Tolling of the Bells: Perspective

     Has it really been a week with nothing new posted?  There for a while I was on a daily roll, but life happened again. 

     I’ve had more scoping to do the past couple of weeks, and I haven’t had as much time for blogging or projects.  Most days I consider it good if the dishes get done and a load of laundry goes in the wash.  Scoping is a type of transcription.  I contract under a court reporter who sends me audio files to transcribe into text documents, formatted based on Morson’s English Guide for Court Reporters.  It’s exacting, and I’m not perfect at it, but fortunately my sister-in-law is the court reporter and she is perfect at punctuation, so between the two of us, we git ‘er done. 

     As a former deputy, I have had glimpses of criminal law and spent 5 years as one of many tending to almost 1,000 inmates.  One thing about scoping is it gives me windows into the civil disputes and divorce proceedings that people bring against one another.  It's quite different from the criminal side at times, but sometimes not so much.  Some of the things people do to one another, say about one another, hold against one another, it can be astonishing, sad, petty, awful, and utterly ridiculous.  But no matter what the scenario, what the context, it always gives me a perspective against which to hold my relationship and to realize that even though we have our moments, I am a very, very lucky woman. 

     Most anyone who knows me knows I turned away from the church pretty early on.  I couldn’t handle the utter hypocrisy, backstabbing, backbiting, mudslinging, trash talking, bad mouthing, hurtful, hateful, and utterly poisonous environment that was every church I had ever been forced to attend.  But that is not to say that I don’t believe that there are lessons to be learned in the Bible.  I just have no faith or calling towards organized religion.  I believe there are valuable lessons to be learned in many of the world's benign religions.  I consider myself a pagan, a heathen in the original sense:  one who dwells among the heath, a country person, rural; and also in the literal sense of one not belonging to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. 

     I don’t hold to any of their tenants, although (with the exception of Islam which I have never and never intend to study) I do feel that there are valuable lessons to be learned.  Casting pearls before swine, as it were, seemed to be what was happening in every church I attended. 

     One of those strings of pearls is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. 

4.  Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,

5.  not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.

6.  Love does not gloat over other people’s sins but takes its delight in the truth.

7.  Love always bears up, always trusts, always hopes, always endures.

8.  Love never ends; but prophecies will pass, tongues will cease, knowledge will pass.

     I am not all these things.  I am not always kind or patient.  I can be jealous and rude.  I am occasionally boastful and selfish, and all the gods know I have a quick and fiery temper.  I can be honest to a fault and frequently lack tact, so I guess that’s a mixed blessing.  I have known lack of trust and the complete shattering of it, though not with my husband.  He’s never abused my trust.  I have many hopes.  I am fiercely protective, I will endure, and I have endured. 

     But my husband?  He is all of these things and more.  He is my teddy bear and my rock.  He’s my soft place to hide and the kick in the ass I need when I need it.  He is humble and generous and the best daddy in the world.  And yes, I am boasting.  I will brag about him to the moon and back.  He deserves it.  He puts up with so much crap from me.  He puts up with my anxiety and perfectionism.  He puts up with my crazy high standards for everything I do that sometimes makes me come across as a bit crazy and fixated.  Maybe I am crazy and fixated.  He tells me that I am good enough.  He shows me that I am good enough. 

     And some would say that we’ve only been married for a few years and are still in the honeymoon stage, maybe I'll get jaded.  I scoff at that.  Five years isn’t all that long to be married, but we’ve known each other for over 20 years.  He’s seen all my ugly, and I’ve seen all his pitiful.  We’ve seen each other’s mistakes, triumphs, wrongdoing, and watched helpless while the other was wronged.  We’ve been friends a lot longer than we’ve been anything else, and that’s, I think, the most important thing.  Friends don’t cheat one another, lie to one another, abuse one another or one another’s trust.  Friendship is love, and love can’t happen without friendship. 

     We both have our imperfections, and we both have to forgive one another on a regular basis, over and over again, for little things, petty things.  We both have bad days and lose our tempers.  We both wake up grumpy or grate on each other’s nerves.  We get even more opportunity to do that since he’s retired and I work from home.  We are *always* together, under one another’s feet, and that is quite a bit different than spending the majority of our days apart, only seeing each other in the evenings like many couples do and like we used to do. 

     But I know this:

I know he loves our little boy. 

I know that I never have to be afraid of him. 

I know that he will protect us as long as he is able. 

I know that he is a good man. 

I know that he is trustworthy. 

I know that I am a very lucky woman.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that he loves me.