Synchronicity

Sometimes it seems prayers, like questions, are answered with more questions. I still have some praying and thinking to do about my issues with being faithful to my chosen family, while being accepting of my husband's family (and my birth family, too). There's a post over at Friar Yid that touches me to the core.

http://friaryid.blogspot.com/2008/12/reflections-on-yarzeit.html

He's not talking about me at all. But his use of the story of Abraham choosing to sacrifice his own son (even though the son is given a reprieve) rather than disobey G-d made me see the orthodoxy in my unorthodox life. I haven't worked out the nuances, yet, but I can see the spark of an answer amid the myriad of new questions.

Once, in M*A*S*H, a crazy guy who thought he was Jesus was asked why G-d doesn't always answer our prayers, and he said he always answers, but sometimes the answer is "no". I think what's happening is that we're not asking the right questions. Sometimes the answer is in the form of more questions to help us get to the right one. At least that's what I think.

One time, when I was a kid, my dad had a friend who went through some mid-life crisis, left his wife, started dating a much younger woman, and started dressing like some "hipster". It was embarrassing. I couldn't look at him. One night, he gave me a present - a board game called The Peter Pan Game (doubt he saw the irony) which was really cool. However, I couldn't look at him or at his young girlfriend. I just wanted to sink into the floor.

My dad told me later that I was rude to his friend, and that it hurt him to have me be so disrespectful. I never wanted to hurt my dad - but I felt like "pretending" to respect this guy was dishonest. I did a lot of thinking and praying then, too. It occurred to me that if I were only going to treat people with respect whom I thought deserved respect, then I was going to have to spend all my time judging people's behavior before I could do anything. That also meant that my behavior would be controlled by the behavior of others instead of being self determined. If they were respect-worthy, then I would be respectful; if they weren't, then I would be disrespectful. That just didn't seem right.

I finally decided that I could treat people with respect - not because they deserved respect - but because I deserved respect. Then it didn't matter whether they deserved it or not. I could treat this friend of my dad's with respect without feeling like a phony, not disappoint my father, and still feel true to myself.

There's got to be a solution like that for me here, too. It's just much easier for me to handle people hurting - or trying to hurt - me, than watching people hurt those whom I love. So this one is going to take more work, but I feel like the answer is closer now.