Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 5:05pm
QUIET TIME!!!!
Column: Interesting Times
She is really annoying. Or at least that is what I thought before I went for a quick lap swim before dawn. About lap five I had a thought, ‘well, IT is annoying’. I hope impersonalizing is one step out of hell because in my mind I had wordy conversations with her none too pleasant. And, I refrained from answering the email in the first 24 hours—often a good plan.
It is certainly the case that I am not perfect, not even in the ballpark but I do have standards and the second wife of my once-foster-son-now-a-grown-man seems to have but one standard—she needs QUIET TIME she says in all caps in a mass email. But she doesn’t need QUIET TIME to rest and refresh and think about the Divine—she needs the TIME to do a list of dozens of things that all the people on the email list have already volunteered to do for her.
Her house looks like one of those disaster areas from Clean House before the team cleaned. I have offered to send a team over to clean inside and out and organize and to pay for that. She did not accept but the mass email says she needs the QUIET TIME to clean, pay bills, go to the grocery store. As it is I drive her husband back and forth three times a week to his necessary medical treatments—one less thing that they need to do. So I guess what annoys me is that she is so the center of her martyred world that no one can even enter. I guess what annoys me is that she is too busy to be humble and grateful.
Of course that annoys me because so many times in my life I have been arrogant, fearful and ungrateful. But I didn’t want to be stuck in frustration with my past mistakes and their current messy house and her lack of humility. So I prayed.
The ideal prayer would have been, I thought, to not be annoyed, to heal myself and see her as God’s daughter, organized and selfless or at least to have her awaken to a less self-centered identity and one way or another “get it together”. However, I am settling for the More Free Time article in this month’s {http://www.realsimple.com/} Real Simple Magazine {/url}as an answer to my prayer. And the more I have thought about it today the more I think the article is an angel message and the answer to my prayer.
The list to have More Free Time is quite practical. The Real Simple list starts with the suggestion to Step Back (For a Second).
Sounds smart. Getting the self out of the way is always helpful. Step Two is: See What You Can Give Up. Another good idea as clinging to things is not helpful in achieving order—Heaven’s first law. There are many specific suggestions—among them asking ‘what can I delegate and what can I outsource?’ I am dropping the article off this afternoon when I pick up my passenger. I’ve asked him to read it first so that he can refer to it when attacked by the “I need QUIET TIME” deluge and he can keep things a bit impersonal. The best thing about this angel message is that I don’t have to say a word.
It is certainly the case that I am not perfect, not even in the ballpark but I do have standards and the second wife of my once-foster-son-now-a-grown-man seems to have but one standard—she needs QUIET TIME she says in all caps in a mass email. But she doesn’t need QUIET TIME to rest and refresh and think about the Divine—she needs the TIME to do a list of dozens of things that all the people on the email list have already volunteered to do for her.
Her house looks like one of those disaster areas from Clean House before the team cleaned. I have offered to send a team over to clean inside and out and organize and to pay for that. She did not accept but the mass email says she needs the QUIET TIME to clean, pay bills, go to the grocery store. As it is I drive her husband back and forth three times a week to his necessary medical treatments—one less thing that they need to do. So I guess what annoys me is that she is so the center of her martyred world that no one can even enter. I guess what annoys me is that she is too busy to be humble and grateful.
Of course that annoys me because so many times in my life I have been arrogant, fearful and ungrateful. But I didn’t want to be stuck in frustration with my past mistakes and their current messy house and her lack of humility. So I prayed.
The ideal prayer would have been, I thought, to not be annoyed, to heal myself and see her as God’s daughter, organized and selfless or at least to have her awaken to a less self-centered identity and one way or another “get it together”. However, I am settling for the More Free Time article in this month’s {http://www.realsimple.com/} Real Simple Magazine {/url}as an answer to my prayer. And the more I have thought about it today the more I think the article is an angel message and the answer to my prayer.
The list to have More Free Time is quite practical. The Real Simple list starts with the suggestion to Step Back (For a Second).
Sounds smart. Getting the self out of the way is always helpful. Step Two is: See What You Can Give Up. Another good idea as clinging to things is not helpful in achieving order—Heaven’s first law. There are many specific suggestions—among them asking ‘what can I delegate and what can I outsource?’ I am dropping the article off this afternoon when I pick up my passenger. I’ve asked him to read it first so that he can refer to it when attacked by the “I need QUIET TIME” deluge and he can keep things a bit impersonal. The best thing about this angel message is that I don’t have to say a word.