The Porch Swing

Yesterday was a trying day for my daughter and me. Actually, Trying was born Tuesday afternoon, grew feet on Wednesday and, by yesterday, was coming toward us at a run. I don't like trying days and I especially don't like the conflict that births them. Maybe Old Trying's purpose is to create character, maybe it's to uncover it, or maybe it's just random enough to exist without a purpose and we get to choose what we take from it. One thing about which I'm certain - I resent it taking aim at my daughter.

I wrestled with sleep last night, so full my mind was with couldas and shouldas over how the situation developed and exploded. So, I'm doing the thing that makes my husband crazy...I'm up in the wee hours of the morning, praying, studying, writing- trying to sort it out. Here are the things I've considered thus far:

There are people (a business owner specifically) who are not honest people. They've become so good at talking the talk that they expect words to be enough to cover the dishonest things they do outside the public eye.

There are people (same business owner) who would prefer to publicly misrepresent you than to privately acknowledge the wrong they've done and make things right.

Sometimes the ugliness people (again, a business owner here) show us isn't really about us at all. We might remind them of someone they don't like or represent something that's been a perpetual thorn in their side. We may have unleashed something ugly in them because we were unwittingly the straw who broke their proverbial camel's back.

And sometimes the adversity we meet in difficult, angry people (and, yet again, a business owner) is completely about us. They don't like the way we ask for something to be made right or perhaps feel threatened by our perseverance...our unrelenting determination to get things straightened out.

I've been working to figure out where our trying situation this week falls. There are elements of all four things in it. On a personal level, I have a need to understand so that I can forgive more easily. Easy forgiveness is just so much....easier. But as I'm sitting here looking out the window, I see daylight breaking. A sunset yesterday without answers; a sunrise this morning with the same questions. I don't think this will be an easy forgiveness when it comes. There will be a deliberate, single-minded quest to achieve it.