Let me attempt to set the mood here.  Because I am a sucker for futility.

What you are about to read is a simple explanation of my beliefs.  It’s not a defense against or an attack on any beliefs that may be different from my own.  I am neither angry nor hellbent on conversion.  This is about me sharing and clarifying my own perspective.

/disclaimer that may or may not do any good.

I’ve gotten a lot some slack about my belief that my brother’s decision to tell the truth, the whole truth, was a good thing.  Some of that disagreement has come from people whose opinions I respect a great deal, and some of it has come from “anonymous” people whose opinion I have a very hard time valuing – because I’m kind of funny about respecting shadows.

How could anyone question whether honesty is a good thing?

Well, in this particular case, complete honesty could potentially mean that both parents of an unborn child are now facing criminal charges.  It makes sense to question whether it is best for any child to suffer through a life with both parents in jail.  Of course that makes sense.  As I told one reader who questioned me directly right here on this blog (which takes guts that I admire, by the way), these are valid concerns.

And still, I stand by my belief that, in the end, only good can come from honesty.

Unfortunately, we don’t always know when or how “the end” will show up.  And because we don’t know, we do our best to use our own human and limited understanding of the world to predict the future.

We, all of us, avoid the truth from time to time because we are certain that it will cause us pain.  We tell ourselves that it’s for the best.  We imagine the consequences to be more than what we can bear, more than what is fair or good or right for ourselves and the people we care most about.

I know, because I’ve done it.

I have held on to secrets because “no good could come from telling the truth now.”  I have lied to my husband about little things and very big things, sometimes for years, because I was absolutely certain that the truth would destroy my marriage and my family.  There was simply no way that I could foresee how a painful truth could be good for any of us.

I was wrong.

In the end, the lies and secrets damn near destroyed us.  It was, ironically, the most painful truths that saved us.  In one month, Jared and I will celebrate our tenth anniversary.  It will be bittersweet, knowing how close we nearly came to missing it and how tainted some of those years we’ve shared have been.  But it will come, just the same, and we will celebrate it with a closeness and openness that neither of us could have even begun to imagine a year ago.

I had to learn about truth the hard way, unfortunately.  It was no act of courage or faith on my part that brought truth into our life; but it came just the same, and I’m grateful for it.

My brother, on the other hand, displayed more bravery and faith than I was ever able to when he spoke his truth.  (And how is THAT for some irony?)  He told the truth despite the fact that the only consequence he could imagine was even more pain.  He told the truth without a scrap of earthly evidence that it would lead to any good.

He did it, instead, in faith.

The word faith undoubtedly carries with it a heavy religious connotation.  And rightly so.

My belief in honesty, and in this case, Jay’s, is undeniably tied to my faith that God will take care of us.

I believe that God has a plan for me, and for you, and for Jay.  I believe that God can dream much bigger than I can.  I believe that my own understanding of what is good and best for me is limited compared to what God knows about happiness.  I believe that God can see “the end” much more clearly than I can, and I have faith that that “end” will be better than anything my cynical mind can possibly imagine.

But it’s not enough for God to simply have a plan for us.  I believe that it is, unfortunately, our job to walk along the path that’s set before us.  We have to make choices every step along the way.  And good Lord it can be hard sometimes to make the right choice.

Sometimes we simply can’t tell the difference between the right choice and the wrong choice.  Other times, we are simply too weak or selfish or scared or uncontrollably human.  And so we step off that path, and we do our very best to hack through the wilderness and make our own way, convinced that we can still end up in a good place through our own will and intelligence and manipulation of our destiny.

And maybe we do.  Maybe, if we are incredibly lucky, we end up somewhere that is good enough through sheer willpower.  But I believe that those good enough places pale in comparison to what is waiting for us at the end of the paths that God makes for us.

I believe that every time we step off the right path, God is already clearing another one for us, a way out of the wilderness and towards something better than good enough.  I believe there are an unlimited amount of paths to numerous better than good enough end places.  There will always be new choices for us to make, choices that can lead us towards or away from those cleared paths.  I believe that hope, forgiveness and redemption spring eternal.

I do not believe that it is God’s intention for us to wander blindly through the wilderness.  I don’t think He’s screwing with us for sport, watching us grope about in the dark while He cackles “Guess!  Guess!  I’ve made a clear path for you, see if you can find it!”  I believe that He gives us maps and roadsigns to show us the way.

And then He gives us the freewill to completely ignore all those signs.  I can’t say that I’m a big fan of that.  Also, I prefer big, blinking neon signs to maps AND a clear picture of where I’m going, thank you very much.  I have tried many times to convince God that if He would just let me know what’s at the end of the road, I would happily stick to the path.  I think His response is usually something about faith and trust and me not being so controlling and blah blah blah.

Ahem.

ANYway.

As much as I try to ignore it, I believe, I know, that honesty is the choice that God has asked me to make every single time.  On that, I believe, He has always been clear.

I have no idea what’s in store for Jay now.  Nor do I know what is next for anyone else he may have implicated when he told the truth.  I don’t know what life will look like for my niece or nephew.  But I am comforted by the fact that God does.  I am comforted by my belief that Jay’s most recent choice has been towards the cleared path instead of away from it.  The relief that he described to me is confirmation, for me, of that belief.

I’m aware that these are not universal beliefs.  I know that to some this may seem like a primitive way of thinking.  Others will discount me as naive, and still others will continue to doubt my sincerity and true intentions.  And, perhaps, some will go so far as to delight in the knowledge that I, too, have failed miserably to live up to these principles I claim to hold so dear.

I’m OK with that – or at the very least, I’m working on being OK with that.

This is my truth.  This is where I find my peace.

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Posted in Personal - Growth and Things I'm Trying To Learn Tagged: faith, honesty, religion | 56 Comments »

Related Post:And a burden was lifted…

Before Twitter, blogs used to be where the exhibitionists among us shared the daily events of our lives with a world of strangers on the Internet.

Sure, we wrote beautiful prose about our startling insights and observations of human behavior.  We dove into our own inner psyches and peeled back the layers of common sense and social decency to reveal a “truer” version of ourselves.  We crafted hilarious tales of normal life that resembled sitcom pilots and used striking imagery to make our lives seem richer and deeper and more interesting, somehow, than average.  But we also relied, on occasion, on things like bullet point posts to keep our “audience” abreast of the day to day happenings in our lives.

And then came Twitter.

Now we can share the inane details of our lives in 140 characters with the immediacy that our pathetic attention spans and instant gratification appetites crave.  And blogging?  Blogging is now reserved for when we really have something worthwhile to say.

*scrolls back through recent archives*

Blogging is now reserved for when we really want to depress the hell out of everybody.

Jeeeeezus.

Maybe the good old days of bullet posts on occasion to break up the OMG THIS IS SOME HEAVY SHIT monotony weren’t such a bad thing after all.  Of course, I have already said damn near everything there is to say about daily life on Twitter, but why should I let that stop me from boring the hell out of you?

A Bulleted Update Of Miss Britt’s Daily Life, Brought To You (Mostly) By Twitter

So, Hilly is moving in with us. Her ultimate plan is to move back to California sooner rather than later, but her DATE TO MOVE and DATE SHE HAS TO BE OUT OF HER HOUSE didn’t exactly coordinate.  Jared and I offered to fill in the gap with our guest room.  In exchange for this gap filling, she will be responsible for providing the family with entertainment and random childcare duties, although she is completely unaware of these terms for now. Jared’s plan is to ask Hilly if she has plans for the evening and then for us to simply slip out of the house under the guise of IT’S NOT TECHNICALLY BABYSITTING IF WE DIDN’T ASK.  YOU ALL JUST HAPPEN TO BE IN THE SAME PLACE.  0 POINTS FOR US!

I don’t anticipate this plan will work very many times, but I only need to see Avatar once.

My laptop broke. Specifically, my laptop on which I earn my living and spend 8 to 108 hours a day on broke.  There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth and threatening babies.  Apparently, computers do not care about wailing or gnashing or babies.  You heard it here first, #dellhatesbabies.  I am now working on a loaner laptop while Adam deals with warranties and card thingies and customer service people.  I have roughly 30 or so articles that have to be written before the end of this week on someone else’s fucking computer, so I should be an absolute joy to be around for the next several days.

In other news – I used Microsoft Paint for all of these awesome images.  I deserve a cookie.

After a minor glitch with the company who manages the prepaid calling plans for people in jail, I got to talk to Jay on the phone. It was, in a word, good.  Out of habit, I asked “how are you doing?”, and we both kind of laughed because, well, you know.  And I feel the exact same way every time someone asks me “so how is that going with your brother?”  Because, well, you know.  He’s still in jail and being charged with robbing a bunch of banks – so there’s that.  But we are all doing much better than we were three weeks ago, because that’s what we do, isn’t it?  We learn to walk around in a new version of normal with whatever new hurt or baggage or whatever we’ve accumulated.

In other news – there is an entire company built on setting up calling plans for people in jails and prisons and such.  The American Dream, people, for real.

Basically, Twitter has been saving you from oatmeal.

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My brother Jay never claimed he was innocent.

He has, from what I’ve been told, been extremely forthcoming since the night of his arrest about the crimes he committed.  He told us, at the time, that it was a relief to finally have everything out in the open.  The first time  I heard that, I wept at the thought of the guilt he’d been carrying with him, and for the realization that I had no hope of innocence to cling to.

When I went to visit him, the first thing I said over the phone on my side of the glass was that I loved him.  He lowered his eyes, unable to face me, and cried.  Without saying a word, I knew he was feeling the guilt and shame of being loved when you don’t believe you deserve it.  I know, personally, that weight that has to crush you before it can finally give you peace.  It broke my heart to watch the waves of shame wash over him and not be able to put my arms around him.  But I was grateful, at least, that I could be there still when he was finally able to look back up at me.  I told him I loved him again, and he didn’t need to look away.

That moment passed.

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve watched from afar as Jay struggled against the truth.  The whole truth.  While he willingly told his own story, content to bear the consequences for his actions, he twisted and turned and tied himself up in knots in order to protect himself from the pain of “betraying” other people he cared about.

Half truths.  Half lies.  Desperate attempts to rewrite history in order to have some control over the future.

The relationship between Jay and my mother began to unravel, as relationships do when you try to pad them with manipulation and fabrications.

I saw the markings of a con man in my little brother.  I saw the tell tale signs of the career criminals we grew up around who share just enough to make everything “OK” without ever really carrying the full burden of their mistakes.  I watched the little boy I knew disappear into a cloud of smoke and mirrors and feared for what that would mean for his unborn child.

I thought maybe all the love that we could give him would never be enough.

And then the dam broke.

After a long phone conversation with my mom’s husband this weekend, Jay finally broke.  Really broke.

He told the truth.  The whole truth this time, despite knowing all that it might cost him in terms of what he’d come to see as “love” and “support”.  Regardless of the unknown consequences, he surrendered completely.

Specifically, he finally talked to the investigators about everything and everyone that was involved in the robberies.

And the truth, it seems, has indeed, set him free.

He talked to my mom yesterday and said “It was really hard to do, but as soon as it was over I knew it was the right thing.”

The burden has been lifted from him.  He is still facing the same consequences he was last week – years, probably, of a life behind bars.  But now he faces those consequences with a clear conscience and an open heart.  And that, I believe, will make all the difference in who he is when those years have passed.

I can breathe again.

The man who held my babies in his arms lives.  The soft hearted boy I loved and protected as a child still exists inside that man.

The kind of love that I have feared would never been enough has, at last, triumphed over the mystical green ooze.

And my hope has been restored.

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The first appearance of Abrittable

Dear Adam,

According to Flickr, this picture was taken on April 17, 2007.  It’s the very first picture we took of the two of us the weekend I flew down to Florida to see if I really could convince some strange guy from the Internet to give me a job so that I could move out of Parkersburg, Iowa.  Not even 3 years ago.  Can you believe we’ve actually been friends for less than three years?

Looking at that picture, I can’t help but think “Wow, that was a really bad dye job.”  And also, “All those people are right – you have lost a ton of weight!”  And also “Why do I look high?  Am I high? Oh my God, did you drug me?  No wonder I thought Orlando was a good idea!”

ANYway.

I know that you checked my blog drafts before you went to bed last night, hoping to see what I had written for your birthday today.  After seeing that nothing was there last night, I’m sure you ran to your computer first thing this morning and checked to see if maybe, just maybe, I had taken the time to write a post for you before I left for work this morning.  Even now, as I type this from the chair in your new living room while you sit around the corner at your own desk, I know you’re anxiously waiting and wondering “ooooh, what wonderful things is she going to say about me on my birthday?”

Don’t even try to deny it.  I know you, fucker.

Instead of writing your post last night or this morning, I’ve been thinking about what in the world I could possibly say to you on the Internet that would be a) good enough for your birthday and b) appropriate enough for The All Mighty Internet.

And then I gave up.  Because you and I?  We are the very definition of inappropriate.

Don’t roll your eyes and get that high pitched squeaky voice with me.  You know it’s true.   But inappropriate or not… you, Adam, are my VVBFF.

Where was I going with this?

Hm.

I cannot for the life of me remember how I was going to tie that first part to this second part, but the one thing I wanted to say to you today was:

Thank you for your loyalty.

You are, without a doubt, the most loyal friend I have ever had.  You are always on my side, whether I deserve it or not.  You would help me bury the body and assure me that I shouldn’t feel bad because “you know, they totally had it coming, anyway”.  You always give me the benefit of the doubt that my intentions, at the very least, are good, because you believe in the good in me.

Over the last not even three years, I have come to believe in the good in you, too.

I have watched you soften your heart and open your mind to people you used to deem “beneath you”.  I’ve watched you push yourself to grow and change and accept the fact that maaaaayyyybe we all, even you, have a few things about ourselves that could be improved upon.  I’ve watched you take tiny steps to be less controlling and more comfortable with the idea that you don’t have to be in charge of everything.  I’ve watched you change the way you eat and dress and talk to strangers.

I know that not everyone likes change.  Resistance to change is a natural thing, and I know you’ve taken a lot of shit for some of the changes you’ve made in your life.  (Let’s not even talk about the fact that I’ve taken shit for the changes you’ve made, because, uh, what the hell?!?!  Ahem.  ANYway.)  I know that pushing yourself is not always easy – in fact, it rarely is.  But I’m really, really proud to have been able to watch you grow as a person.

Um, shit, this was not supposed to get mushy.

So.  Uh.

XOXO,

Britt

*Technically it’s open because it’s on the Internet.  Open letter does not always mean interesting, people.

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Posted in Friends and Family Tagged: adam, avitable, Birthday | 41 Comments »

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I am a person who believes in forgiveness.

That belief defines me.  It gives me hope and faith and strength.  It tells me how to look at the world and what to do with my anger.  It brings me peace when nothing else can.

I am a person who believes in forgiveness.

Last summer, when I man I respected died, I vowed to honor him by extending forgiveness to people who had hurt me in the past.

I said…

“Today, I forgive the stepfather who abandoned my brothers, abused my mother, and robbed me of pieces of my childhood with his violence and addiction.  I don’t have the strength to shower him with love, but I can find the power to let go of the anger.”

And I meant it.  I believed it.  And I really, really thought I had forgiven a man I once hated.

And then, today, I had to listen to someone praise that same man.  I listened as someone suggested he was capable, now, of being a decent human being.  Worse, I heard someone call him a good father.  Worse still, I listened to someone imply that he was somehow better than my mother – the woman I watched cower in a corner with her hands above her head, trying to deflect his blows, the woman who stood in his place when he was “absent”.

Forgiveness vanished from my heart as quickly as the breath escaped my lungs.

And in its place came a hot, fiery rage that I have not known in years.

I remembered the hand shaped welt on the thigh of a five year old.

I remembered standing in a puddle of my own urine, stinking and ashamed that I hadn’t been able to control myself better during a spanking.

I remembered screaming at my mother “Shut up!  Shut up!  Mom!  Just shut up!”, desperate to protect her from the inevitable punishment for “her mouth”.

I remembered the look of disgrace on the faces of two young boys who had done nothing wrong except bear the same last name as someone in the local paper.  “Is that your dad?” their friends would ask, and the two boys would come home and cry when they thought no one could see.

I remembered the rolled up newspaper wrapped in black electric tape that my dog, my mother and I would all come to fear equally.

The last time I saw him, he called me “Britter”.  “Heyyyy, Britter,” he said, in the sickly sweet drawl of a con man whose brain has been permanently damaged from drugs.  I told my husband that day that the only thing left in my heart for him was pity.  I was so sure the hate had long since passed away with years and distance and the love and support of good people.

But I was wrong.

That hate, I learned today, still lives deep inside me.  It has been buried underneath my most shameful memories, in my most vulnerable places.  It lies beside the place where I first learned I wasn’t good enough.  It sits with the realization that only a truly broken person would be unworthy of a parent’s love.

I hate him.

I hate everything in me that he broke.  I hate that, decades later, the memory of the sound of his voice makes me weep.  I hate the way he ripped apart my mother.  Do you know what it is to watch your mother cower in a corner? It’s horrible.  It’s beyond horrible.  It’s inhuman.

You do not get to defile one child and call yourself a father to another.

You do not get to make one child feel guilty because they, for some reason, are spared your wrath, while you make them sit and watch you torture the women that child loves – all the while claiming that you know what it is to love.

I hate him.

It scares me how much I hate him.  The rage that washed over me today was unlike anything I have ever known.  “I’m scared for you,” Jared said when he heard me on the phone – and I have to admit, I’m scared for me, too.

Because I believe in forgiveness.

And yet, as someone pointed out to me today, I am “slow to forgiveness”.  Twenty years, I suppose, would be considered slow by any standard.

I try to see the other side.  I try to imagine that it makes sense for someone to say that now he’s making up for the pain he caused in the past.  I try to hold on to the belief that all of us have a human side, a side worth loving and forgiving.  I try.

But I can’t.  I just… can’t.  As much as I believe in the power of forgiveness, that man remains, for me, unforgivable.

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