Ugh. Well this is better than what I thought might happen but not by much

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
My former father in law did very well at the service. He seems to have been sucker-punched into submission and was very sweet and thankful that so many people attended the service. I had an extremely wonderful surprise that I totally wish my late husband could have seen. father in law owns two houses in his small town. He and his wife lived in the larger one, and the smaller one next door was empty for many years. A few years ago he rented it to a kind African-American gentleman. This man, has been super helpful to my in-laws. My mother in law said many times that she didn't know what they would have done without his help. My father in law, a former racist, saved this gentleman a seat next to him in the front pew and acknowledged in front of everyone that this man is his "best friend in the world." I am so proud that friendship has dissolved his racism. My late husband would have been proud as well.
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
This man, has been super helpful to my in-laws. My mother in law said many times that she didn't know what they would have done without his help. My father in law, a former racist, saved this gentleman a seat next to him in the front pew and acknowledged in front of everyone that this man is his "best friend in the world."
What a lovely story Pigless. Thank you for sharing. It shows that people can change with time and circumstance. I am glad you were there to witness that moment. God works in mysterious and wonderous ways. Holding you and yours in my thoughts and prayers.
(((hugs)))
Leaf
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I'm so pleased for you, pigless. You were brave, and were very kind, to attend. I never once expected to learn that the man had changed.

You must feel so pleased for your children's sakes, too.

A grandfather kind enough to cherish, instead of someone whose behavior must be excused and explained.

Very happy for you and your children and family, pigless.

Great post!

Cedar
 

Kalahou

Well-Known Member
Pigless,
I have been following along, and learned much from your post and this thread. You have much strength and wisdom and insight. I send condolences for this family loss, and thankfulness for the changes and possibilities that you’ve seen. You are a strong inspiration and example. Bless. ~ Kalahou
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Hi Pigless.

Redemption. Out of suffering comes resolution and growth. And love, too.

How great.

What a great lesson, all of it, for your children. They and you acted from commitment and look what came? I do not see it as father in law sucker-punched. I believe people can learn until their last breaths. Maybe he did. Or maybe he loved his wife. Or maybe, who knows? Maybe the gift of friendship from the elderly neighbor sweetened his heart.

What a great post. So happy for all.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
My former in-laws have been driving up to see us for lunch on the first Sunday of the month. father in law told me that he wanted to meet us on the fifth. I telephoned him yesterday to thank him for the treasures that he gave to my children. I also told him that if he wanted his friend and neighbor to join us for lunch next Sunday, that we would love to have him. His voice brightened at the thought that his friend would be welcomed.
 

Lil

Well-Known Member
Pigless, I'm so glad that this wasn't as much of an ordeal as you were afraid of. I was thinking of you this weekend. What a great story - it always fills my heart to see someone change from hateful to loving of others.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
His voice brightened at the thought that his friend would be welcomed.
Pigless. This gets better and better.

What a life lesson this is for us.

This has become not just redemptive but transcendent. I cannot wait for what happens next. I think you need to write a book. What was that book that became a movie?

Lunch with Morrie or something like that.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
My former in-laws have been driving up to see us for lunch on the first Sunday of the month. father in law told me that he wanted to meet us on the fifth. I telephoned him yesterday to thank him for the treasures that he gave to my children. I also told him that if he wanted his friend and neighbor to join us for lunch next Sunday, that we would love to have him. His voice brightened at the thought that his friend would be welcomed.

This is beautiful, pigless.

I awakened this morning thinking: I've lost everything by which I'd defined myself.

And I was all about identity and what that is and self worth and how to carve out a new identity and internal versus external locus of control and oh, man ~ on and on it went.

I learned this, in my explorations this morning: There are three areas of self definition.

One includes our relationships with friends, family (Oh oh, you guys. That means Family of Origin and you know what that means, for me.), and peers.

One has to do with the sincerity of our interests ~ with the energy we put into the things we enjoy. (This would be where Thich Nhat Hahn and drinking our tea as though our joy turns the fulcrum of the Earth comes in.)

And the last has to do with things we own. Our appearances, our cars or houses, our educations, our racial or religious or sexual identities and etc.

***

I learned that, especially for those of us blasted into external locus of control through one kind of abuse or another, self worth sometimes becomes almost solely dependent on those externalized attributes of identity listed above. Today's cultural messages are all about externalized attributes of identity ~ things that can be bought or sold. How we present ourselves. Whether or not we are educated and to what degree. How our lives look to the outsider. And whether we can buy looking better by switching from say, Budweiser to white wine. Or listening to a different kind of music as part of a values system of good or bad when music is music, as stringent a reality as mathematics.

***

About that time in my explorations of self definition, I came to check in here and read: "To thank him for the treasures that he gave to my children. I also told him that if he wanted his friend and neighbor to join us for lunch next Sunday, that we would love to have him. His voice brightened at the thought that his friend would be welcomed."

And I realized that what matters in defining ourselves and our lives is not outcome.

It is faith.

Intention matters, but we can hold whatever intention we want and outcome is still outcome. So, what matters is faith. In ourselves and in the rightness of the goodness of our intentions, whatever the outcome.

Whatever the outcome.

My outcomes? Don't look so good, you guys. So, I know they say we should not compare ourselves to others. But sometimes, what we do have is something so different than what we were sure we did have that we compare ourselves to ourselves ~ we compare our what is to our dreams or our certainties regarding what the future would look like.

We cannot wrap our heads around the hurt of it, and the seeming loss.

But this beautiful story pigless, reminded me that what matters is believing in ourselves and our people and the courses our lives have taken, whatever that looks like, today or forever. What matters is that we not write the end of the story even in the secret depths of our own hearts. What matters is our faith in the intentions we've held, and still somehow hold onto, in the face of the outcome we experience. That is who we are. That is what Viktor Frankl was telling us. It isn't about whether a child battles addiction or mental illness. It is about the intention we hold, and have always held, toward our children, toward ourselves, toward our lives and our (in my case, roaringly dysfunctional) families.

This is where we (I) have been falling apart. I am forever questioning where I went wrong because I am basing decisions about who I am ~ about who we all are ~ on outcome. But...I have zero control over how a thing turns out. Maybe, no one does. In this story you've shared with us this morning, a miracle happened and a tide was turned. Had the tide come in, in the usual way, you were fully prepared to meet it. But in your intention pigless, there was room for the generosity of a miracle to occur.

Whether it did or not, you held space for it.

And somehow, one did. Or the beginning of one. And part of its fruition was your faith in the goodness of your very personal and individual intention for yourself and your understanding of how to live a life. Maybe, that is what faith is, after all. Holding space for the generosity of a miracle whether it happens, or not. Even, or maybe especially, when no miracle happens, and when something very bad happens, instead.

That's the tough part.

It almost doesn't matter how a thing turns out. What matters is holding faith with our highest selves, with our kindest selves. It matters that we see clearly, that we not go comfortably into denial about the hurtful things. That matters. But who we are is not about what has happened to us. It truly is about somehow holding faith with ourselves and our people ~ estranged or just plain whacked out as they are or as we are ~ and even, with the courses of our lives.

That was the thing I lost, pigless, when Daughter was hurt and my Family of Origin did what they did.

Faith: Holding an openness, a generosity of heart, where something unforeseen then may, or may not, occur.

And now, because I know there were struggles for you in deciding how to respond, and because you responded from your highest, kindest self, and because you shared all of it with us here...I have it back. I wasn't foolish, or foolishly in denial, to have believed in my people, or in myself, or in the goodness at the heart of things.

There was a time when a quote about faith was at the bottom of my posts. When I lost the capacity to hold faith, I took that quote down. I felt punished and lost, and became cynical. I named myself foolish for having believed better for any of us than what I saw with my own two eyes.

Here is the quote in its entirety.

"Faith is not contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out to be right or wrong, like a gambler's bet: it's an act, an intention, a project, something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of time or a whole lot of time or unending time, but timelessness, the old Eternal Now."

Joanna Russ
On Strike Against God


***

So, this morning, rather than search through my quote box to find this quote, I googled it. And learned that Johanna Russ was a lesbian, and a feminist, during the 1960s. I read other quotes of hers.

Amazing.

How to define ourselves, to ourselves, from the perspective of our highest, most ethical selves. That is what Johanna Russ has to teach us.

Me.

In her lifetime, the unmarried, and defiantly determined not to be married, childless lesbian feminist writer in blindly misogynistic 1960s America, Johanna Russ was labeled degenerate; was ridiculed and caricatured and actively hated.

But somehow, she refused to hate herself. Instead, she was somehow able to hold faith with herself ~ was able to hold faith with her highest, most ethical self.

Faith.

This ties in to that phrase that has come so clearly to resonate for me lately: "Do not fear rejection."

Thank you, pigless.

This story about your life has been a catalyst for me in defining the meaning of my own. How extraordinary that this should be so.

Maybe, another little miracle that changes everything and reaches into forever.

:O)

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
It is faith.
For me, it was intention, and the holding space open for possibility. Typically we presume based upon all of the negative experiences that have happened before. In Pigless' case she had a family history of generations that would have justified her preconceived certainty of what would happen. That the same thing will happen.

Of course, pigless thought it might, but she decided to go, open to a different outcome. Even if it was unlikely. To suspend emotions and thoughts like judgment, anger...because she and her children deserve better. Even if there is disappointment. She decided she would support herself and her children to hold faith. Or is it stillness?

Imagine your mother, Cedar, or my sister, in this situation.
It is about the intention we hold, and have always held, toward our children, toward ourselves, toward our lives and our (in my case, roaringly dysfunctional) families.
I think you are talking about love here--because what else really could fuel such an act. Love in its sense as devotion--loyalty, and faith.
But in your intention pigless, there was room for the generosity of a miracle to occur.

Whether it did or not, you held space for it.
She did. Imagine how many miracles we miss in the course of a day or a year. Because we have failed ourselves--by pre-judging. Pre-judging not others, but ourselves, that we are too small or damaged or hurt--to believe in the possibility of the best.

The miracle of father-in-law had occurred already. But pigless and her children could have missed it. By not going. By going with closed minds. By deciding to judge rather than open up.

The same thing is true for father in law. Having lost everything--he had nothing to lose. Whether it was his helplessness or whatever--he opened up. And flowered. After generations upon generations of misery, as if programmed in his genes. All he did was. Stopped.

The knowing is that there are miracles all over, that by being open, we can receive. But we close ourselves off, with all kinds of explanations, and rationales. Personality disorders. Sociopathy. Look at politics.
Holding space for the generosity of a miracle whether it happens, or not.
Yes. This is it.

Think about it. The miracles are already there. It is choosing to let them in. Like father in law did. After a lifetime. I think it is about love.
 

pigless in VA

Well-Known Member
The book is Tuesdays with Morrie. It's a great book. My former father in law is no Morrie. In fact the man has not said more than three words to me in decades. I was prepared to reject his offer of continuing the Sunday lunches on the basis that I didn't think they would even be important to him. I think I am wrong. I think simply because he does not have conversations doesn't mean that he doesn't enjoy seeing his only grandchildren. I think we continue to meet with him, continue to have short visits, continue to talk at him instead of with him, because we are all he has left in the world. And because Candy and Ferb are his connection to his family, to those who are no longer with us.

Cedar, I'm glad my little story touched something in you. My former father in law is the last person I would ever expect to be grateful for a friend. He has been so remote, unreachable, hateful and judgmental.

The same thing is true for father in law. Having lost everything--he had nothing to lose. Whether it was his helplessness or whatever--he opened up. And flowered. After generations upon generations of misery, as if programmed in his genes.

Maybe it took him losing his two sons to suicide to shock him into the reality of life and loss. He did not know how to connect with his sons. He yelled at them. He derided them. He judged them.

I watched him for years snap at people who visited his house. No one wanted to sit and chat with him. Sunday was different. Sunday he was grateful for every person who came to see him. He was teary but functioning. He appreciated the support of his friends and relatives.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Maybe it took him losing his two sons to suicide to shock him into the reality of life and loss. He did not know how to connect with his sons. He yelled at them. He derided them. He judged them.

I watched him for years snap at people who visited his house. No one wanted to sit and chat with him. Sunday was different. Sunday he was grateful for every person who came to see him. He was teary but functioning. He appreciated the support of his friends and relatives.

You have been more than kind to him, pigless.

He sounds like an awful man.

Cedar
 
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