Friday Ramblings

I thought I had hit my limit for chaos this week. 

When one waves a white flag, doesn't that mean it gets better?

Like being on a roller coaster and knowing you have hit the peak and you are screaming all the way down and the end is just around the corner.

Not so much.

Especially when your new painter-friends look at you like you are talking out of your ears because they thought this would be a spray one color and be done job. I reminded him that I had told him what I wanted and then asked if he really wanted the job. He said yes, of course! But it will take "many days." Apparently they are behind all ready. Then one painter-man tells me he is a trainer for cage fighters. Did he really need to tell me this just because he saw we have a chin up bar in the house? I really don't want to make a cage-fighter upset, would you?

Let me back track just a bit.

Coming from the crazy household I grew up in, needs were not on the top of the priority list. Raging was. Working out a problem, not so much. Drinking was also a priority, and it really didn't lend itself to a healthy way of learning how to make your needs known. I did learn to make others happy and make everything o.k. and clean up messes and to be quiet and meet my own needs. I learned exceptionally well to just put my head down and get 'er done. No problem and no worries were my mantra. Ya'll just do what you need to do and I'll come in after you and quietly make it the way it should be to make everyone  happy. 

This doesn't work after a while. It doesn't work after about a day, but I got really, really good at it and soon after having Brenna,  I realized it wasn't helping me at ALL and I couldn't make everything o.k. for everyone else AND take care of a special needs child.

I have sought lots and L.O.T.S. of help for this and other anxieties in my life and continue to do so. It's a life long process, this life.

Back to my painter-friends. 

They finished the kitchen and family room yesterday and I hate the colors. My husband says it looks like a baby boy's room and needs white puffy clouds painted on the ceiling. For me, the colors are too jarring and I'm completely unsettled and I feel like I'm in a church's nursery room and need to fill the room with plastic toys.

It needs to be changed. I need to tell my new painter-friends they have to re-paint. This would be confrontation to me, or at least the possibility of it. It also has the great potential for making them upset. Especially the cage fighter.

 I work this out by waking up at 2:45 a.m. and obsessing how I will get my needs known to my new friends without a huge argument and little to no confrontation.  This also includes working out every single scenario possible in my head. 

Have you ever noticed working this out at 3 a.m. is NOT the best time of the day to work out a problem?

My sweet husband told me, (at 3:00) "It's a room. It's not like something major has been broken. If we need to, I'll paint it this weekend." Why this didn't comfort me to go right back to sleep is beyond me.

I got up and went downstairs to contemplate my new toy room. Maybe I could live with it.

I can't. I hate it. How will I approach my painter-friends?

(Insert various scenarios again and again working through my head here.)

After watching nothing on T.V. for a distraction I managed to back asleep in the middle of praying around 4:30.

I am happy to report today that I talked to my new friends. I told them what a fabulous job they have done in painting but I just don't like the color. No drinking needed before hand and no raging afterward. Pretty cool.

 Their response?  "Ohhhh. The whole room? Ohhhh. O.K."

No confrontation.

It will take more time and they do have a job to get to after my house, so I said maybe they could come back after finishing that job and repaint.

The cage fighter guy? He didn't like the color either, but didn't want to say anything.

O.K., THAT scenario definitely did not make it on my playlist at 3:00 a.m.

I'll have to remember it for next time.

 Then he went on to tell me that they painted for a lady who didn't like the color of her room either. FOUR TIMES. He said, "You don't like it, we re-do it. We take a deep breath and repaint." Then he asked me if it would possibly be o.k. to use my microwave to re heat his coffee. By then, I was ready to go buy him new coffee. 

Some days, I want a refund on all the therapy I've had. Some days it really, really pays off.

The best part????

I have nowhere to land in my house, so I went to our Corner Bakery to write this. I read my Jesus Calling devotional first. Here's a stand out sentence:

"Do not condemn yourself for your constant need of help. Instead, come to Me with your gaping neediness; let the Light of My Love fill you."

I'll have to add this to my 3:00 a.m. playlist as well.

New day. New mercies.