Get Up and Do It Again

Motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson says that when you expect something to be easy, you get quickly discouraged when it's not, and you're more likely to quit. Halvorson's extensive studies in motivation and achievement reveal that people who think the path is difficult actually invest more effort and work harder than those who expect things to be easy. For example, the people who believed that getting a good job after college would be easy sent out fewer applications.

In my times of abject discouragement, I believe always that God sends me encouragement, having read about this woman today, and hearing what I needed to hear from her.

My upside down world, where my giving is perceived as stifling, or where my love is puked back at me, where there is often no peace in my home which should be my sanctuary, sometimes I have to physically force myself to face another day, knowing folks try their dadgumdest to make me wish I'd never gotten up.

Antagonistic, hateful and dishonest, my head and heart reel from it constantly.

Stop and cook dinner only to hear whines and complaints, a trashy kitchen left over, my frustration grows, yet I tell myself that washing all the dishes, at least, gets my garden hands clean.

I am momentarily totally discouraged. I'll get over it. I always do.

Yet Daniel came by and we watched the Braves on TV, two games in a row, one there, one here, spent with him, makes me incredibly happy.

I also have some sweetly smiling children, that others resent for deep reasons, but that I adore, that follow me around happily.

Tony was shocked last night, to find me crying outside in my Big Back Garden. Everyone thinks I have no feelings when they lash out at me. I'm overwhelmed by the fact that I'm being emotionally tormented and punished for ever attempting to help children. The backlash for doing so is severe.

Jack cried about Grandpa yesterday, upset that all of us seem to be going on with life.

He told me he'd hate any kind of new grandpa, which isn't gonna happen, but that's his biggest, deepest fear.

Light Bulb Moment: Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I get it. Extrapolating how some of my children blindly hate me for being the new mom who seems to be rudely taking over the birth mom's position. "We didn't ASK to be adopted," they'll scream at me, wrongly thinking that I kidnapped them, that I am all that stands between them and their original mom.

Oh, I understand.

I really do.

But I don't know what to do about it, and we avail ourselves of many levels of therapy in order to help them, and me, to cope.

My own mother frets over me, over the severely negative morass heaped upon me constantly.

But what can I do? I signed up for this.

I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, investing my time and efforts, even though I am constantly being thwarted and despised.

Oh Dear Lord, please heal me from within.

Now I begin the weekly struggle to get everyone dressed and out the door for church...