A Long Time Coming

I wrote this last week. After I published it, my Mum took umbrage with it. Read it and then I’ll tell you why …

Read Between The Line #2

The line goes — ‘God only gives you what you can handle’.

Just like the ‘Women have come a long way’ line featured in my previous blog, this one is also absolute bullshit.

The world is chock-a-block full of non-handlers:

People who commit suicide are at the top of the list. Closely followed by those who attempt it.

Then there’s drug, food, alcohol addicts. Whatever numbs the pain and removes you from reality for a while.

Those who have nervous breakdowns or anxiety disorders.

Angry people who lash out at everyone and everything.

Fed up people who just stop trying.

Chronically ill people who just want to die.

People who cry themselves to sleep.

Bullied people who eventually find themselves with mental health issues.

People who can’t overcome grief.

Victims — in all their connotations.

And so on and so forth.

Organisations abound to help people try and handle stuff. Shit mental health is a chronic societal problem. And it gets worse each year.

Sure, people continue to function. Getting from one day to the next looking, for all intents and purposes, like all is manageable. But make no mistake, just going through the motions is very different to ‘handling’ things. Handling implies you are successfully dealing, rising above, coping, going about your business unbothered and unburdened.

The line should be: There is no God and life sometimes gives you more than what is bearable.

… My Mum was jarred by the ‘There is no God’ bit. She is a woman of faith. She believes in a higher power — which she calls either God, the Universe, or Source, depending on what the topic of discussion is. It’s mostly ‘God’ though.

I don’t believe in a higher power. I used to. But not anymore. (I’ll be writing a series of pieces on that shortly.) My Mum always gets nervous about my harsh and vocal dismissal of this alleged energy she holds so dear. You see, I’m always saying the Universe can get fucked. My Mum actually looks afraid when I say it. She goes all aquiver and I think she fears I’m gonna get smote or something. Seriously, she looks scared to death. She believes God is love yet her uncensored responses tell a different story. Mind you, she does have a palpable fear of authority so I do understand the contradiction.

Anyway … my Mum went on to defend her God. “I bet those people who suffer don’t even believe in God because if they did they’d ask for help. God can’t help someone if they don’t ask for it. He (yes, He) doesn’t interfere.”

She also said she’s sick of everyone blaming God for all the things that go wrong in their life. I said, “Well, the line is implying that God is the entity that dumps shit on you. It makes God sound pretty mean, really.” To which she responded, “He gave us freewill. It’s not His fault if people mess things up.”

Being reasonable, intelligent people who don’t give in to histrionics, we went on to have a well-articulated discussion on the topic and I got her to see how, in what I’d said, I didn’t personally blame God for anything. That all I did was give the line, a line that is bandied about with little thought to what it’s actually saying, my interpretation of its meaning, and that what I wrote is nothing more than an opinion. It’s neither right nor wrong. It’s just my view. Even still, she was a bit worried that there would be some terrible backlash against me. And I thought, from who? Religious people? Aren’t they supposed to be kind and accepting? Hmmmm.

The point, and best thing about all this, is that my Mum took me to task over what I’d written. She was fired up and she was not going to let it go. She had something to say and she expressed it. And, for my Mum, that’s huge because as she very proudly told her granddaughter the other day, “I’m 80 and I had my first opinion!”

Yep, it was pretty much the first time she’s dared to hold firm and defend what she believes in. It was a proud moment for her, but it wasn’t an easy moment. She looked nervous when she said she had something she wanted to discuss. A childhood spent being intimidated and ‘seen and not heard’ will do that.

I’m glad she got brave and confronted me. It was a big deal for her. It was a long time coming, but she got there and she discovered that she can speak up without suffering repercussions. That her opinion doesn’t cause bad things to happen. That her opinion is valid and she’s entitled to it. And that she can disagree and still be lovable and loved.

For that lesson she would say, “Thank you God”.

I, of course, would say, “God didn’t write the blog! Thank me (lol)