You're doing it wrong...

Yesterday I wrote:
Lent is almost upon me.  I have ambitious goals this time around.  I struggle so much with the idea of staying alive.  On a practical level, life has purpose. We create things, we encounter people, we experience daily activities, we love, we hate, we judge, we consume, we use things up and what we don't use, we flush.  The fact that we have been here matters to some people, and sometimes to us.  In what seemed like a casual conversation, someone showed me his wrists. This was to prove a point that many of us get tired of living, tired of trying, tired of giving, tired of being disappointed. Tired of hurting. More and more, I am beginning to realize how hard it is to stay alive...and much harder than that, to stay happy. 
There is so very much I need to write about, but I think now is too soon and later, it will not matter so much, and I will have forgotten much.  My hope is to put these words down in a vague manner, yet with enough clarity to get an idea across.  Bear with me, if you wish...
The theme of my week is perfection. I think it is perfection. I could be wrong. There is a Catholic nightmare inside of me that involves nuns and rulers and erasers...and maybe dogs...where I am being challenged to do something the "right" way, but I am doing it wrong. 
As a little girl, desperate for love, which she believes she will get through approval...the goal was always to do things right, but the nuns...and the mother...always told her directly and indirectly, that she was doing it wrong.  The nuns would chastise her for not folding her paper in half properly.  They needed something to criticize because her answers were always right.  I guess the nuns thought, "you can not tell a child that he/she is doing good work.  He will get lazy and careless.  Always find the mistake, the room for improvement."
My first horrible nightmare, perhaps at age 7, was of my mother forcing me to sit on a swing over a fire. She would not let me get up from the swing and she and all the girls in my Girl Scout troop were laughing at me, while I sat there crying, wanting to get off of the swing. But I was told to stay there...and burn...
I woke in a sweat and wanted to cry out for comfort...but how could I cry out for help from the one who was my tormentor?  And my father would sling obscenities across the house if I woke him up.  It was the beginning of my real and active rebellion.  If I can't please them, I might as well take joy in pissing them off...since that is what they expected of me anyway.  I was pleasing them (doing it right)by living up (or down) to their expectations. 
All this comes back to me much too often...and has manifested itself in some of the work I am doing now.  Here is a place where I am going to say this poorly: I am surrounded by people right now who insist on "doing it right."  Not just me, but it seems like the many people are doing it to the many people...I mean, this problem is not exclusive to me. In fact, I think we are doing it to each other.  They are hovering, watching, judging, suggesting, evaluating, complaining...all while saying, or believing in their hearts that they are only doing "God's will."  And they all have the earnest desire to "make things better."  I have had to take my gifts and cheapen them to accomodate others and I dislike myself for doing it. I am not being authentic and I am angry inside, and it comes out in unpleasant ways.
Ways in which I have decided to "give up for Lent."  Hence the pressure for the next 24 hours. How am I going to do this? Give God this gift, which on some level, has less to do with some distructive behaviors and more to do with letting go of my pride, of my vision of what could be and knowing that it just ain't gonna happen this time.   This is very hard work for me. I have eaten and smoked and...done all sorts of things to calm me down and absolutely nothing makes me feel better.  I want to run away, I want to quit. I want to be buried in the ground...because I can see all the good things that could happen but won't because someone else has a different idea of what 'perfect' looks like. 
They tell me, "You're doing it wrong."  and sadly, in my heart, I 'm thinking exactly the same thing about them.  So rather than argue, explain, work through it or just give up and give them what they want...I want to go away and hide.
I dislike confrontation. I also have enough brains to know that while I think I am right...I might not be right...yet it seems, when people follow my ideas, really great things happen.  And when I give in, what I expect to fall apart...does...So I am frustrated and confused. And there are days, I look back at the scars on my own hands and arms...and remember why I put them there.  Some days it's just too hard to live.
It seems that there might really be a God, you know...because when things got the blackest for me...the right person seemed to show up...and love me in exactly the way I needed to be loved for exactly the right amount of time...until I could get up from the ground all by myself again...and go back to the war of staying alive and loving one another.
That's what it is like going into a hospital room sometimes. I walk in, I have a certain look, or say words in the right order or the right tone...and a person I have never met before tells me their life story, many times they tell me things they did not know that they knew. And getting them out of their body makes them feel alive again...for a moment...the sickness of the mind and the mind games...is relieved. 
I have been stewing for the last seven days on my mistakes, on telling too much or too little. Of being angry at people who I needed but were not there...and of being miffed that I can not seem to go anywhere without someone needing something from me...and feeling exhausted...and angry because I do not get to have my own way.
I have watched others argue and assume hatred and prejudice because someone looked at them wrong or said the wrong words. I have seen people being angry because they felt unappreciated, angry because there is not enough money, or a paper wasn't filed...and I have heard the exasperation of others just wanting to give up trying...or angry with me because I was doing something 'the wrong way.'  Or just because I was a woman...oh my heavens, how that one set me off! 
How weak of spirit I am, to let a man get to me...that one snowballed into an ugly mess.  Why do I stay with a church that does not seem to value women?  All of  my Sunday was consumed with reminders of who I am not, who I will never be...this is one of those things I must leave in the desert.  It doesn't matter who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong.  What matters is that I follow the will of God for my life. Churches and people must follow their call...and I must follow mine.  I do not wish to waste any more energy stewing over other agendas. I have enough work just trying to live out what God requires of me.  I don't have to fit in, I don't have to be liked...if I follow what God asks, I know it will work out...even if I can't see it working out. 
You see, in the midst of this mess...I am called even now into consolation with God.  There is some deep part of me that knows how unimportant all this extra noise is...

Today, February 21, 2012:
I thought what I wrote above was a total mess.   But this day, I see it has to be finished, if only in part, and put out for...I have no idea. The thousands of thoughts that continue to flood my head, you never really know which day will be your last...and I guess this is my art...a gift from God and gladly given back. Mardi Gras going on right now. I don't much care for parties. I used to handle them well because I stayed gently intoxicated...a person can do anything with the right amounts of alcohol...not intoxicated, I am always thinking, trying to solve an imaginary puzzle. I was going to speak of consolations. How can I tell you how beautiful they are?  How can I help you surrender to the ones He has for you?  Can I tell you to be brave and give away all that mess that keeps you chained to this world? How can I help you to understand that you don't have to do it right? There is no recipe for God. There is no incantation, no right number of Hail Marys, said daily or nightly, or in community...that will get you what you most want...and what you most need. There is only the letting go of the need to be right, or perfect, or beautiful...or in charge. God really doesn't care. His Love is not dependent on what you do insofar as what you are doing is not completely focused on Him.  Every good thing is in Him...and when you are in Him, every good thing is inside you.  And oh my goodness...how unexplainably good that is!  Settling into Him, of your own free will...is the most wonderful thing you can do...and it fixes everything...nothing hurts there, nothing is confusing there. But it takes a complete letting go of what you want, or think you need.
It doesn't matter that it's not perfect. It doesn't matter if you do it wrong. It doesn't matter if you've denied Him three times or three hundred times...the moment you say yes, with all your being...there you will be. In the One who breathed life into you. Where life begins and stays forever...
In Him, all is perfect, all is right, all is love...
I'm not kidding.

Love, Cindy