In yesterday’s post I asked “What has happened in the space between you and the ones you love?” A reader responded,
Think of being loved but not being able to be touched. …Rituals above spontaneity. Of having Lysol applied to everything you touch. Lysol applied to children’s legs and shoes. Not being able to hug your kids after work until after a bath and your inside-clothes on. The tirades. Most things literal and not humorous. Any cabinet or freezer needing to be as stuffed as possible.
As a young person it seemed very personal and hurtful. …All the lost years…. After all those years now on the mend.
It doesn’t matter how old we are, it takes courage to live. There are many astounding parts of this story, but today I draw attention to “the lost years.”
I don’t know if any of you readers saw the episode last week from the musical comedy, Glee. It irreverently tossed together a potato salad of high impact emotions. (Delicious potato salad!) The best part was as usual the great Jane Lynch. That woman is brilliant. She shows us anger, resentment, and personalization through spitting words. She contrasts this against her thick velvet love for her older disabled sister. Sue Sylvester (Lynch’s on-screen character) has festered the insults she absorbed on her sister’s behalf, ever since she first realized her sister was different. It was only until her sister, with a still-waters affect told Sue that she didn’t care what others said about her. Her disabled sister was whole inside. Sue started to heal too.
Being present with our dark history, can summarily be our gain. Especially if in the end we found love, became connected with our journey and with others, and forgave. It becomes rather an education of sorts.
When I was struggling with my ambivalence about vocational choices, my dad told me, “Education is never a loss.” I plunged forward with that as a talisman. 
Education is never a loss. Even our school of suffering? Look at it as a currency of sorts. It’s all perspective. Even manure helps you know. We had to pay $100 the other day for a truckload of chicken-poo for our farm trees.
Self Care Tip #73 – Find the value in your suffering. Be a friend to yourself.
Question: Do you agree or not? Please tell me your story.
Once again thank you so much.
My manure was stress and in the University of suffering, I graduated with a PhD in Stress Management which has helped me and helped others.
All things work out for good to those who love God and are called according to His purposes.
Hello Miriam. Really nice to hear from you. Thank you for reading and commenting! I like that. “The University of Suffering!” you come w credentials. Keep on!
Never before have I read such an eloquent post about “manure”!
Our hilarious Thys le Roux. u r of the best sort of persons. thank u for “commenting!” Keep on!
I read a book on logotherapy many years ago when I was in high school. This sounds maybe similar. Hard earned currency. It is knowing what to buy.
ok. i had to look logotherapy up… and i am flattered to be connected in thought! u r too kind 😉 (tee hee!) “…a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to meaning as opposed to Adler’s Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud’s will to pleasure.” wow! keep it coming richard. many thanks!