Stirring things up…

Well, it looks like I really stirred some things up with that last entry. Hey, it’s not just ME that thinks this way! How did so many of us end up feeling this way in the first place?? We’re a product of our environment. Don’t you all know that I realize how shallow and hopeless that kind of thinking is or did you not read any other entry but the last one??

I am not happy about growing older physically. It’s not so bad mentally and emotionally, but physically it sucks because you don’t get a lot of the perks you get as a young attractive woman. That’s the simple truth, though it may be an unpleasant one. Nobody’s going to come around offering ME a role in Charlie’s Angels, okay? Unfortunately the world that we’re presented with as we grow and watch tv and go to the movies and listen to our mothers and walk through the junior highschool hallways is a world that is biased toward the young and attractive. “I learned a truth at seventeen…” (Janis Ian).

Anyway, I was tempted to delete some of the mean comments… I’m not here to get beaten up, I’m here to spew some of the poison OUT of my system and, at the same time, wrestle with issues that are bothering me. If you think it’s news to me that this thought progression is superficial and ultimately damaging to me, think again. I know all that… your comments are not going to “wake me up.”

On the other hand… the imp inside me really got a chuckle from stirring things up. It was kind of cool to see that I made some sort of impact on people, be it positive or negative. This is obviously a subject that people feel quite passionate about… not just myself.

To be honest, as I wrote that entry I knew what a petty b***tch I was being. That’s a part of me that rears up it’s ugly head when I feel insecure and inferior. It’s like I have to find ways to put others down in my mind so that I don’t feel so bad about my own short-comings. Doesn’t anybody else in the world see that bad person in themselves too? The person that wrote I needed to wake up or whatever… don’t you have an inner demon with whom you wrestle… a person within that shames you and startles you with how bad they really are? That’s what part of this diary IS for me… if I put down this stuff, it helps me let go of it.

I saw an entry after I wrote mine this morning that talked about this person losing her family to cancer and I thought to myself, “I am an idiot.” But that idiot is part of me, and until she comes to grips with her idiocy, she’ll linger, judging ME in the mirror just as she judges the other “old ladies” out there. I hope somebody SOMEBODY can understand this and accept it, but even if no one can… that’s what an anonymous diary is all about… being able to say the things you would not necessarily want associated with yourself out in the “real” world.

So anyway, I went to church later on (after writing that whole thing), and the Pastor preached on “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Along with the other rather unusual things about my family that I listed earlier, I need to mention that we also attend a non-denominational charismatic mostly African American church. I discovered this church about seven years ago and have been going ever since (except for a rather extended break I took after my son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes). Anyway, I love this church because it brought back the “magic” of God to me. I came to believe that maybe Jesus was real and that he could cleanse me of all the things I found so corrupt inside. (As noted in my last entry, Jesus is still at work, okay?) Anyway, our Pastor is an incredible preacher and teacher and he brought home how we don’t put God first. We put everything else first.

He asked different people in the congregation what they wanted most in life. As good Christians should say, many replied, “A better relationship with God.” I was thinking, “Geeze, I wish that I wanted that most… but I’m such a mess that I have to want to have God make me want to want him.” (If you get that train of thought.) Anyway, someone finally said, “MONEY!!!” We all laughed because everybody knew that was the secret agenda. Although it seems pretty simplistic here, Pastor brought up how we needed to “seek first the Kingdom of God” and then all other things would fall into place. All I could pray was that God would make me good.

After the sermon, Pastor always holds an alter call where you can come and pray and be prayed with and for if the sermon has particularly sounded in your soul. Of course many many of us went up to the alter. But, again, all I could pray over and over again was to beg God to just make me a good person. And, as I have done several times, I re-asked Jesus into my heart. I know He works with me. I know He has long worked with me. But I also know that I’m not the easiest “lamb” he’s ever had to shepherd.

I don’t want to think the stuff I think, but I’m not going to lie about it and pretend I don’t think it. I would rather get it out and beg God to change all my brain cells so that I’m having right thoughts instead.

(Please continue on the next entry….)