The Reality of Being Me

So I made this bad decision. I wish I hadn't, but in fact I did. I made it so a member of our church could not be present at a meeting. I even did it on purpose, even though my intentions were good. I would imagine most people who make bad decisions say much the same thing. I know my sixth graders did; "But Mrs. Harrison, I did mean to cheat, it's just that she...!" Yeah, that's me. I suppose the culmination of seeing Anne Lamott (a woman who says how it really is), falling madly in love with my dog, reaching some unforeseen limit with a friend, and discussing the status of our church last week finally resulted in some action on my part. Too bad it was ugly.

I feel all mixed up inside. I'm angry and hurt and sad and guilty (what's new?), and at the bottom of it all, I just want things to be easy. Not easier, just flat out easy. I hate the hard work that goes into being involved with the people in my church. I love being friends, true friends, with those people; I just want it to be easy. It's not going to be, not ever. I hate having to eat crow about something I thought was a good idea (and am still not sure was completely wrong). I hate having to be the one in the wrong. I hate feeling manipulated and guilty and trying to be brave when I just really want to have a good cry about it and finally speak the truth about how hard this is and why it's so hard. I want to be able to breathe freely with all the people in my church. I feel like it's too dishonest not to.

We had a good start today. We did speak some truth, but it's not enough if we just stop here, because then it will be personal and our discussion will have been only about me and my poor judgment, and that I don't think I could handle. I am afraid that we will decide that was enough talk and the rest of the struggle will simply fall into the abyss that the rest of our conflict and angst goes. I hope it won't. I hope that we will keep fighting through the hard stuff and do what we can to keep speaking truth. I know I will have to. Oddly, because of today, I have more hope than I previously had that we might be able to keep up this sort of dialog. I hope that we can be honest about our church and where we want it to go. I hope that we can speak more truthfully because we know that we will still love each other, despite our shortcomings, our thoughtless remarks, our poor decisions, etc., etc.

Sometimes I'd rather be anyone than me.