The hardest people to love.

Back in January when people were thinking about making resolutions for the New Year, I saw a theme recurring in various places.  It was the theme of purging friends.

Currently, a mindset is evolving that says, "I can only afford to have people in my life who build me up and make me feel good about myself.  This is what I deserve from my friends.  Thus, anyone who drains me and brings me down shall be henceforth purged from my life."

This makes me profoundly sad.  Maybe it's because I feel as though I am a person who brings people down, and I am the one on the chopping block of life.  I've had a rough year, and I've probably been a needy, draining person to be close to.  In life, there are seasons when we can give generously, and there are seasons when we need others to help us shoulder our load.  I hope that I do offer something of value to the people I love, but I also hope (desperately) that the people I love will not kick me out of their lives when I don't have much to give and I long for a shoulder to cry on.

The truth is, the people who need love the most are often the hardest to love.

The people who need love the most are the hardest to love.

The mindset of only ever surrounding yourself with people who "bring you up," is one of the most selfish and futile attitudes I have ever encountered.

It is selfish because it exemplifies the trend of thinking, "Me.  Me.  Me." It is astounding that people do not even try to hide their selfishness anymore.  There isn't even any pretense about being concerned with the way others feel.  The media encourages us to put ourselves first, to focus on gratifying our personal desires, to measure our relationships in terms of what we can get out of them, and not in terms of how we can give to build up others.

Giving is always more gratifying than receiving.  The old adage says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," and this is absolutely true.  If you are suffering from depression, if you are down in the dumps, one of the best things you can do is to go out and perform kindnesses for those less fortunate than yourself.

When you reach out to someone who has profound needs and can never pay you back, you have tremendous opportunities.  Entering the mess of someone else's situation will help you put your own situation into perspective.  You often find gratitude welling up in your heart as a result:  you recognize your own blessings and you are thankful to have them.  You may even feel thankful to be able to share them, thankful to see evidence of the good you can do when you break out of selfish mode.

When you shower love on a hurting person, you have the blessing of seeing the power of love at work.

When you use kind and encouraging words to build up someone with serious problems, you have given a priceless gift.  Our words have more value and power than we can imagine.  Proverbs 25:11 (NIV) says, "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver."

Proverbs 15:1 (NIV) says, "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."  We can affect the course of another human's whole day by the way we respond to them in a moment.  Can you say something calming (without being demeaning)?  Can you diffuse a situation with humor?

However, it requires getting out of our own heads and into the heads of others.  We have to make heroic efforts to step back from the sensations of our own thoughts and feelings, and try to imagine how the other person feels.  "Put yourself in his shoes," they used to tell us, and it was a good way to look at it, but it is very hard to do if your automatic default is to ask yourself, "How do I feel about this?  What do I get out of this? Does this make me happy?"  Instead, as the Bible tells us, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 2:3-5, NIV)

Selfishness is ugly, but it is also unproductive.  Trying to build yourself up by only choosing friends who make you happy is fated to fail.  If you depend on others to make you happy, you will never be happy.

Seeking happiness is a self-defeating goal.  I know it is supposed to be one of our inalienable rights ("...the pursuit of happiness"), but in making it a goal, we make it utterly illusive.  Happiness is called happiness because it just happens, unpredictably.  Get it?  Happy.  Happen.  Same word root.  Happiness is not something you can plan, put on the agenda, check off a list or mold into being.  Happiness happens most often when you least expect it, when you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, when you relax and love, let go, breathe, give, see.

So if you decide to make yourself happy by purging all your needy friends from your life, you might end up with less friends, but you won't likely end up much happier.

In fact, if you cast off all your needy friends, you may be left with a group of very un-needy friends.  The thing about un-needy people is that they are often fairly unscathed.  And unscathed people are also often unsympathetic.  So while they might make for a hilarious get-together when everything in your life is clicking along smoothly, they might not be there for you when you find that you, yourself, are needy.

If you choose your friends for what you can get out of them and what they can do for you, then don't be surprised if they treat you exactly the same way.  Then, the day you have nothing more to offer will be the last day of your friendships.  Your friends won't like you anymore, because you are bringing them down, draining them, needing help and support and comfort. You will be the cast off.

In my own life, I've found that the very best people, the kindest and most sympathetic and the most worth spending time with, are the ones who have come through deep hurts.  Suffering tenders people.  But in order to have relationships with this kind of person, you sometimes have to put your faith in God and the future.  If you cut them off while they are going through something--suffering, hurting, needing--you may not have the opportunity to know them when they have been tendered, matured and made beautiful in their souls.

The people who need love the most can be the hardest to love, but if you give them the love they need, you could help them through an event that will make them the best friends you ever imagined having.

And... on a day when you yourself are hard to love, wouldn't you hope that someone would share that same kind of grace with you?

Be the friend you want to have.

Kitchen Project. Day 21.

I stopped updating for awhile because I was so bored by the lack of visible progress, I figured everyone else must be, too.

We've undergone a great deal of drywall work and sub-floor work, both of which are important (and messy), and we are thankful that they were done well.  We trust that they were done well.

Yesterday they began to lay the flooring, and today they finished the flooring in the kitchen, but not in the laundry room.  I may be visiting the laundromat this weekend.

Yes, they finished the floor in the kitchen, and the upper cabinets were delivered today.  Observe them in my kitchen, in those cardboard boxes.

Tomorrow they will start to hang the upper cabinets, and when those are done, they will install the lower cabinets.  After that, the counter-top people come out to measure for the counters, and while we are waiting for the counters to be fabricated... then they will finish the laundry room floor.

Yes, I may be visiting the laundromat this weekend.  Or maybe even before that.



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If you are bored with this kitchen stuff, I wrote about something else over here.

Kitchen Project. Day 16.

Day 16. Leading into Weekend #3 without a kitchen... and this time, we are also without a washer and dryer.

Oh my.

Yesterday we had a difficult and incredibly scary talk with the contractors about the floor, and how we are not happy about the level of the floor, and the resulting bump right at the edge of a step down into our family room.

Both Shawn and I were extremely nervous to bring up a criticism, and dreaded doing it, fearing that we would ruin our working relationship with the people we have hired.  They are really very nice, polite, careful and even good about cleaning up after themselves.  However, I've taken two serious falls (not related to the kitchen) in less than a week (lupus?), and a tripping hazard right between the kitchen and the family room where we are always going back and forth, up and down two steps... well that is big concern.

We probably should have them tear up the whole sub-floor and re-lay it at a lower level, but since we will be charged by the hour and for materials involved in any rework, that simply isn't in the budget.  So we had this talk, which by the grace of God was very calm -- and I didn't cry, either -- and I think they heard our concern about safety.  The solution is yet to be seen.  I'm praying for an adequate one.

Ach.  Yuck.

And yes.  No laundry.  The washer, as you can see, is not in the laundry room.

The washer is here...

The drywall work is coming along.

I sure hope that by the end of next week I have my washer and dryer back.  I am not making this up.

Funny story.  When they detached my washer, one of the guys asked me, "Is this the only washer you have in this house?"

Ummmmm... yes.  I didn't know anybody ever had more than one washer.

Cooking without a kitchen

We ate homemade food at home last night, balanced on slightly wobbling TV trays, washed down with glasses of water drawn from the bathroom sink.

It wasn't too bad.

Crockpot Chicken Lentil Chili

28-30 oz. can crushed tomatoes

10-15 oz. can diced tomatoes with green chilies

3-5 oz. can chopped green chilies

1 cup dried lentils

½ cup brown rice

2 --1.25 oz. envelopes MSG-free chili seasoning mix

3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (2-3 lbs.)

1 quart (4 cups) water

Stir crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, green chilies, lentils, rice and one packet of chili seasoning mix together in your crockpot.  Stir in water.  Lay chicken on top (it will sink).  Sprinkle the second packet of chili seasoning mix over the top.

Cook on high for about 2-3 hours.  Reduce to low and cook for another 2 hours or so.  Or just cook on low for 6-8 hours.  When the chicken is fully cooked, shred it with two forks.  You can do this right in the crockpot, in which case you will miss some of the chicken and end up with a large chicken chunk here and there.  If you want it to be uniformly shredded, remove to a plate, shred, and return to crockpot.  Stir to distribute the chicken throughout the dish.

Cook on low for another hour if you have time, to let the flavors thoroughly permeate the chicken.  This is a nice but non-crucial step.

Serve hot with shredded cheese and sour cream or plain Greek yogurt.

If you are not camping out in an upstairs bedroom with only a crockpot and very limited cooking supplies (while your kitchen is torn out for a remodel), you can substitute your own seasoning for the chili seasoning mix.  Try mixing these and dividing into two piles to use in place of the two envelopes:

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cumin

2 tsp. granulated garlic or garlic powder

1 Tbsp. minced onion

1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

2 tsp. oregano

chili powder or paprika as desired

OBSERVATIONS:

• If Jon and DJ had been home, this would have made one meal.
• It was tasty, but I'm not sure I would have liked it without the cheese and sour cream.
• Stress causes lupus flares, and I am in one.
• It is virtually impossible to write poetry on MSWord, and even though nobody likes to read poetry, sometimes it is the only thing I want to write.
• Bwahahahaha.  No.  I do not write for an audience.
• I am having failures in life lately.  It feels like getting a math exam back, and seeing that I've failed, totally messed up the problem and gotten it wrong, wrong, wrong.  But.  Even though I know I failed, got it wrong, have a red slash and no points...I can't specifically figure out what my mistake was or how to fix it.  Not a good feeling.
• However, we ate plentifully and fairly nutritiously last night, so maybe I get some points for that?

Snowed in

Being snowed in is historically one of my very favorite things in the world.

I love when the world is quietly muffled with a thick layer of new, white snow.  New snow is so fresh and clean and relaxing.  I love staying home with nothing to do, sleeping in, drinking hot steaming drinks out of warm, chunky mugs: tea, coffee, hot chocolate.  I love when people I love can't leave my house, when school and work are out of reach and we can sit around with board games and homemade soup.

Today we are snowed in.  It is mainly Shawn and me, but of course the two dogs are also here, needing their food and their medicine and even a walk, which was fun and fluffy, and like a miracle the snow hardly stuck to them when we came inside afterwards.

After their walk, I went out to scoop the lighter layer of snow off the front porch.   Shortly into this task, I began to feel not-so-good, and then I remembered the doctor telling me that after my surgery, I was not to shovel or vacuum.  "How long before I can shovel or vacuum again?" I asked her.  "Forever," she replied, leaving me to wonder what the 4-6 week recovery period was leading up to.  I already did something to myself last week, vacuuming behind the electricians.  I may have compounded that today, in the ten minutes I spent shoveling before I remembered not to.  Sigh.  What am I even good for anymore, anyway?  God, please don't make me have to go in for more reconstructive surgery.  Please.  Please be merciful.  I know I am stupid and forgetful and do dumb things to myself, but please have mercy on me.

Construction has been delayed for the day, so once again, the kitchen project agony will be extended but at the same time mitigated (today would have been Day 14).  I am not against mitigation.  Although, the sooner I can cook again, the better.  It is impossible to accommodate my dietary needs the way we are.  We have succumbed to canned soup, which takes approximately 45 minutes to heat up in the crockpot, MSG and all.  Pshaw.

Today I am going to try to make a chicken, rice and lentil dish in the crockpot.  I made it up in my head and perused recipes online to try to figure out a method.  Since all my spices and seasonings are packed away, I bought some MSG-free chili seasoning mix at the store.  We shall see how this works, and we will eat it whether it is good or bad.

I also plan to have a nice long soak in the tub today, because why not?  After I have started supper in the crockpot and soaked in the tub, I will work on wiping things... because everything needs to be wiped, and it is much easier for me than sorting through things (which will always need to be done), and it is not against the doctor's orders like vacuuming.

Too bad we don't have dust covers for everything like the English gentry used to.  I suppose I should take the opportunity of this day and pack away everything on shelves.  If only I knew where to pack it.

We also need to figure out how to get the water out of that heat duct.  Still.  Suggestions have not been pouring in.

Kitchen Project. Day 13.

Day 13.  Well, Day 7 was not particularly impressively good**, and Day 13 (today) was not particularly impressively bad.

I didn't take any photos today.  I'm just tired.  My back went out after I went to bed last night (yes, after I cuddled down beneath the quilts).  I spent from 11:00 p.m. to 2:44 a.m. in blinding pain, but it was the dark of night, so I guess it didn't matter that much.  Finally, at 2:44 poor Shawn got up and brought me 600 mg of Advil, and after that I slept until 6:45.

If you were to look at my kitchen today, it wouldn't look that different from yesterday.  There is more sub-flooring down on the floor, and much of the sub-flooring is covered with some sort of brown paper, taped down with blue tape.  In the corner with the bay window, all the appliances stand clustered, or at least the washing machine and the refrigerator.  Perhaps the dryer is in the garage.  The laundry room is empty now, and its floor is partially covered with sub-flooring as well.

It is progress.  It just feels slow, and photographically uninteresting, which probably means that it is more-boring-than-tap-water to read about.

We are in the midst of quite a winter storm, with 6-12 inches of snow predicted, and what looks like 5 inches already fallen, and the state has already used up its stores of road salt for the year.  This may mean that nobody will be able to make it to the work site tomorrow, and it probably means that the workers will be called out on emergencies on Thursday and Friday once the storm passes.  We had chicken patties in the toaster oven tonight, and they were fine, plenty filling.

The fragment of something more interesting to say flitted through my mind and escaped, dissolved, evaporated.***

So I will end for the day and hope for more dramatic progress to report soon.




** Actually, in retrospect, Day 7 was probably our hardest day so far.  It was tremendously loud, long and dirty, dirty, dirty.  I am still finding clumps of pink fiberglass insulation hither and yon, despite cleaning efforts that may have prolapsed all my remaining internal organs.  If it hadn't been for the lights they put into my bathroom, that day would surely have driven me over the brink.

*** Oh dear.  I remembered.  Today, Shawn noticed that our laundry room heat vent was not putting forth any heat.  Upon close inspection, he discovered that the heat duct that runs from the furnace through the basement crawlspace to the laundry room is full of water, blocking the flow of warm air.   Apparently on the day of the flood, a bunch of water ran down the heat vent into the duct, and stayed there.  It's bowed down, curved like a drain pipe with a trap.  We have to figure out how to get the water out, but we have to be able to do it with what we have, because we can't drive to a hardware store in this weather.  It's pretty low, so it's going to be hard to get gravity on our side.  Ideas appreciated. 

Kitchen Project. Day 12.

They are still here, but I'm going to start this post.

I spent most of the day out of the house today.  In the morning I babysat for a Bible Study Fellowship leadership meeting.  It was a very easy gig, two workers and two little baby boys.  One of the babies got fussy, so maybe it wasn't as easy as it sounds.

After that, I went to Meijer.  My plan was to buy more coffee for Shawn, and to try to get a cheap manicure, because two of my fingernails had torn and I wondered if they could be saved.  I arrived at the store, and the nail salon was closed.  So I walked through the aisles and bought kefir, yogurt, salad fixings and ingredients for crockpot-chicken-lentil-chili.  Upon arriving home, I realized that I had forgotten Shawn's coffee.  So I failed to complete either of my original goals.

Sigh.

Then, this afternoon, I had to take Piper to the vet.  Unwisely, I also took Schubert, not wanting to leave him home alone with the workers.  If you have ever struggled with a screaming, miserable infant for hours while waiting to see your pediatrician, you have some idea what I went through with these dogs at the vet today.  If they could do a surgical "bark"-ectomy, I would take Shubert in for the procedure immediately.

When we had finally finished the vet-appointment-of-eternal-punishment, we went out to pay.  Just as we entered the waiting area from the exam room, another lady, a Model Dog Owner, entered from outdoors.  Her dog was perfectly groomed and perfectly behaved.  It pranced on delicate feet and looked haughtily away from us as Schubert embarked on another frenzy of skull-shattering yelps.  Piper joined with his harsh monotone expectoration of noise (he's mostly deaf).  I tried to apologize to the Model Dog Owner, and she gave me a look that said, "Some people.  Why do you even have a dog, if you aren't going to train him and control him?"  She took her dog outdoors to avoid us.

I waited yet another eardrum-blasting eternity for the receptionist to get off the phone.  Finally she looked up at me and, over the din of my dogs, asked my name.  Lip reading ensued: How do you spell it?  What is the dog's name?  Do you have an appointment?  She could not find me in the system.  Finally she asked with annoyance, "What are we trying to do here, anyway?" 

A feeling rather akin to hatred welled up in me, and I cast pretenses of civility aside.

"I am trying to pay," I said, biting my lip and (surprisingly) choking back tears, "so we can go home."

Piper, however, has up-to-date shots and two new heart medications.

I missed most of the work at home today.  The muscles in my head, neck shoulders and upper arms are rather tight.

There is one carpenter, a very tall, lanky guy, who seems to head up a lot of the work.  He is young and polite, and he listens to country music, singing along (on tune).  I don't know much country music, but just now the radio was crooning out "Can I Have this Dance for the Rest of my Life?" by Anne Murray.  It brought a little grin to the corners of my mouth.

They are working on the floor.  Right now they are placing sub-floor, not the actual floor.

But they have not mudded the new ceilings and walls that they patched and hung last week.  I really, really wish they would finish the drywall work before they lay the floor.  I know how messy this gets.  I don't want the mess on my brand new floor!

I am in agony.  I don't know whether to say something, or if I would just annoy them.  "Stupid woman," they might think. "When has she ever done any of this kind of work?  What does she know about it?  How come she thinks she can tell us how to do our job?"

Also, it is getting to the point where soon I will be afraid to post pictures because I fear that people will think the elements I have chosen for my kitchen are dumb and ugly.  I feel self-conscious and insecure.