Today totally sucked. Today was totally blessed. That’s not as eloquent as, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” But that line’s already taken.<\/p>\n
Some of what follows is pretty personal. Don’t click on the more link if you hate that stuff.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The suckage<\/b>. You may know I’ve recently been dealing<\/a> with a chronic boundary violator. And I’ve written about boundary violators before<\/a> and before<\/a> and before<\/a> and before, so it can be a painful subject for me, and for a lot of people. I know.<\/p>\n These violations have been both professional and personal, including the one type that’s most awkward and difficult of all: dealing with a person who has “special” feelings about me and simply refuses to acknowledge that I have no such feelings for him — don’t want to and never will. <\/p>\n I hold my line. No means no. But he’s undeterred. He backs off for a while. Apologizes. Comes back and does the same thing. I thought I’d taken steps to end the problem. But no. Today it got to the point where words like “sexual harassment” and the old-fashioned “unwanted advances” came to mind.<\/p>\n The anguish of wanting to be rid of this ickiness while also not wanting to hurt a basically decent, well-meaning person has been eating my guts out. (He says all he wants is my happiness; I believe that. He’s not oozing on me or anything. He just won’t accept that his<\/i> relentless pursuit is not my<\/i> happiness and is, in fact, a squirming misery.) <\/p>\n The problem will<\/i> be solved. I<\/i> will solve it (with a little help from my friends; thanks, Ms You-Know-Who.) But today will never go down in the books as a great day. My gut aches. My head aches. My heart aches. My brain? Well, it simply seethes with outrage and the frustration of being unable to get someone to understand the simple word N-O.<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n The wonderfulness.<\/b> Late in the afternoon I stopped by the post office and there was a package holding a huge, whopping contribution to the roof fund — $500, along with a beautiful card and a photo of a roof under construction that’s prettier than my roof will ever be and made me smile.<\/p>\n $500. I’d say I’m shocked speechless — except that the people who sent this, the devotedly freedomista Family A., have done things like this before. And I’ve been blessed to be on the receiving end of their tithes.<\/p>\n Yes, tithes. The A. family are devout Christians and this is simply what they do. Instead of giving 10 percent of their income to a church (though for all I know, churches may get some), they give to people.<\/p>\n Now the A. clan — especially a certain member with whom I’ve had several intelligent but sadly head-banging talks — know I’m not a believer. They wish it were otherwise. A bible verse — yes, about roofs \ud83d\ude42 — came with this gift. And that, too, made me smile.<\/p>\n But I am what I am and they are as they are. I cherish them for their kindness and often wish I could fathom and accept for myself the religious mystery they live by. But I can’t. And they accept me as I am, flawed to the max, not the believer they surely wish I were.<\/p>\n And from them I feel no pressure at all. Just kindness beyond measure from their own amazing hearts and from — they would no doubt tell me — a source beyond understanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today totally sucked. Today was totally blessed. That’s not as eloquent as, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” But that line’s already taken. Some of what follows is pretty personal. Don’t click on the more link if you hate that stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-and-spirit","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}