The Tiny Victories are Better Than No Victories At All

I've been feeling very guilty lately for being a bad "blogger".
I have to tell you all honestly that absolutely nothing has happened in my life this week (aside from my complete inability to spell the word absolutely. Someone pour another glass of wine :)  ).
I did start a new job and I have to say that so far it is marvelous. There is a ton to learn, as with any new job. But I am up for the challenge.
So far my favorite of the new work challenges is developing x-rays. Just being in the darkroom takes me right back to middle school yearbook. I used to love developing the photographs. Cropping them, leaving them for the right amount of time in the right solutions. It made me feel so powerful to be able to exercise patience and knowledge and get the pictures to come out exactly how we wanted them...darker or lighter. I still remember that little darkroom in the Seahawk (or maybe Osprey) hallway of Sprinbrook Middle School.
It's sort of nice to enter a mini time machine every time I go down to develop the x-rays. Like I'm sent back to a time when there really were no worries in my life at all. Because honestly I just didn't care if that girl didn't like me. And the one who thought I was a bitch (I know that because she told me to my face) I just didn't care about her at all.
Well the new challenge, in my new darkroom is after the x rays are developed. These days there's a machine to control their time in the proper solutions. But after they come out I have to put them into a sleeve in the proper order to actually resemble the persons mouth. It's like a giant jigsaw puzzle, except there's not picture on the box. The first time someone left me alone to place all of the x-rays, 16 mind you. I thought, there is no way on earth I can get these in the right place. I thought for a moment I might cry.
Then strategic Jennye swooped in, almost like there was a phone booth around or something, and my brain went wait...this is a challenge (cause 'strategic Jennye' speaks only in italics), "I can beat these x-rays and have fun doing it." Now it's my favorite part of the job.
After they're all in the proper little slots (getting them into the silly little slots is no small feat in itself mind you) I bring them upstairs, hold my breath while I put them in the light box, and just hope no one says; "great, but can you swap these two?".
And even if they do I still feel a sense of victory. A week ago I had no idea what dentists were even looking for on x rays...and now I swear to you I looked at a set of x rays today and before I could stop myself I said (out loud and alone in semi dark room) "this guy has great teeth".

So what has your victory been this week? 

I Got Nothin'

New job.
Exhausted.

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We'll talk soon I promise, have you ever known me to stay quiet for long?

Outfit of the Day

A little Easter Joy for everyone:

We got to attend "breakfast with the bunny" thanks to Aunt Shari. Esme's favorite part were the pony rides!

Because honestly, what outfit is complete without a pony?

To Everything There is a Season

(I apologize in advance that this is a long post...if you bear with me I have to say the end result seems so basic but this has to be one of the biggest moments of release and acceptance I've had so far! How's that for a teaser :)  )

I'm finding my current situation especially hard to deal with on Easter for several reasons:
Easter makes me feel I should be ready to forgive (I am just not) I think really that's ok, it's just more difficult in the context of Easter.
Also years ago when we were dating, Easter services were always ones we went out of our way attend together and when we had broken up it was my husbands efforts over an Easter weekend that started to bring us back together.
As this morning's service drew nearer and nearer I started to realize I was holding out secret hope that if he was ever going to come to his senses this would be it.
All of these Easter activities alone with my daughter were one more painful face to face with the truth.
Realistically these are the things that will strengthen my resolve, the things that reassure me I need to separate our lives. The things that convince me "the big D" as Becky called it, is the right direction.

Trust me, I hate that I simultaneously can't stand the thought of my husband but also am longing to talk these things through with him. I hate that I know with every fiber of my being that moving on is the best thing I could ever do, yet still hold out secret hope that there will at least be some sort of conversation before I move on. Love really is just not something you turn off and on like a faucet. I think anyone who says they had no choice but to fall into love with someone new and thus out of love with someone old is wrong. There is choice (like the turning on of a faucet) but the response is nowhere near that immediate. It feels to me like nothing short of sheer force of will (and lots of it) can enable one to move on at any pace other than a turtle's from a truly loving relationship.
So the next painful part, is that that leaves me with two options. Either my husband stopped loving me long ago and fooled me into believing it much longer than I should have, because there was convenience or some other benefit in it for him. Or he is capable of immense cruelty in order to do this to someone he does still love. Either way I have to say there is great cruelty involved. And I guess that is just one more thing I need to use to steel my resolve. Anyone capable of this kind of cruelty is not simultaneously worthy of my unconditional love.

See now I'm back in this vicious circle with thoughts of Easter and how we are called to exactly that. Called to love demanding nothing in return, called to love those who deserve it the least. I'm telling you this is a really big hang up for me.
I feel immensely guilty walking away from that kind of call to love. Just typing this makes me want to march over to my house and say "we committed to this, committed to love, neither of us gets to walk away, there are no free passes in marriage. You fucked up big time (and literally) but I don't care! My job is to love you (as a christian and as your wife) and your job is to love me. Yes it is a job (and I know you're not a fan of those types of inconveniences). But it's a job we committed to and here we are. So let's just suck it up and find a way to do our job!"
All of this seriously reminds me of a time I had an employee call up and fire me as his boss (his not so subtle way of quitting). Not at all to say that either of us is an employee in this relationship but there are just ways these things are done and ways they are not. I just don't like that he gets to walk away. That's not the way it's done!

Ah, but there's the rub it doesn't matter. He has turned off the faucet, fired me, completely walked away. And no matter how I feel I cannot make someone love me. That I guess is where I have to end it. The ultimate answer to why it is okay to walk away.

If he can choose to be done with me than I can also choose to still love him, I just have to do it differently. A variation on turning the other cheek. On this cheek I loved him as a wife and a partner, deeply and truly. He slapped that cheek (metaphorically) right hard a few times.
So now, in order to live with myself I guess the only answer is to turn the other cheek. For me, I have to continue loving him, that is the imperative. But I can no longer love him the way I used to, not if I also love myself. Now I can love him the same way I am called to love that person that makes me crazy in church or on the bus.
On this cheek husband -- on this cheek stranger who no longer bears any resemblance to the man she once loved.
This is the way I can do it. To get here completely will require forgiveness...but I really think this is a start.
And I have to say just reading this over I have a completely different sense already. I think this change of cheeks could be the hardest but most worth it thing I've done up til now. I actually feel an Easter like sense of hope at this idea.
So...share, has there been a time in your life when it seemed impossible but you still turned the other cheek? How did you do it?

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Outfit of the Day

Yesterdays outfit is a blast from the past. Please forgive my lack of timliness. Yesterday's two hour nap was awesome!

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I still say medicine requires way too much science!

I've had two very vivid dreams in the last 24 hours. I don't actually remember a lot of dreams so it sucks that I have to remember these.

The first one was last night. Just before I fell asleep I was beating myself up over the thing I see as my one really major misstep.
Last summer when my husband told me that he was choosing "his best friend" over his brother to help him drive all of our belongings out in the moving truck I was not clear enough about how I felt. I expressed hesitations to both of them but all of those hesitations together didn't even add up to one solid beating for the bush.

What I should have said immediately and without hesitation was. "If you're driving out with her then don't bother driving out at all."

But I didn't, moment lost. I guess it's good to have at least one solid thing to regret. (over, and over, and over)

Anyway the dream I had right after beating myself up over not following my intuition, was about an issue over which I've had many doctors visits in my life.

I have endomitriosis. But doctors could never figure out why, when I described the pain I was having, I would tell them it was on both sides of my body. I was told over and over again that the pain I was describing was not possible and above and beyond that could not be endometriosis, could not be anything really. As endometriosis is clearly reproductive cycle related and every one knows every woman only produces one egg per month, on one side of her body it was not possible for me to be consistently experiencing this pain on both sides.

I was written off, doctor after doctor, as having imaginary pain. Even when this pain was so extreme it would wake me in the middle of the night and had once left me balled up fetal style in a supermarket aisle. It took a supposed appendicitis which turned out to be an actual ruptured cyst, before a doctor discovered that I release two eggs per month.

Two eggs = two sets of shed cells = the amazing amounts of scar tissue wrapped around organs that "could not possibly be causing me any pain" and most importantly = the reason "the pinchys" were on both sides of my body month after agonizing month.

The dream last night was about a doctor actually putting all of this together and telling me I wasn't crazy for experiencing this pain on both sides of my body.

When I woke up from this dream what I found most interesting was the realization that I'm not alone. Even doctors often think there is one set formula you can expect in diagnosing even the most common illness. All of us focus on the abnormalities to this formula. The ways it cannot possibly be what we can otherwise so clearly see that it is.

I too searched for those abnormalities, ignored that all the walls were in a different place in my house and instead said "look, there are still walls!" ignored that the signs could only be leading to one thing, stuck my head firmly in the sand and went on frantically trying to build the most perfect sand castle ever.

But the pinchy's were there, on both sides and then some, there was no denying that these symptoms could not possibly point to any other illness and sometimes we all (doctors included) just have to go out on a limb, scream out a diagnosis (if that's what it takes) and begin to deal with the problem.

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Outfit of the Day

Esme (not so) politely refused to take part in today's picture so...the outfit for today is for my finger!
Got this new ring from Target Boutique...feels better to have not so naked fingers again.