Not Quite Betty Crocker

Do you believe in signs?  I asked that in yesterday’s post.  I definitely do, in the sense that more knowledge is always available if you pay attention, and what is a sign but more knowledge?

(I’m writing this the same day that I finished my post about our fight.  Because that post quickly approached a bazillion words, I will schedule this post to publish later so as not to exhaust you with my words.  Because then my online life would be too much like my real life, with an overabundance of words and an underabundance of people willing to hear them.)

I listen to XM radio in my office while I work, my latest effort to ward off the loneliness that comes with working from home.  If what’s on the radio is too stressful or too frustrating for me (I’m talking about you, Dave Ramsey callers who complain about bosses yelling at you), I turn it off.  If what’s on the radio is too interesting, I also turn it off.  It needs to be background noise.  It’s off more than it’s on.

Today, though, it was on and I was working, and suddenly the words pierced my consciousness.  The founder of TheFirstThirtyDays.com was being interviewed, and for the last thirty minutes, I’ve been hanging on her every word.

“Yes, yes, yes.”  I’m actually speaking these words out loud, nodding, tearing up.

I’ve been sitting with my need to change all morning.  I need to change my natural reaction to perceived threat, or continue to not love my husband like he deserves.  Dr. Laura (speaking of radio shows that cause me enough anxiety that I have to turn it off) told a caller that she needed to stop wanting to be loved for who she was; in fact, she would be loved for how she treated him.

You know how sometimes you hear something that everything within your being fights?  Yea.  I’ve been fighting that idea since I heard it.

See, I want to be loved because I am smart and funny and silly and smart and caring.  I want to be loved because of who I am, not in spite of who I am.  But this idea just flipped my whole premise on its head.  To be loved not because or in spite of who you are, but only based on your actions.

Scary.

Anyway, this woman was talking about how to change, so I flipped over to her website and signed up for daily emails helping me make the change I want.  Since “be nicer to your husband and lessen the Crazy in the fights” isn’t listed, I choose, “Being Happier.”  Truth be told, I wanted to choose virtually every one.  Well, except “Getting Divorced” and “Losing Your Job.” (knock on wood)

Then the words finally pierced my net-haze and I heard, “The worst thing you can do is tell someone who’s angry to calm down. It doesn’t work. Anger calls for action.  The antidote is empathy.”

Yes!

And then, my favorite, because I felt its truth in my heart, in the place where things you can’t help but know live: “The antidote to fear is faith, even someone else’s faith if you don’t have enough faith in yourself.  You can find faith in anything.”

And (last one, I promise): “The antidote to doubt is surrender.  We ask questions that cannot now be answered.  They’ll be answered in a little while.”

I’m on the right track.  A decade of drama is closed and I’ve learned much of what I need to know to be good at the rest of my life. I know it.  I just need to remember it.

Prologue

My husband and I both noticed – within hours of each other – that one of the huge trees in front of our house was leaning.  Not a little bit.  A lot.  I mean, enough that I noticed.  So for the past few days, he’s been talking about climbing it to cut it down before it crashes into our living room.  As the one with a better sense of reality, I was not a fan of this plan.  I’d hemmed and hawed and changed the subject, but he was determined.

This evening, at Hell Depot, he bought rope to go with the climbing gear he’d borrowed from a friend.  After running the plumbing thingie through the blocked pipes, he wanted to climb the 30-foot tree and cut it down in chunks with a chainsaw, all the while keeping the huge heavy chunks from crashing into our house, or us.  So, so many words wrong with that sentence.

So he was messing with the plumbing and I was picking tomatoes from the garden, plotting to keep him from climbing the tree by getting him really drunk off the jug of wine I got for my birthday (don’t knock it – Red Truck with a spigot – heaven), and this man pulled up in the street and asked if we needed any tree work.

I shit you not.  Not only did he ask at just the right time, but he quoted us a ridiculously low amount, the kind we didn’t even have to think about, and had a climber out here in an hour.  One hour.  At 7 pm on a Tuesday night.  On the day my hubby bought a freaking rope to climb the tree.

God spoke to us, I am convinced.  "Those dumb fuckers aren't taking my best attempts at speaking to them with gut feelings and bad omens. It's time to get direct."

{I’m sorry if your God doesn’t cuss.  Mine most definitely does.}

He could not have said more clearly, “You need not be climbing trees.  I will send you a person so perfect and so cheap even you morons won’t be able to keep me from saving you.”

If that’s not a sign….