An Unpleasant Realization

And, finally, the last thing I wanted to get recorded here was an unpleasant realization I had yesterday (or maybe it was Friday) while thinking about some things. I came to the realization that money is ingrained as the most important thing to me. I would have never expected it of myself. I would have even thought myself one of the least likely persons to have felt that way (although I know I am somewhat dysfunctional about money), but I had a slap in the face epiphany of the unpleasant sort during a chain of thoughts on Friday (I just realized it WAS Friday).

I was thinking about the movie Sybil (a movie you should see if you haven’t.. a very powerful performance by Sally Fields in the early days). Anyway, there’s a scene in there (if I remember correctly) where she is flipping out about something with her therapist and she breaks a glass window. She calms down and is embarrassed and contrite about the window. She apologizes and Joanne Woodward (who plays the therapist) is binding up her hand which is bleeding. Joanne Woodward says something like, “Don’t worry about the window, it’s only glass. But YOU’RE hurt and you’re a little girl!” (Sybil had multiple personalities one of which was a little girl.)

I remembered the first time I saw the movie, thinking that was such a cool thing of Joanne Woodward to say but that thought was immediately followed by, “Yes, but little girls heal but glass will be broken forever.” That seemed to me to be a logical response. If I had been Sybil and Joanne Woodward had been MY therapist, that is what I would have answered.

This scene and this response has come back to me a number of times throughout my life and Friday was just one of those times. Only on Friday, for some reason, the conversation somehow took a different turn. First the usual happened…

“But little girls are more IMPORTANT than glass.”

“I’m not saying they aren’t. I’m just saying that they’ll heal and be repaired, but glass won’t.”

That’s usually where it ends and I always have the feeling that it’s a good thing I’m in therapy because there’s some important point I’m missing. On Friday the internal conversation continued…

“But the little girl will probably have a scar.”

“That may be true, but she won’t cost anything to heal. The glass will have to be replaced and that may be expensive.”

“The little girl’s injury will have a cost, it just won’t be money. There are things more costly than money.”

And all of the sudden I realized that on my internal scale of importance, I had somehow, in my solid foundational basis of all measurements, put money as the most valuable of all weights. Was the cost of the glass replacement more important than the cost of the “little girl’s” mind, heart, spirit?

Like a punch in the stomach, my whole world started spinning! I thought it was practical and right to put the money thing first. I had been criticized all my life by my parents for NOT doing that. I got hammered for giving things away to friends. I know my family thought I was a little irresponsible for tithing. If I wasn’t being practical in all things I felt guilty; if I had the practical answer or did the practical thing, I felt good! One would think, then, that I would have a lot of money saved up. I don’t – I just have a lot of guilt and remorse for NOT doing the practical thing.

Now my paradigm is cracked. (Not that I’m going to go out and throw money to the wind, but I’m definitely going to have to re-evaluate some of my first responses to things in the future.

Hmmm… which also reminds me of a little event that happened last night while I was out with my husband that I don’t want to forget. This shows how good it can be when two people work together to get themselves to do the RIGHT thing. We ended up eating our dinner at the bar in HOB because it would have taken too long to wait for a table. We had paid for our entrees before they came and when they arrived I ordered and irish coffee and my husband ordered a diet pop which we both got but didn’t get charged for right away. When we were finished eating our bartender was nowhere in sight. We got up and I knew we hadn’t paid for the drinks. Everything is so overpriced there and the entrées we got were these chicken things called Elwood’s which were so spicy that I couldn’t even eat mine. I gave it to my husband but had we been in a regular restaurant I would have sent it back and gotten something else. I thought to myself, “We should just leave, that would make things even,” but I said out loud, “We didn’t pay for our irish coffee or diet pop yet.”

My husband paused and looked around and said, “Well, I don’t see our bartender anywhere.”

And I said, “And I would have sent back my dinner under any other circumstances so this just makes it even,” but we both sort of stood there. Then I said, “But is it the right thing to do… I just don’t know.” We both hesitated. Then I did notice our bartender down at the end. “There’s our bartender. What do you think?”

My husband waved him down and paid and said that we’re doing the right thing. Now it was just $7 and when things like this happen I always think to myself, “Are you going to betray Jesus for $7.00 because you know how we always say, ‘Judas betrayed Jesus for just 30 pieces of silver,’ but we betray Him every day for much less really.” But, in this case, I just know that given the circumstances each one of us would have had a problem doing the right thing had not the other one been there to be strong in the one second that the other was weak. I thought that was pretty wonderful and was glad that God put us together in this positive way because that’s what it’s all about when you come down to it… when two, together, become more than they could be as just one.