THE WISDOM I WISH WAS MINE
I received an email today from a friend I’ve been talking to since 2002. She and I will most likely never meet, but we share who we are and where we’ve been. I’ve taught her how to ask herself the tough questions…you know…those questions that petrify you because you’re afraid to hear your inner voice. I use Runes to get to that place where I am “me.” I’m closest to being able to hear God whisper to me…the place where lies don’t exist. No, I know you may be asking, I don’t need a drug to “get there.” I’ve trained my WI friend to do the same. She still is unsure of how to interpret a Runes cast. If I do it…she and her soul can concentrate on her whispers and God’s.
Anyway…..a few years ago, as she was struggling with her marriage, I told her 2 things – “Anna, Never make someone a priority if he only makes you an option.” I heard silence on the phone when I said that. Those are not my words…I didn’t come up with them. They were uttered by a preacher in NC…not even to me. She said, quietly, “My God, I get it.”
Never the one to let things alone (the guy I can be)….I quoted her a chapter title from a book I was reading at the time (“Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart”). “Anna, any relationship is under the control of the person who cares the least.” I heard her catch her breath. Maybe it was her “Ah-hah Moment.” All she said was, “Dear, God.”
So I received an email from her today…you know the ones…the forwarded funny ones, except at the bottom she quoted me “Never make someone a priority if he only makes you an option.” She used my name. It is the wisdom I wish was mine, and I feel like a pretender because it was passed along to me by a NC preacher…and maybe given to him by some other means.
I talked to my youngest daughter last night. She’s dating a guy she broke up with months ago. You know the guy…self-centered, self-absorbed…Oh wait…..that’s like…99% of guys when we were in our 20’s. I reminded her of those 2 truisms. “Yes, Dad, I haven’t forgotten. He’s on “probation” until he can prove to me he’s changed.” I then gently reminded her (as I’ve done more times than I count)…”Don’t “date” Dad’s worst qualities trying to correct them. My faults and shortcomings are mine. You can’t make them better, or go away.” She knows exactly what I mean. It’s the attention she needed when she was eleven when I wasn’t there, the quick and thoughtless response that bruised her a year later, my faults that made her wonder about me as she hugged her dolls, the shortcomings that made her question if it was “all her fault.”
I wish I had my own wisdom to pass along. But there are far more enlightened than I. All I can do is pass the wisdom on.
