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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
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Please also visit my music page, where you can hear samples from my debut CD, I Believe, which features songs written based on experiences shared in this journal.
A couple of weeks ago, my pastor said that the greatest enemy of passion is drudgery. I've thought about that a lot lately.
Trust isn't about being sure that a person is never going to hurt me or that I'll never be disappointed. This is something I've wanted to put in words for years, and I haven't been able to until now. Trust is largely about knowing that I'm not going to get shocked without reason. If the car breaks down, that's a good reason for me to be thrown a curve ball if I expect someone to show up for dinner at 6:00 and they are still not there by 6:30. But finding out that they just decided to do something different and didn't tell me hurts, and finding out that they had another engagement all along and never told me hurts even worse. But trust is also about knowing that I can work through problems with a person. It's about knowing that when we do encounter each other's flaws we can talk or even argue through the situation and eventually find resolution. That's why I can continue to trust the person who didn't tell me about the previous dinner engagement even though it hurts deeply. I can explain that I would rather have been disappointed than promised something that could never be, and I can ask for a specific action that will improve trust. The person who schedules something on top of my dinner engagement is sometimes harder for me to trust, especially if the occurrence happens repeatedly. I'm not able to see any motive in that pattern that I can work with. Instead I see a lack of respect for my friendship or presence in the person's life because there is a consistent pattern of ignoring plans and scheduling other things. The sad part of this realization is that I have stopped trusting some very well-meaning people because I didn't feel that I could confront them about this pattern. They're just busy people with aspects of their lives that are more pressing than my need for relationship, and I didn't know how to confront that. I do now. I need to acknowledge the importance of whatever else is going on and ask for a reschedule--and the other person needs to do his/her best to find or make a time to meet with me that can be kept barring unforeseen emergencies. Trust is really a two-way street. I have to give it, and the other person needs to honor it and protect it. It's not really about the behavior modification concept where I give it but the other person has to earn the right to keep it. It's about the person treasuring a gift and holding on to it by doing things that enable it to grow.
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