The small splinters are hard to remove on your own, aren’t they? I mean, if you’re buried under a heap of 2X4’s you might want help getting those off your back, but even a tiny sliver can be very hard to get, which is why we often ask for help. Just the other day, I had to ask for assistance with a wood sliver I managed to get from my milking stool (yes, there.) This morning, my son asked for help removing a sliver from his hand. Where would we be if we didn’t have trustworthy people to help us with splinters? We can’t just leave them, can we?\
How does one remove a splinter with love? I personally cannot imagine jabbing a trusting/trembling child with a needle just to get a reaction, or just to see the look on their face as their trust is betrayed... Even if I was in a foul mood, I could not imagine inflicting pain for my own recreational purpose. Nope. Not at all. But the splinter has to come out, so, as gently as possible, we work on it, right? And sometimes it hurts, right? Children know and understand this; even the animals in the farmyard understand that having porcupine quills/nails/parasites removed is a good, kind and loving thing for the farmer to do, and they DO show their gratitude. (possibly not at the time, but certainly later on, when the relief comes)
Honestly, I would rather do anything than clean up another mess, fix another fence, pull out another nail, etc. For me, these things are done out of necessity, and not recreation. And yet, fixing and cleaning up are a regular part of life in this world. It has to be done! Why should we pretend we are all perfect? Sure, we would likely all prefer that everyone come to the sandbox right side up and ready to be fully accountable for their own actions and responses? Ha ha! Life is messy, and interacting with people is messy. Maybe that's why I enjoy interacting with animals...the messy smelly part is there and we all know it. With people, the messy stuff is hidden. You might not know its there at all until you get a weird reaction...like a door shut in your face, or being lied to, or being completely ignored when you try to address someone. Rude behaviours like this usually indicate something smelly is being covered up. I have observed that what most people seem to want is for everyone else to IGNORE the smell. Their own smell, the neighbour’s smell – everyone must agree we all smell fantastic!! If you don’t want to play by the rules, you can’t play at all. Imagine my cow trying to hide the fact that she just dropped a five pound load of steaming shyte on the barn floor? What a joke!! Its just there, and it gets cleaned up promptly, so it doesn’t get in the milk, right? Do I love mucking out the barn? No, but I love my cow…and I love the fruit of our relationship – fresh milk, cream, butter…ahhh. What’s not to love? So she digests and eliminates. This is not a surprise to me! I’m still IN!! Did I mention that I love my cow? I brush her lovingly. When she kicks at the milk pail, I don’t love that, and I say so. I don’t pretend I didn’t notice. I don’t pretend I don’t care one way or the other. I don’t run off and leave her tied there, wondering what happened.
Oh well. Three days to prepare mentally and emotionally for another family get together where the agreement is that no one smells any shyte. Not in my pants, not in yours. Its not there, your senses are deceiving you if you think anyone stinks. The guilty party is the one that breaks the code of silence about the shyte. I anticipate a migraine as I try to play by these rules…because, I know when I walk in the kitchen, my sister in law is going to bend over and drop a nasty one right on my shoes. This makes it really hard to ignore…what to do, what to do… trying to come out of this bs is just very difficult to do. Doesn’t mean I’m perfect, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to love – I just can’t promise I can do this lying and covering up thing anymore. OK??
(I anticipate I won’t be getting invited to many tea parties now?)
Love. What is that again? That perfectly patient, kind, longsuffering quality...oh yeah, thats the part where you get offended at me, and instead of speaking to me about it you go into "longsuffering" mode. How long have you been suffering? Maybe it would have been a good idea to just talk about it when it happened? IT might have been a complete misunderstanding, after all. There are two sides to every story, right? Today, I am going to try hard to make sure that I get both sides of every story straight away, without judgement of right and wrong until the whole matter has been heard.
Have a TRULY fresh air day
Ani
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