What a weird couple of days. It was like a rollercoaster and now, just as Sookie asks on the ‘Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving’ episode of Gilmore Girls, “Am I crying or laughing?” After Jackson deep fries the turkey, and almost everything else, including a part of the lawn! Yeah, I felt that confusion.
It wasn’t all bad though.
Friday was actually a spectacular day! As the sun descended behind the rain-filled clouds and darkness ensconced the day Kyle and I found ourselves in a magical wonderland of lights. It was Keystone Safari’s holiday night! The entire zoo was decked out with holiday splendor, under the twinkling of lights and interludes of rain, a familiar place transformed into a magical experience. I even got to meet a Kangaroo joey!
Saturday was good too, my mom and I had a wonderful heart-to-heart that filled my heart with joy. But then Sunday came. As a believer usually, Sunday connotates peace, freedom, and comfort. This day instead, was a big bummer. A friend, I was building a strong relationship with in spite of a lot of limitations, like distance and ease of communication, well she just dropped a chaos bomb and put our relationship in a tailspin.
As a kid of divorce, messy boundaries and lack of consistency are tough, random disappearing maneuvers just plain suck. I’ve done a lot of work on my own and with God over the last five years to break free from childhood pain that was stuck to me, so that I stopped letting those wounds dictate my life. It’s tough when life just throws you a curve ball. The experience, even though we made some efforts to right the damage, raised more questions than I have answers for.
When you put a lot of effort into growing something, only to have the other person rip out your progress without thinking it through, it uproots the relationship. It makes it hard to keep those established and healthy boundaries. Your roots are shallow, although you are fighting to go deeper. I was discouraged by it.
Then Monday decided we should go another round, and I’d say Monday won. That’s okay, life is all about those unexpected moments and how you roll with it. The day started with a false alarm that our bank information was stolen. It’s quite the wake-up! A few minutes later we realized our furnace was not working. Living near Pittsburgh, this time of year can be chilly. It was 20s or 30s Fahrenheit outside, our house was going to need a heat source for sure.
It all worked out because God provided for our needs, and I knew even if the furnace never started again, there would be a way forward. The waves of unexpected problems were tiring though, after the unnecessary drama from the day before. That is where I felt like Sookie. It was 7:40 am and the day already seemed doomed to fail.
I’m learning a lot from these moments though, something I plan to dig deeper into in a future post. How do you handle those kinds of moments? Do you have a go-to thing that pulls you out of the frustration?
I tend to listen to music. This song was a go-to for me this weekend:
One Rabbit Riot 