Renter vs. Owner Mentality

 

I have a secret love.  Mind you all, it's been ongoing for years upon years, but here lately I've indulged in it more and more.  I like to watch vlogs about small apartments.  We're talking anything from 191sq. ft., to the 2m sort in Paris.  Deep city apartments, lost in the boroughs and arrondissements.  I love seeing how people utilize their tiny spaces, some of which are rented and some of which are owned.   

Do I have any desire at all to live in New York, or Paris, or Italy, or Chicago or Los Angeles? Nope. None.  Not at all.  I am very much a girl who must have her green space right outside her window, be free of traffic noise and fumes, and be able to access her home without climbing five flights of stairs or walk six blocks to the corner grocery.  I am and always will be a country woman and be quite happy about it.  But I love the glimpse into a life that I don't know and never shall.

But this is about what I have discovered about the creative, die-hard city dwellers.  Renting an apartment never stops them from decorating and changing and improving the spaces in which they live.

Each woman has made the apartment she's gone into uniquely hers, changing what she can, carefully saving whatever element she might remove and reinstalling it or painting over it, when she is ready to move once more.  These people are owning the apartment for the time they are spending in it and allowing themselves (with the true owner's approval) to make it an extension of who they are, their aesthetic and their likes or dislikes.

I recalled a day and time, not too very long ago, when I was living in my current home, a home I actually owned and had for years, as though it were a temporary abode, someplace I was just passing through...And how I came to truly love it here once I'd begun to make it my own home.

So there I was thinking about houses and then, as these things will, it went deeper.   What came next made me stop and think...  How many of us are owning the lives we live at present?  I mean really acting like this life we've been given is ours even more than it is our family's or our parents' or our partners'?  Even if it's not the season we'd necessarily choose to be in?  

I've had it drilled into my brain that we should never be self-centered or selfish in any way.  But I think that 'rule' to live by is especially directed at women and directed a little to adamantly and too harshly.

I've met three utterly selfish, completely self-centered women (and about as many men) in my life and frankly, I don't much care for a single one of them.  I can just about tell you exactly how any visit or conversation with them is going to go.  It's all about themselves!  

Here's how one such recent conversation went with one of those sorts.  

"I'm so sorry about John...I don't feel well.  I haven't really felt good in ages.  I've been trying to get someone to see to this matter that I don't know what to do about, and no one will help me.  I wish I had someone that would just do something for me!  I thought I'd try my hand at sour dough and I told..."  And they were off.  In their mind, they'd mentioned the loss, had done their duty, shown they were kind and that was the end of that.   

At a recent dinner, one woman dominated the conversation so hard that even if anyone chimed in to agree with her or ask a question due to genuine interest, she'd stop and say baldly, "I wasn't done talking!" and plowed ahead.  She never did finish talking!  No one at the table got to say a single word during the whole meal.  What I felt at the end of what should have been a pleasant gathering wasn't indigestion but frustration and very real dislike that made me feel dyspeptic.

So, there's that level of self-centeredness and selfishness.

But what about the other level?  You know, what I mean.  The women who were taught it was Godly to be the submissive one (which has never meant exactly what some will have you believe).  Or the ones who perhaps slipped quietly into the background because we felt it was our duty to cover responsibilities no one actually asked us to cover. 

Or the ones who were forever giving up their hopes and dreams so that another could go chase still another rainbow.  We do it because no one was there to do it for us.  We do it because we want to follow a Christian walk.  We do it because we want everybody (oh the dreaded everybody) to think well of us.  We do it because we were taught to do it, to a fault.

I think too many of us are so afraid of being the wrong sorts, have had it ground into us so hard that to show any personal preference, or have a life of any sort that allowed expression of self was quickly erased and wiped out.  Forgotten about.  Squelched.  Swept into a dark corner of an attic closet and left there.  While we, the person, the woman, the girl, the soul that we are, quietly disintegrated into nothingness.  

And honey, that's what I'm here to ask now.  

Are you owning your life, or simply living like one of those temporary sorts?  Waiting until you reach that distant day called Someday to hang a picture or paint a wall, or sing or dance or paint?  Waiting until you have the right amount of money, the right house, the right partner, the right time?

You do realize there's a good chance that Someday is really NOW?  That you were meant to do more than clean up behind someone else or continue to be the great supporter of all and sundry?  That you were actually meant to discover your own light and let it shine?  That quite possibly you're not reaching all of the people you were meant to reach in this lifetime because you kept settling for the lesser things, the temporary renter mentality and never accepted the owner mentality that "This is mine for right now."  

It doesn't make you selfish.  It makes you brilliant.  It makes you confident.  It makes yourself and others aware of you, stunning and awesome YOU.  

You know...  God only made one of You.  

So why not show everyone who He made you to be?

Stepping Into the Void

I was meant to be gathering images for a collage that marked Past, Present, and Future for a weekly task in a study I'm working on.  Since I have only a very few magazines on hand, most of my images centered around words clipped from pages and a handful of pictures that represented things important to me.  Frankly none of them represented my past, of which I feel I've had a gracious plenty!  Instead, I focused on what I wanted to see in my future.  Some of what I have now.  A lot more than I have now.  I had slowed considerably in clipping and started scanning articles as I flipped through one of the last magazines. Suddenly there was a small paragraph that leaped off the page at me.  

My Turn

 

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately...  Oh, let me begin again.  As usual, I've been doing a lot of thinking...

Possibilities abound all around me.  Things I've always wanted to do, never had time for, or was otherwise unable to do.  All the usual excuses come into play here. In the past, I'd cite John's lack of interest, a lack of money, a lack of time, etc.   All were exactly what I said they were: excuses.  Some had more validity than others, but they were all excuses, nonetheless.

July Promises and Possibilities

 

For this last day of June, I have been mildly busy.  And I took a long, deep nap, too.  I've wished a Happy Birthday to my granddaughter Rosalynn who turned 12 today.  I've worked in the shed, made Cheddar Jalapeno bagels and contemplated what I consider to be the real start of summer, the month of July.

It is the last 'vacation' month for the children.  Nearly all of them start school at the end of July or the first of August.  June was full enough of nice things to keep me feeling I'm more than a drudge but not all the things I'd promised myself came to be.  I'm happy with what I did get to though.  

But what about July?

The Visible Woman

 

It is a common truth, that as we age, we shrink.  Gravity has a way of pulling us down closer to the earth.

But for some of us, we've been shrinking for years. It's nothing to do with aging.  It's everything to do with thinking we are of no value, that we have no right or reason to draw attention to ourselves.  

For some of us, shrinking out of sight is a skill we learned as children.  We kept low and out of eye contact range as much as possible.  When all hell broke loose, we went quietly about picking up pieces, cleaning up messes, taking care of the debris from someone else's fallout level disasters.  

Someday Is Now

 

Everyone has a list.  It might be a physical list, but some of us only keep a mental one tucked far back in the brain.  And every once in a while, we drag it out of hiding and examine it. It's the Someday list.  Others might call it the Bucket List (good movie by the way...).  It is a comprehensive list of all the things we mean to do someday.

Someday...

My Grief

 

Here is a question I struggle with a great deal:  What does grief look like?  Is it meant to look exactly the same for everyone?  Does it come in different sizes and different forms?  Does it go in and out of fashion like styles?  How do I, as a new widow, still lively enough to want to live fully and well, deal with loss?  What is my identity now?

So many questions follow the one question, which is circular and always comes back around: What does grief look like?

Loss and Possibility

 

This is where I am here in June.  I have experienced a loss, a great loss, and yet I am so very aware that there are all sorts of possibilities before me.  It's a weird balance to walk between grief and joy, between old identity and new unformed self, between now and a future that is so vast and unknown before me that it scares and thrills me all at once.

As I came into May, once I began to be aware of life still life-ing all around me, it was hard to remain in the fog of grieving on a permanent basis.  Oh, there is still grief and it comes upon me unexpectedly at some point in most days, but it's not devastating.  It's not consuming misery.  It's just an awareness that there is a huge void in my life, that John's presence was large in my life.  I was happy to sit on the sidelines for the most part, to observe quietly and share what I observed with him.

A Time to Dance

Ecclesiastes 3 has always been one of my favorite passages.  The whole book is a favorite of mine, but most especially Chapter 3:1-8. 

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." 

Those verses speak of all the things of life in my opinion.  I find them very comforting at most any time but of late I've found them reminders to of hope because for everything we might experience in life there is an opposite that balances all.  

True to Myself

 

There was a place in my life where I didn't like who I was.   I'd say the shocking things that no one else would say just to see people react, to draw attention to myself.  I didn't want their attention, yet I felt compelled to get it just the same.  I was too loud.  Prone to exaggerate. Intent on disguising all that I wasn't by pretending to be someone much bolder, badder, and funnier.  Acting and behaving in ways that made me uncomfortable, that felt false to who I truly was underneath, but I thought if I acted more like those around me then I'd not feel so lost and alone and so very much on the outside of the window looking in at everyone else.  

There comes a point in every life where we have to own who we are inside and who we are pretending to be.

Love, Intimacy and Desire

I've been reading an absolutely lovely book by a female Christian writer widowed after 46 years.  She talks of the great love she and her husband shared.  I too have spoken of the depth of love John and I had, how good (and normal) our marriage was.

She mentions many of the emotions and feelings I myself have experienced.  But one thing is noticeably missing.  It is missing in most dialogues about widowhood.  Perhaps because for many of us it is such a powerfully intimate subject, and for some even taboo.