Six Word Saturday (8/14/10)

Three years worth of counseling sessions

Today marks the 3-year anniversary of the first day I started counseling.  No, I'm not going to give a rundown of everything I learned, but it is a lot.

The biggest thing I learned -- the best thing --  happened the very first day.  This guy Mark who I'd never met before (and who never met me) listened to everything I said and I could tell he cared about me but the whole time I was there that day I couldn't get my head around WHY he did.  Why would someone who doesn't even know what a bad person I am care about me???  Then he gave me a DVD to listen to of someone's counseling testimony.  All the way home and even AT home I felt this comfortable softness, the same as I did at the office.  I put the DVD in and listened; it was a college student.  The thing that struck me so hard (even to this day), she said, "Mark was like Jesus to me."  That's when I had my "Jacob moment."  

Jacob from the Bible -- he had a dream about a stairway to heaven and God told him he would give him descendants and would watch over him.  Jacob was sooo excited about it and said "Surely the LORD is in this place and I was not aware of it."  (It's noteworthy that he used a stone for a pillow, a hard stone and it didn't bother him at all because he was having such a great dream.)

It wasn't Mark causing the comfortable softness I felt, it was God.  As soon as she said that, I knew.  "Surely the LORD is in this place and I was not aware of it."

Six Word Saturday (8/7/10)

"Well, there's a big surprise"

Yesterday those were the first words that popped into my head when I woke up, as the voice of Vinny Gambini from the movie My Cousin Vinny.  In that movie, two boys are framed and on trial for a murder in Alabama, and Vinny comes all the way from New York to be their attorney.  Except he's only handled accident cases fighting insurance companies ... and they've never gone to trial.  So Vinny makes a lot of mistakes in court and keeps getting in trouble by the judge.  One second he's saying something and the judge warns him about being in contempt of court, the next second he's riding the rickety bus to jail.  Being in contempt happened so often that when the judge threatened him with contempt again, Vinny muttered under his breath, "Well, there's a big surprise."

So this line pops in my head yesterday morning and I was thinking about it all day.  Vinny knew he wasn't an experienced murder trial attorney, and he kept getting in trouble.  If I were Vinny, I probably would've quit the case after the first time I got in trouble, you know?  I would be hurt that I kept getting scolded.  I would start worrying I was going to get scolded, even before I actually got scolded!  I love how Vinny persevered.  I love how he knew he was going to keep getting in trouble (even yelling to his girlfriend before he boarded the bus, "Just keep bailing me out!").  I love how he knew the judge was going to be (and was) annoyed with him.

It got me thinking.  There are a lot of people in my life who are mean, snarky, or critical.  And it bowls me over each time they act that way towards me and I get really hurt.  You would think after 43 years (*gulp*) I would learn by now like Vinny to expect it from these people.

So here's me yesterday, I almost couldn't wait for someone to make a snotty remark to me just to see if Vinny's little mantra would help me.  Well, it did and it didn't.  My kids wanted to go to Kmart to get school clothes but I still had some typing for work to do.  They kept bugging me, I kept telling them to wait till I was done, and they got loud and obnoxious and, yep, mean.  At first, yes, I could hear Vinny going, "Well, there's a big surprise," but after the 100th or so time, I started to lose my cool.  In fact, I put off my typing and took them to Kmart just so they'd shut the heck up.  But I guess deep down I'm not hurt at all because I do know that the problem is with them not me, it's not me being a bad mom or a bad person just because I wouldn't drop everything and take them to Kmart, so I guess I did learn something from Vinny after all.