The Violet’s Fragrance
Posted on | August 19, 2010 | No Comments
as written July 5, 2008
My body heavy as an unforgiving boulder, I hauled myself to Family Group. It was the only place I could break in safety. The only place that could instill hope for living, even for just the next few minutes. How glad I am that I did…to sit beneath the pictures of Christ on the light mustard colored walls, I sank into the well worn couches and disappeared within myself. Except for my ears, those I left working, on the desperate chance I could lessen this load.
Analogy of the week, as spoken by my sister Elaine: You plant a seed, water it, nourish the soil – then you stand over the seed, hovering, making sure it does everything it should and that you think it should do. By doing that, you are blocking God’s light. If you keep standing there, the seed will not and cannot grow. Even you can block the enormoity of the light of God.
- Did you know just how often we mix the deadly cocktail of emotional abuse with spiritual knowledge? (“You need to read the scriptures, your son’s just wayward, just made bad choices, etc.”)
-Most of us aren’t teachable unless we’re hit smack in the face by pain. Ha! In the FAAAAACE!
-Possible acronyms for DENIAL: Don’t Ever Need Intelligent/Inspired/Insightful Answers to Life (sounds like pride) and Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.Wow…
The Woman stated: “Using willpower against addiction – is like throwing a pebble against a pyramid and expecting it to crumble and fall.”
Are you in enough pain to listen? Oh God, dear God…I am ready to listen. I’m here, I hear, please…no more pain.
I kept repeating this chant like a sad lullaby as The Woman shared a story of one wife who came into her office blustering and blistering about her husband’s tobacco use, and how she’ll continue to make an example of him in front of their children so that he’d learn his lesson. As she prayed fervently not to simply react to this woman, the powerful truth came: “It is far more destructive to your children to shame, ridicule and insult their father than it is for them to see him chew.”
Wow. Wow wow wow. How the truth blazed white hot as she said this, and my chanting stopped while I contemplated it. It is not my JOB to make an example out of anyone. No matter WHAT they’re doing. It’s never my job to shame someone, to belittle them, to make small someone who is most likely fighting so hard with self-loathing already that I might push them further toward that beckoning ledge. No matter what I feel I am owed, no matter what I have been through.
“Even after all this time, the sun never looks down on the earth and says, ‘You owe me.’ Just think what a love like that does. The sun is filled with such love that it lights up the whole sky. That, is love.” –Wayne Dyer (quoting a philosopher).
“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” –Mark Twain
Oh God, dear God…I am ready to listen. I’m here, I hear, please…no more pain. Help me to smell the violets…
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