I have been wondering (and so has The Bernardsville News, who asked me to start blogging three months ago) why blogging has apparently been so challenging for me ... if anyone has noticed, I've done only four blogs in three months and I've been told, though I've only read two blogs in my life, that this is something people do on a daily basis. By all accounts, if you were asking someone who knows me, even for 10 minutes, I am a non-stop talker, non-stop writer, non-stop processor, truth teller, no-filter kind of person. So why in God's name would blogging be challenging for me? It really doesn't make any sense, and those who know me say, "Megan! I would think you would LOVE blogging!"
So I have thought about it ... is it my fear of exposure? my question of "why would anyone care what I am doing?" or maybe it's my concern that if people really knew what went on in my head on a daily basis, someone would have me in the next ambulance racing up Route 287 to Morristown Memorial Hospital psych ward. I am a psycho-therapist and social worker, so this would not be the best way to attract new clients.
I am a thinker ... a feeler ... an explorer of the human experience, and sometimes this can be so damn annoying to me, and I am convinced it is the same for the people who love me (and especially to those who don't love me) But I am who I am. I am my father's daughter.
So if I am going to cover today's events, they are as follows: Starting my day off with 12 United States veterans raising the flag in the center of our town. Heartworks started this tradition a few years ago and I look forward to it all year. Out of 200 families on an e-mail list announcing this event no more than 15 families have shown up any morning or afternoon this week (they raise the flag at 8 a.m. and lower the flag at 4 p.m.). This makes me want to scream. This makes me want to knock on doors and ask what the (expletive) people are doing with their time. If it were not for these men we wouold more than likely not have soccer practices to be on time for or breakfast meetings. I don't understand, especially because we are presntly at war, how anyone in our country can continue to take anything for granted. I really, truley do not understand why people would not be jumping out of bed 30 minutes early to come say "thank you" to men that have paved the way for the life we have.
Which in turn reminds me of how judgmental I am. How I have to remind myself that I grew up with a father, a Korean War veteran, who never let us "celebrate" Memorial Day weekend. We were told from an early age that it is a weekend of reflection and gratitude, not sales at the mall and BBQs. This response was always met with my very best eye roll and heavy sigh. He was a man who, on freezing cold winter days, would be in warm flannel pajamas sitting in front of a roaring fire and would get up, put on shorts and a T-shirt and run five miles until he came home with ice hanging from his earlobes. As he came back home hooting and hollering, my mom would look at him and yell, "Larry! You're crazy! What the hell are you doing?" and my Dad would run up the stairs, jump into a freezing cold shower and scream at the top of his lungs. Ten minutes later he would come downstairs in two pairs of flannel PJs and his striped robe, with a hot cup of coffee in his hands. "Meggy Meg, I started to take the warmth for granted, so I had to fix that!" and would settle back into his chair for the rest of the football game he had started.
I am 42 years old now (really??) and I have to realize that not everyone was raised by my dad. So I have no right to judge or blame anyone.
Oprah always says, "When you know better you do better." So the fact that so many women, all of which I love dearly, do not see this flag ceremony the way I do is difficult to swallow but I understand what Oprah is saying and I realize that everyone has different reasons for supporting different things...but in reality...how can you not supoort our Veterans??
Next is the agony of throwing out half of a tuna sandwich that my daughter Madison didn't eat for dinner tonight, because I just got through watching a video by an organization called "Feed the Poor" about three little girls spending their days, in a country I've never been to, walking up and down a mountain collecting clean drinking water for their family. They spend so much time doing this that they don't have time to go out and find food to eat. They choose clean water over food. They have to choose this and they are like 2, 5 and 8 years old and have nothing. When their mom brought home rice from a neighbor's house, she had to pick leaves off a tree to give it some nutritional content. My loves, Madison, Caroline and Mary, are 4, 9 and 11. so enough said, right? Torture to throw out this half a sandwich tonight! I live in a town where if someone's road has a pothole in it or their neighbors play their music too loud people seem to have time to raise hell to raise at a town council meeting, but 8 minutes each morning and afternoon for a week to honor Veterans? Nope. Is my judgmental personality showing through again? This is why I am hesitant to blog.
And then there is my godson, Charlie. The most painful part of my day to write about. Even more than our veterans not being honored enough (only in my own judgment, of course) and starving children walking up and down hills for clean water, it is more painful for me to write about sweet Charlie because a week ago tonight, four hours from now, my best friend from childhood's son woke up in his room in a small town in Rhode Island, had a seizure, fell down the steps, which woke his parents up to their worst nightmare. He was rushed to the hospital (though by Amy's account the word rushed is inaccurate because when your third grader is in the back of an ambulance, it takes FOREVER). I believe her because I have a third grader as well.
It was the same day that lovely Pat called me from The Bernardsville News and said, as politely as she could, "Megan, blogging means to actually blog, write down your thoughts, your experiences, your feelings". But sometimes this concept is just too much to ask. I have not been ready to write about Charlie or the tumor that was found in his brain when he arrived at the hospital. I have not been ready to write about the silences on the phone with my Amy because even though we are as close as BFFs can be, there are times like this when there is nothing to say. This silence has been our sacred ground. A comfortable discomfort between two lifelong friends ... My heart reaching out to her from New Jersey to Rhode Island, to say, "I love you, I love Charlie, this is all (expletive) up but both you and I know that God is as present as He has ever been".
Nope, not ready to write about Charlie. But I will ... because Pat from The Bernardsville News and people who love me seem to think I can be a blogger ... so I guess there will be more tomorrow. Good night and thanks for listening,
PS: The reasons behind the title "Overwhelmed or "whelmed" as Amy and I call it, is because Amy and I say "whelmed" instead of overwhelmed when we are overtaken by God's grace and powerful truths of the human experience. Simply put, the term "overwhelmed" is reserved for too many soccer games in a day, the air conditioning being too cold and too many hand-me-downs to fit in the closet. "Whelmed" is when the important truths of life seem to be too much, either because they are so awe inspiring or so terrifying and there are no words to express the experience. Though as a blogger I will do my best.
As I post this blog, my iPod is playing "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles ... this fits perfectly into the realm of "whelmed."
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