Tag: love

They Didn’t Ever Fight

Never. Not one time did I see my parents have a fight. I was born into a home with a dad and a mom and a big sister and I never saw my parents fight. My parents were married 59 1/2 years when my dad passed away, in my home, and I honestly never saw them have a fight.

When I was growing up, they made sure that we knew they didn’t fight. It was like a gold star they proudly wore, the “We Aren’t Like All The Other Couples Out There. We. Don’t. Fight” prize.

I was well aware they did not fight because I heard it regularly, and then observed it daily. Dad would get up and go to work. Mom would get up and take care of us. I would get up and go to school. The reverse happened as the day wore on. By the time dad got home in the evening, I was expected to defer everything to his will…didn’t matter what television show was on that I had watched 2/3 of, or what conversation I was in with my mom – if dad wanted a different show or to take my mom away for a conversation, not only did it happen, but I was considered ungrateful and inconsiderate if I expressed frustration.

As the years of my youth rolled on, we lived in detached peace in our home. No one ever really asked me anything about how I felt, or what I loved, or if I had fears. No one connected with my soul, and I got kudos for the good stuff and punished for the bad. I got adept at covering the bad, at just not talking about it. I learned to shield the responses of my spirit, my deep down, to protect it from injury. I learned to tell what would please my lovely, we-don’t-ever-fight parents and hide any of my questionable thoughts. Or actions. Or decisions. Or fears. Or hurts. I could wordsmith with the best of them, rewriting a situation or an incident so that I looked good, or at least, not as bad.

But inside, I was crushed and crumbling.

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I did not know it, because it was all I knew. But I gained great skill at shaping a message not only to those on the outside, but to myself. Since there never were fights between my parents, I knew any tension in the house or in our family life was because of me, right? And since no one ever talked about being scared or fearful, if I had those feelings, it must be me, right? But I just kept all that to myself, and figured out how to pretend I didn’t hear those voices.

As HUSBAND and I have worked so hard on ourselves, and on our marriage, these scary, tightly wrapped layers have begun to peel off my being. I don’t blame my sweet parents, oh no. They were trying so hard to be great together and great to us and their way of being great was to not have anything in our lives or in their lives that was un-great. So they were doing the same thing they were so effectively teaching me: pushing down any feelings and hurts and fears and pains as best they could. My therapist likens it to floating on a ball in a pool…you have to constantly try to keep that ball carefully centered and balanced precisely under you and it works and it works and you adjust and it works and you change pressure and then POP! Out shoots the ball from under you when you least expect it. If that happened, my parents would quickly grab the ball and put it back under themselves, balancing carefully…adjusting…and never acknowledging the ball had escaped…

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And so did I, for my youth and for 27 years of marriage.

I don’t balance the ball anymore. I have learned to allow myself to really feel, to grieve the sad things and rejoice in the amazing. I’ve learned to be realistic about my fears, and to find solace first, and then hope with the overwhelming promises of God lived out in Christ and evidenced by the beauty from ashes that is my life. I’ve ventured into the amazing place of freedom through vulnerability, and sharing my shattered soul, finding that it can really meet the other tattered soul in the oneness that marriage is meant to be.

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But it is luring, and a regular fight for me not to retreat back into my deep down. To make myself stay exposed and risking. I have to make sure I never, ever forget that the safe place really wasn’t safe at all but actually a place I was dying a slow death, and that out here in the risky places are where I found I could love. And be loved.

love heals

 

Victory

Some victories are so sweet. The victory of overcoming fear when I started a new school – I attended tons growing up as a military girl –

I remember the fear the night before, the stories that bounced around in my head, the plans I mentally made to deal with this or that or that or this. And the feeling of walking into a new room and being introduced as “the new girl.” Going to the lunchroom and knowing there were rules but no one had told me the rules and if/when I broke one wondering what the punishment might be – from administration, but worse, from peers.

Unhappy Teenage Girl Being Gossiped About By Peers
Unhappy Teenage Girl Being Gossiped About By Peers

But the victory when I wasn’t the new girl anymore and had at least a few people to share secrets with and I knew where to sit and with whom.

The victory of completing a routine on beam…not just without falling…but soaring. Knowing I’d hit every moment just the right way and that the judges were struggling to find the blemishes in the performance…receiving the embrace of my coach and then seeing the score. Such sweet victory.

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As a young driver, I was determined not to be a typical girl which I defined as indecisive and inattentive on the road. I wanted to drive like a boy with daring and confidence and an arm out the window and my head thrown back. Oh, the victory when one of my friends commented that I drove like a guy.

It was a sweet victory each time a precious new life emerged from me…all plump and squished up and crying. Holding that new life and staring into the eyes of creation – that is a victory so sweet and so timeless and I’m forever grateful.

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It was bittersweet victory as each milestone flew by in the lives of those babies…kindergarten…transition to high school…proms and honor societies and graduations. Now the victory of seeing my beautiful girl pledge her love to her mate, and the boys seeking education beyond high school and graduating and working. Oh, the beautiful victory.

I thought it was a victory when I said my own vows. When I pledged myself to love forever even if things got really bad for any reason. I thought it was a victory for me. For HUSBAND – he told me it was as he gazed into my heart. For us. But it was so soon, so early in our delicate oneness that he broke those vows. Far too early for the oneness to be strong, he went outward to another woman and set a pattern of seeking pleasure for his pain that excluded me rather than embraced me. I couldn’t figure out why the victory of love and marriage had turned so distant and felt more like a marathon that never ended rather than the short sprints of joy and life with victories sprinkled in. But it was all those lies, all those deceptions that HUSBAND was either living in, or covering up for, that created a space between our oneness that only he knew how to bridge. Because only he knew the real story.

So the victory in this? The victory is that truth…truth really has freed me and freed us. It has no hold anymore, no ability to fool or separate or speak words into my heart that destroy. Truth revealed and the excruciating process of healing is victory like none other.

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Being New.

HUSBAND and I attend a unique support group. He with men, sex addicts, for a time and I with women, betrayeds. Then we come together as couples. It is a powerful time, and we leave bolstered in our me-ness and our us-ness and it is good.

During our time together last week, HUSBAND shared. He shared that it is closing in on two years of complete and utter truth for him, and truth between us – two years from the time the trickle-truth DDays ended and I had a clear understanding of who the man that had shared my head and my heart and my bed and my life really was. He shared that he had worked really hard to be the same in his words that he was in his actions. That he had put fences around his behavior and checks around his actions and accountability around his emotions.

Fences

He shared that he had taken care to change even small behaviors…things like not exaggerating the amount he spent on something or what time he was leaving his office. That he has faced the emotional pain and fear and stories that were deep down in his soul and worked hard to quiet them. That he has committed to carefully speak his needs with honesty and to continue to be vulnerable in the roller coaster of my emotions and to continue to be sorry no matter what or why or who or how long.

And then he struggled to explain, but ended up sharing that it was incredible what was happening. That he realizes he has begun to believe he is this man, this new man. That he is beginning to realize that he is becoming honest and learning to live in truth – really – from a deep, core place of who he is. He shared that the freedom he has is incredible and the lure to move away from truth in his words, through his thoughts, by his actions is less tempting.

NewMan

HUSBAND looked at me, then. He shared that he could not believe what he had done. That as the man he said he was and the man he is becoming synthesize together he looks back in great shame and shock and disgust and sees now…he was “that man.” And he took my hand with tender tears in his eyes and shared with me…and with the other couples in the room…that he could not believe I had stayed by his side. He shared that he didn’t think he could…now that he was beginning to really, completely comprehend the magnitude of betrayal he had woven through our lives, he just didn’t know if he could be me if the roles were reversed.

It was a stunning moment, a moment of illumination, a moment of searing pain and remarkable agony somehow moving between the two of us and we were sharing the hurt together. And sharing the healing together. The new man and the new woman and the new marriage, together in an oddly wrapped and shaped package of precious love. A package clearly and utterly covered with the battle-wounds of our lives, and the blood of the One who showed us the path through the forest of pain so we could reach this place called freedom. This place, this tender and amazing place, called love.

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Broken-Open

So I took the 30-day alphabet challenge during the month of April, writing every day of the month except Sundays. I do not write ahead; rather each day I search for the direction of the moment and follow those thoughts and they result in my posts. Doing that for 26 days out of thirty took lots from my soul. HUSBAND asked me to take a respite after that and at first I scoffed thinking I did not need a break. Seems he knew me better than I knew myself – I needed it. I’ve missed you all and am glad to be back.

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And that brings me to here.

Today. June 1, 2016. A day that I can boldly say is better than June 1, 2015 or 2014 or 2013 or for all my married years prior to now.

How…why…can it be better to be the wife of a sex-addict, to know it? Wasn’t it better to live in the bliss of naiveté? To be unaware that HUSBAND found other women repeatedly throughout our marriage – whether real flesh and blood – or screen images that gave him things that only exist in fantasy?

No. No it wasn’t. It wasn’t for me.

Today is better than the last two years because I am two years out from finding out the awful reality of being a betrayed. Two years of living a progressively less violent emotional roller coaster. Two years of rolling memories around in my brain and reliving moments and trying to make sense of them and going through the cycles of grief again and again. Two years of learning to deal with triggers and a flood of pain that takes my breath away and mind invasions and questions with no answers and self-blame and hatred and overwhelming love. It is who I am now, indelibly stamped on my being and whether I remained married or left to have a different life this is me – me – forever and always.

Today is better than last year when I was a year out. 2015 was filled with anniversaries: One year from anonymous email and finding out HUSBAND was unhappy. One year from several weeks later and finding out HUSBAND was having an affair. One year from several weeks later and finding out HUSBAND’s affair wasn’t what he first revealed and included more time with his AP and more, well, more. One year from several weeks later and finding out there were more affairs. One year from several weeks later from finding out about family betrayal and friend betrayal. One year from several weeks later from finding out there was porn and masturbation and addiction. A year of one years, each one forcing me to take out that date and hold it in my hand and heart and try to decide if it was worth it. I could only look at that one moment, that one day, and step forward.

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And the year before…2014…such a looming wall of torment when I go back to those moments. Reading the anonymous email. Finding the letter of love and devotion from the current affair partner. The conversations and conversations and conversations and conversations with HUSBAND. The realization that pain inside could seep into every fiber of my being and wrack me with sobs that started in my heart and raced into every limb and digit and through every vein and capillary and occupied every cell and screamed and cried and begged for the hurt to stop. Oh the moments of not-wanting-to-die yet not-wanting-to-live or rather not-knowing-how-to-live or not-knowing-what-living-was and just not even being able to breathe. The shame. The guilt. The anger. The hurt. The abandonment. The confusion. The lies and the lies and the lies and the lies that I now knew had been my life.

The years before. They were good. I thought they were good. Or at least mostly. I thought that and yet now that they are good – really, really good – I can see they weren’t so good. I didn’t know about the women in HUSBAND’s life, true, but I always knew I wanted more with and in our relationship. I wanted to be cherished, to be considered deeply from a heart place. I wanted to share dreams and be able to be sad together when they didn’t happen without worrying it would make HUSBAND feel bad or like a failure. I wanted to be able to dream more and again and different without worrying it would make HUSBAND feel like I could never make up my mind. I wanted to be able to touch and be touched in public and private and to exchange glances that spoke volumes across a room and have private jokes that weren’t laced with sarcasm and know that above all else, I could count on being adored and protected.

Sometimes I pretended I had that throughout my marriage. But I didn’t.

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Up until the time the true nature of my marriage was revealed, I counted my words. I timed my conversations and wrapped that in the lingo of various women’s magazines and self-help journals and even religious teachings about wisdom and being gentle-tongued and a Proverbs 31 wife. I wanted so badly to have a deeply allied and intimate relationship that really was one flesh in every sense of the word and I acted like that was what we had and told myself that was what we had. But it wasn’t true.

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That is why June 1, 2016 is so incredibly different. So incredibly good. Because now, it is so incredibly real.

No walls. No masks. No space between our one flesh.

My addict HUSBAND became broken open through the revelations. My addict HUSBAND has committed all the fiber of his being to recovery and loving himself and loving me. I became broken open through agony, and that pain has poured out all the layers and layers and layers of pretensions and excuses and craziness and self-lies. No layers now between us. No secrets and hidden things and carefully (manipulated) thought-out words to try to get the other to respond the way we want them to. All those things that I wanted and had convinced myself only exist in chick-flicks live in my house now. They live in my words and my relationship and my bed. I. Am. Loved.

June 1, 2016. Two people, broken-open and meshed together into one. Battle-scarred, far-from-perfect but oh, so beautiful.

BrokenOpen10

 

 

Why. Didn’t. I. Know.

The question tortures betrayeds. We feel so stupid. We adopt guilt on many levels from many aspects of being cheated on, and one of them is that we are just stupid, right? Because obviously a woman in an intimate relationship, day-to-day, with a man pledged to her with his undying love that was not really living his undying love to her would be obvious. She would know it if he was panting madly after another woman…whether it was one-night-stands found in massage parlors or brothels or images portrayed on the screen and delivered to his phone or real-live-flesh in his arms that was joined with a fantasy relationship of constant messaging and plans for a future.

She would know, right? We would know, right?

I saw those teasers for outrageous tell-all shows through the years, or headlines on tabloids at the grocery store that screamed He Lived A Double Life And She Didn’t Know and my passing thought as I put the food on the belt was Well She Must Be An Idiot If She Didn’t Know.

Because I would know, right?

But I didn’t know, and when I found out I felt S. T. U. P. I. D. I still have to deal with that cropping up from time to time when everything crashes in and I find myself walking into a meeting and the tidal wave of HOLY SHIT I AM A BETRAYED WIFE washes over me…the immediate next thought is…and I am so stupid.

Oh

But I am not. I am not stupid, and neither are the multiple other betrayed women that I have come to know intimately over the last two years. I look around at my group and they are beautiful. Seriously, they are beautiful. They are smart and own businesses and run non-profits and juggle family and work and myriad responsibilities and they are beautiful. No…these women are anything, anything but stupid. To a one.

So how did we get duped? How, collectively, are cheaters able to delve into their destructive behaviors and we don’t know?

I can only speak from my experience, yet think some of it may resonate with other betrayeds. I was always taught about privacy…and privacy meant things like knocking on the bathroom door when it was closed, not listening in on a call someone was on or opening their drawers and looking in them. I was taught it was rude to ask about money or why someone lowered their voice to talk to someone else in person or on the phone. I was taught that men hate nagging women and asking questions = nagging and that men aren’t as emotional as women and don’t like to share their feelings like women and that men can’t stand drama and feelings = drama. I was taught that any semblance of jealousy could lead your man right into cheating, and I was literally told by HUSBAND’s grandmother that if you don’t give HUSBAND freedom to (hunt/fish/play with his friends) he would end up with a blonde on his arm. (I was highly offended, scoffed at such a notion, but it was there now, in my soul, and helped shaped my responses whether I could see it or not).

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I was taught it was showed no trust to follow up about something slightly sketchy and for God’s sake, I would never have dreamed of looking on HUSBAND’s phone or asking one of his friends to verify his actions or really dig in to find out why there was a gap in time or money or people or place, because I didn’t want to meddle, or look like I didn’t trust him. I didn’t want to be that kind of woman – that kind of wife – the kind all the jokes are about and men hate and women roll their eyes about.

I watched sitcoms that made fun of insecure women and read articles about annoying habits men hate (google it).

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Those were all thoughts and ideas and attitudes deeply ingrained in me, socialized in my womanhood and wifehood by family and friends and culture and media.

But mostly, I never ever even considered that the man I found, loved, gave all of me to would consider cheating. So all the rules made sense.

It wasn’t stupidity, not at all. It was faith and trust. Wrongly placed, but that is what it was.

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I’ve stayed with HUSBAND, who by all counts has continued to show me now for nearly two years that he is a new man. His continued willingness to provide any information, answer any question past or present has not wavered since he finally bared his soul and all its warts and lies and filth. He is different in every sense of himself, and we are different together with this stark honesty constantly the stalwart between us.

But now? I do ask. I do verify. And I don’t buy the cultural encouragement to utter personal freedom, no questions asked, within a committed relationship. I went down that road for 27 years, but took a sharp turn after DDay, and will never head that way again. That…that would be…stupid?

KnowBetterDoBetter

X = courage? Or badass…

A Xenolith is a (beautiful) rock fragment that is actually foreign to the igneous rock in which it is imbedded. These lovelies get melded right in…embraced if you will…in the hard and mundane yet exuding their glory and sparkle with strength.

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That is the picture of the betrayed…the broken…the abused…the destitute of spirit. Covered in the package of hurt, continuing to move through life looking bland and ordinary, we are stunningly beautiful in our core. That outer wrapping is foreign…it is the inner place that is authentic. We have received the worst of what humanity has to dole out, and we have survived. We were promised love and devotion and got manipulation and abandonment, yet we hang on and keep believing and hoping, whether in this person or another or in ourselves. That place, that incredible amazing place that somehow stays alive despite all odds that is wrapped in the layers of our being is nothing short of miraculous beauty. Like a xenolith.

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And that human xenolith…we are also xenacious. Xenacious people yearn for change…deeply desire things could be different and don’t stop trying. That is a characteristic I find nearly uniform amongst people with deep wounds…

We want things to be different.

And we are willing to be part of the change.

Xenacious xenoliths are courage.
Xenacious xenoliths are badass.

courage

 

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day has never been a real favorite of mine. Since we moved around so much, I found myself excruciatingly nervous about whether I would receive Valentine cards and was deeply grateful when my little handmade box got deposits.

ValentineBox

Valentine’s Day as a young professional brought the proverbial roses and/or chocolates. Always appreciated, never over-the-moon. Had I not received them from my lover, I would have been hurt I suppose, yet the day never held great significance, truth-be-told.

Valentine’s Day as a married woman was fairly routine too. Through the years, HUSBAND would leave me a lovely card, often send flowers by delivery or bring them home after work. He cooked a delicious dinner and gave me chocolates for dessert.

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Valentine’s Day 2014. Nothing.

I didn’t get anything. Well…I did get a card. A card that was not lovely and loving, but funny.?

It was a little niggle in my soul, but nothing too big. We had been married 27 years and were busy and had my parents living us and things were different. I had gone out and purchased Valentine’s cards for our children, and HUSBAND, and for my dying father to give my mother (something he always did). And I picked up three lovely, simple, crystal bracelets that looked like something daddy would give mom and that mom would like and I gave them to daddy to give to mom since he could not leave the house. And he cried. And she cried when he gave them to her.

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There was a little niggle, but all these things took over my heart and my mind.

So a few months later when I had discovered infidelity and I was ravishing records to try to put what life appeared to be and what life was together into one picture, I found a simple little email in HUSBAND’s account. It was from 1-800 flowers for a discount for Valentine’s Day flowers. And I asked him if he’d sent SW flowers. He had. He had ordered her flowers, an elaborate bouquet…one of the most expensive they’d promoted. And then he told me he had canceled the order because she said she had to travel and wouldn’t be in the office. And she really didn’t like flowers. Waste of money. She likes plants.

Paypal confirmed this story.

I love flowers. Beautiful, fresh flowers. I know they are a waste of money and they don’t last. But they are beautiful and if you get the right kind, smell good too. I love them and always have. She doesn’t. But she was going to get them.

Valentine’s Day. Still not a real favorite of mine.

NoValentines

Real

heart_of_broken_glass_by_tallasx

Revealed betrayals that were repeated and repeated

Led to a ruptured heart

And reduced me to a remnant of myself

Running…returning…running…returning…

RETREAT

And then there was radical regret

And then there was radical regard for the ramifications of choices along the way

And then there was radical responsibility acknowledged

And then there was radical reconstruction with him

With me

With us

I was on a roundabout and could have gotten off

Considered removing myself as I went round and round and round

Yet remained

And the result is his redemption

The result is my rescue from repose

Regret?

Revulsion to the remembrances of the life-rape resonate…

But reverence to the reconciliation of two souls is

Real

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Longing

Longing – that ‘strong, persistent desire or craving, especially for something unattainable or distant’ according to dictionary.com is a soulful word, a haunting word and one that I don’t think I used to understand, really.

I hear my mom longing for the days of her youth…days where she remembers men were genteel toward women they cared about and toward those they didn’t. Days where women blushed at the utterance of a cussword and there were no commercials on television about how to enhance your sex life. Days where everyone gathered around the one small TV screen together to watch the one show that aired at the one time, and were just as likely to gather around the radio to listen to something. Mom longs for the days of phone operators who connected you to whom you wished to speak, and laundry was done only one day a week, period.

PhoneOp

I lived most of my life as such a practical girl, and longing – consciously – really didn’t play a huge role. No, I was determined to live with intention, to make my future be what I wanted through hard work and sheer grit. I was confident that I didn’t need to long because I could make it happen for myself, and for my family. Seeing that a longing is unattainable or distant, it had no place in my life.

Yet it did, was a driving factor that resulted in my staying in a marriage that was missing the mark for deep intimacy, for unity/oneness. Staying in a marriage enabling (how I have FOUGHT AGAINST THIS LABEL) my addict-HUSBAND, believing that tomorrow would be different and if I just handled this situation and if I only reacted this way and that this prayer or that marriage seminar or this discussion would make the difference.

What I see now was I had enormous longings. I longed for intimacy and communion of the souls. I longed for a family that honestly valued each other, that would meet at the heart level and care beyond perfunctory events and routine cards and empty words. I longed for adventure bridled with stability, and vision tempered with reality. I longed for deep, committed relationship. I longed…for love…

love

I couldn’t let myself see that I longed for these things, and that I was not likely to get them, really, really, really get them. Ultimately, I discovered I didn’t believe I could get them – not because I had married a guy who was only willing to connect so far, to go so deep. That was the obvious answer and the one I clung to until DDay forced the journey deep into my own soul. The real answer, the real reason I ACCEPTED and stayed married to a man who gave me only part of his soul was because I didn’t believe I deserved love like this. Neither did he.

We were two broken souls who stuffed deep down their heart longings to live in a half-baked present that was wrapped in a beautiful package. It was like we could stay one step ahead of our hearts by having it all on the outside even though our insides were so sad. Nearly everyone…and I mean EVERYONE (other than our children) who knew us, lived with us, was part of us thought we had a great marriage, a great life and frequently told us that. Only a very few saw chinks in the armor because we were good – very good – at denying our longings and living on the surface of our really deep lives.

And that’s how this stuff perpetuates beyond our generation. The reason I say our children knew isn’t because we had big knock-down drag out fights, or called each other nasty names with regularity or were running out of the house, slamming doors and driving off in a huff. And it wasn’t that they consciously KNEW…it was because they knew us individually almost better than we knew ourselves, and they could see the subtle discord between the me and the him that wasn’t played out in the us and even though they couldn’t put their finger on it, IT was there.broken_family They saw we weren’t living our REAL dreams, even though we pretended to. This is what we taught them was life, was marriage. So if we had continued that way…if HUSBAND had carried out his plan to leave me for the final whore without me ever knowing his infidelity throughout our marriage, if I had gone on living in the oblivion that I had longings and they were driving me into craziness, if we hadn’t ended up face-to-face first confronted with the pretense v the reality and then each chosen to step into it….well, we would both still be longing and it would be the only picture of marriage and family that we painted for our children.

Oh, this journey. It is soul-sucking and devastating and still shocks me that I am the wife of a serial betrayer…a sex addict… It is draining and is full of places of self-blame and anger and having to work really hard not to be bitter.  I wish the triggers would stop, and that I didn’t still have questions and that I could trust unconditionally. I wish I didn’t have to deal with the voices in my head that say You Are So Stupid or He’ll Do It Again or You Should Have Left Him or It Is All Really Your Fault. I wish I didn’t have a marriage history and a new marriage history that is so much shorter than the marriage history. I wish my children didn’t have a past that was full of lies, and a stable home growing up that really wasn’t so stable.

But ironically, it is all of this that birthed my ability to find that I have longings. To be able to admit my longings. And I have found that HUSBAND now isn’t the vapid, unemotional and stale man he pretended to be for much of our marriage. His vulnerability and mine have met together in the entwining of our souls, into one flesh that isn’t just flesh but is mind and spirit too, and my longings are not so distant now. Real, honest, in-the-light beauty from such a pile of ashes.

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Imagine

HUSBAND and I went to watch a talk last week at a Creator-Innovator event. One of the speakers, involved in the space industry, mentioned ‘the Overview Effect’ and described it much like Wikipedia:

“…a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts…refers to the experience of seeing…the Earth in space…a tiny, fragile ball of life, ‘hanging in the void,’ shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere…national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this “pale blue dot” becomes both obvious and imperative…”

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Imagine.

Imagine if we could all somehow gain the perspective, and change the way we live and think and see and respond to each other. Even in our own little space….much less globally…how the ripple effect would change our world.

Imagine if it didn’t matter if two cars merged in front of you and not just one (or none, depending on you).

Imagine if you had extra food from dinner and you packed it in your car and when you saw a homeless person on the way to work you handed them a home-cooked meal. And didn’t worry about getting the container back.

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Imagine if you mowed your lawn and then mowed the neighbor’s lawn instead of complaining about how they never mowed their lawn.

Imagine if the neighbor that you mowed the lawn for came over and asked if they could scrub your windows when they were scrubbing their windows instead of complaining about how you never clean the mildew off your windows.

Imagine if your friend who has lots of money donated to the local community college and didn’t get a building named after him, but did reduce everyone’s tuition by $100.

Imagine if we didn’t care about manicured lawns so much and instead allowed the indigenous “weeds” to grow strong and beautiful and flower in their season and everyone in the neighborhood thought it was beautiful.

Imagine if we spent less time suing each other over issues and more time hearing each other’s issues.

Imagine if we did less compromising of individual wants, and more negotiating together toward shared mutual vision.

Imagine if we learned to value each other because we are humans, not because we have stuff or looks or are a particular gender or race or religion.

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Imagine if families didn’t break up and when things got rough we banded together to help any way we could – all of us.

Imagine if we only had a glimpse into the heart of each other and when we saw the joys and the hurts and the excitement and the sadness we cared.

Imagine if we spent so much time and energy focused on helping others that we didn’t have time to worry about our stuff.

Imagine if our emptiness and hurt and fear and anxiety was filled with people who showed us our value and worth instead of getting artificially high on pain killers or pot or alcohol or synthetics.

Imagine if people honored each other enough to help them keep their commitments and find solutions even when their resolve was running low.

commitment

Imagine if somehow we could embrace and experience the overview effect in our own lives in our own homes in our own neighborhoods in our own towns in our own states…and it caught on…and caught on…and caught on.

Imagine.

loveoneanother