Cleaning up of Life’s Messes and Setting New Boundaries

Cleaning Up the Spilled Milk

I am home today and so glad to be. I have quite the line up of things to do today. There is no milk that spilled in my house but there’s been a lot of darts and accusations in the last couple of weeks with extended family – lots of questions, a lot of speculation, and a few answers that may or may not be right or correct. But I’m trying to clean up the mess, even though I didn’t make the mess, for the sake of the family.

But….For starters, here’s what’s on my schedule today and I will get as far down the list as I can. We have been gone for several days in a row, dealing with Mom’s stuff, church stuff, and so forth.

• 2 loads of laundry
• Water flowers and water for the cat
• Check on my health insurance records
• Make nail appointment for Friday
• Review Mom’s finances/pay bills
• Deposit #1 of Moms estate sale to her account (you can only mobile deposit so much per day)
• Video edit (run through of video, last minute touches, upload, title description)
• Pick up the shoe farm at the front door, lol
• Vacuum the house
• Refresh the bathroom
• Scrub the tub
• Weigh myself and do my measurements and enter into the spreadsheet
• Take my breakfast supplements after fixing eggs on toast as I’m hungry for that
• Do my Devo – it’s the last chapter of Job where he is supposedly rewarded and restored – I hope he does that for me!
• Spot clean the fridge and throw away leftovers
• Kitchen Clean up – it’s not bad today
• Make pimiento and cheese, homemade
• Clean microwave
• Clean stainless steel in the kitchen
• Take lunch supplements
• 2:00 p.m. YouTube meeting
• Send sympathy/get well cards to a couple of people
• Preview the video with George after it’s uploaded
• Put appointments from my calendar book into my computer so it’s in both places
• Order Moms quarterly health freebies from medicare
• Do a Tai CHi session
• Find boxes to ship some things in
• Dust and clean TV area and electronic surfaces
• Dust my bedroom
• Watch the rest of Sweet Magnoia’s
• Clear out old text messages

Yee Haw, What’d I do Now?

Well, there’s nothing like finding out that more members of your family have been talking about you behind your back. Word gets around. Apparently people don’t like it that we don’t just evolve totally around them like a moon in its orbit. Hello…..we actually have our own orbit over here and we run on our schedule not everyone else’s. Everyone else is attended to- don’t we all know as it’s taken up 80% of our year, but we are on track to get our time back very soon. Can people just not appreciate what you do for them instead of just demanding more? Nope apparently that is not the case here and not even in their power to be considerate or grateful.

I Raised My Voice…OOPS. It did feel good at the time though.

I had to apologize to Mom for raising my voice at her last night. She was saying that I had a quilt of my nieces. I certainly DO NOT. This made me boil. Mom gave my sister and I a quilt a couple of years ago – maybe even 4 or 5 years ago. I cannot remember. But she had them quilted with the backing put in and gave me one and my sister one. She also gave my daughter one and my niece one, a bit later, to the best of my memory. I called my daughter to make sure. She said she got it. I think this was before she left her house. If she asked me to send it, I’m sure I did. Either she asked me to wrap it or had me send it or give to my sister. I cannot remember to be honest. I told Mom that I would have done whatever she asked me to do. I wouldn’t just have taken it home and kept it. I don’t work that way. I’m one that follows through with things. I am still bumfuzzled that family members who know you well would accuse you of these things?

(And with mom when she asked you to do something, You do it and you do it fast, b/c if you take your time, she will ask you 12 dozen times about it. I’m a trained slave in that way, and I still can’t get things done fast enough for her – and have since learned that I don’t have to be a slave, nor on her timeline unless it’s a health issue – that “our lives also matter too” – whether she realizes it or not).

In the same conversation she said she had not even had a chance to go back to the house herself to get things out after she moved. I was already boiling at this point over her thinking I still had my nieces quilt, and another family member accusing me of stealing the quilts that she had wanted but was too late in asking for them and then someone took them at the estate sale, after the kind estate sale lady held them back for her. But Mom had gone back to the house and would not cooperate with us from the beginning as to what she wanted to take to assisted living and here she was saying she didn’t have opportunities to get what she wanted out of the house. BS. Calling it right here! :-O Mom knew since April 15th she would be moving June 3 and refused to use the blue tape on anything!

I reminded her with my raised voice of the following:

• She had too been back to the house. How could she forget it? We had an argument there. A huge one in which we both declared we each wished we were dead b/c this earth is too much being in it with the other one. Yeah, it was bad. So then all those things made me angry again at her not using the mover and us having to shuttle over 15 car loads as the day passed and I remember us feeling used.
• My next declaration was that I was drawing a boundary and I would refuse to be a medium between her and other parts of the family. Because I no longer want to be the responsible party for information nor “things”. Mom can’t remember and neither can I, barely anyway, so it’s no longer safe b/c if I’m involved they will blame me. I made this declaration VERY LOUDLY, to which Mom said, “when are we getting our nails done?” lol

I then called my daughter to check on the quilt thing because I cannot remember what or how I was involved but I’m pretty sure I wrapped them? Or shipped them? All I know is that I would never hold on to anything like that and I always did what she asked me to do.

I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how so many things get all twisted up and everyone pointing fingers at me for everything – when I’m over here working my butt off for these people in this family, taking on the brunt of everything at the front end. And was doing it without holding grudges, until now apparently.

I’m being put in a position where I’m still trying to forgive the last person and the last thing, and here comes three more things.

Thank God for our Savior

My daughter prayed with me and George last night over the phone regarding these things and my life group is praying and my Sunday school is praying. Why is it that the person doing all the work in this family is the person getting all the persecution? Tell me that. Is it to draw attention away from that fact, that they are not doing much to help? I’m being accused of being controlling too, my blog was mocked, my husband was pitied for being married to me, and horrible hateful things have been said about me and my family. And a life time of rooted conflict wrapped up in a nice bright jealousy bubble was brought up – I guess the current events of late weren’t good enough for an argument so more had to be dredged up to make their point?

Of course I’m controlling b/c the person controlled in their discipline gets to do all the work, eh? Speaking of that, we’ve taken 8 loads to Goodwill after the estate sale and today George is working on the 9th as I needed a break and a day at home from everyone and everything. I want to see no one and talk to no one.

I have the cleaning person coming tomorrow to do a thorough clean so we can list it next week and get it on the market. I have to check with our estate sale person who was doing a furniture post on some websites to try one last time to sell. If not I’ll get the key back and we’ll be done. And we have an agency to call to come get remaining furniture. Hopefully. If not we’ll have to hire someone to move the remaining pieces.

So I’m trying to forgive and figure out what that looks like, as you know from previous posts. These things always tear me up so. And much of my advice is to release it and not let it bother me, threaded into loving your neighbor as yourself, and being able to separate the person from the sins, and to realize we all have sins, and to pray for them. So I’m praying for both of these family members.

And even though I do not have my nieces quilt and I do not have the two quilts that were stolen form the estate sale, I will send my family member the quilt that Mom made and she gave me (she also gave one to her). But I will give this to her. I just have to find a box to ship it in. And I’m also shipping the cookbook. I don’t know why, but somehow it’s me trying to make her believe me, I guess, but for some reason this helps ME – even though I’m not the guilty party here. Sending this damn quilt will help me release MYSELF. I honestly at this point don’t care what she thinks b/c I’m becoming so numb to the whole thing. But I realize that the giving of this quilt is going to help me get over this. And it’s the only way. Because as of this writing and I am so very not over this! But I’m trying to move on, b/c this person will not get to rent space in my head for much longer.

Middle of the Night Lessons

At 3:00 a.m. this morning I finished another lesson on forgiveness in the YouVersion app. At 4:00 I started a new one. At 4:30 I went back to sleep, knowing how to resolve it for me and try to make it right. I’d send her the one quilt Mom gave ME. And I slept until 6:00. At 8:00 this morning I sent a text apologizing to Mom for raising my voice with her. I also said a curse word or two, and I forgot to say sorry for that, but since she is the one that taught me to say the word “sh*t” everything something bad happens, she ought to understand.

But I also told her I had reached my boiling point and that I would no longer be in the middle b/w her and my sister. If they need to talk or give each other things they can do it without me and that I’d give my sister my quilt that Mom gave me, so everyone would quit accusing me of taking quilts. Geez! Like when have I ever been a conniving thief?

(Ironically when I went to deposit the estate lady’s check, I noticed that the check had quilt patterns on it. It made me chuckle and shake my head. The theme of the week apparently! The evil spirits must be having a party over that one!)

Forgiveness is not this….

I realize that I DO NOT have to put up with the juvenile behavior from ANYONE in our family just because I’m choosing to forgive. I can draw boundaries of protection for myself so that I do not hurt and I do not sin myself. (My family can make me sin like no other – let me tell ya!) So new boundary setting will be done.

I don’t have to approve of anyone’s behavior by forgiving.

I do not have to be in a relationship with anyone that I don’t want to be in, just because I’m forgiving. I keep trying but you see where it lands me every time?

I AM, drawing NEW boundaries, and I’m keeping them. PERIOD.

And I am working with myself daily to release it and give it to God so that I don’t harbor it. The best way I can do this is just to focus on other things, and be happy doing what I’m doing. Soon Mom’s house will be sold, and we can release that burden as well and kick the whole darn project to the curb! And I’m getting my life back soon!

Running away from home….

I will admit that running away from home, purchasing that RV van I’ve been noticing at the local county RV dealership, would be a real thrill and beautiful option to my dilemma. Heading west, snubbing the rest, mooning everyone on the way out, leaving life totally up to them to deal with. That is what my head wants to do. I have done enough, haven’t I? Go do what I want, like everyone else does in the family, evading responsibility. But that’s not me. It would be nice. But I could never do it like they do. So I dream of running away in an RV. I watch it on TV, and I smile pretending I’m there getting to live my life.

How did we get here anyway?

So I’m trying to clean up the spilled milk here. I think there will always be a stain. Only God can bleach it clean. But I shall go on about my day, with my boundaries. I don’t know why we have to be born into the families that we were born into and how they end up in such confusion. It’s the devil’s intention to bring drama, confusion and division so that we all lose love for each other and I will tell you that the devil did it. He succeeded. I have lost so much love and respect and trust. I don’t know how to build it back again and that is what makes it so hard, is the trying to love people with their behaviors when they are not sorry and they hate you because you don’t serve them and their own purpose you don’t serve them in their time frame I mean please give me a break. Or don’t bother. I’ll take my own break whenever I want it – starting today!

And I have also set a day or two a week at least where I don’t even call mom to check on her. She has her people now to attend to her. We both need to be reminded that I am NOT her slave nor her puppet, and nor will I be her medium b/w family members again. If they can’t communicate without me, they’ll just not communicate.

I also have some unspoken boundaries too. And that is what I have to do for me. So those our reserved for my knowing, and no one else.

The tribe, and there’s a lot of us, has spoken amidst this circus of life. Who’s the tiger? Who’s the elephant? Who are the monkeys? lol