Things that I can (and cannot) fathom

I may have mentioned that we had our priest over for dinner last night. While he was here, I was able to ask him about a question my brother and I have been chatting back and forth about. It's something I have some experience in and have dealt with before, but experience makes it no less hard. Namely, forgiveness. It's easy to forgive someone who asks us to. Or it ought to be. Love always hopes for restoration. But how do we actually, actively, deliberately forgive someone who does not ask for it, and who continues to harm?

In my life presently, I'm talking about the Ex, the "Un" I mentioned a few days ago. The harms just keep coming and I walk a very fine line between anger and hatred. I don't want to fall from one, which is just, into another, which is never, at present, just.

He used an interesting image. He said, "Imagine that every wrong she does you is like a flaming arrow. It's going to hurt. It's going to burn. Of course it is. And of course you're going to be angry, and of course you might rant to J. But you have to let those little fires go out." Don't keep fanning the flame. In one sense, we have to keep a record of wrongs. We have to keep track of the relationship, especially when it comes to the kids. But in our internal life, we have to leave each rock thrown wherever it lands. We can't pick it up and carry it with us. We certainly cannot throw it back. And we must actively hope, not only for our sakes, but hers, that the arrows and rocks stop coming.

I can fathom that. I can learn to do that.

I have a harder time with the dictates of biology. My stepdaughter started her period this week. She is nine. Nine. She still believes in the tooth fairy. She is in every way a child and yet nature already makes it possible for her to bear one. WHAT? Does that sounds incredibly young to anyone else? I mean, I'm no yardstick of normalcy. I was sixteen. But nine?

I feel like a baseball bat just collided with my head. Not in a painful way, but in a sit-down-on-a-step-and-let-my-head-spin-for-a-sec way.

Now really, where in my mind do I put that?

Oh. I ovulated 12 days ago. Right smack in the middle of a 3-day "stint" (if you catch my drift). My doc would throttle me if she knew. I was told in no uncertain terms that we were to avoid such a thing. In my defense, virtually none of my typical preovulation symptoms showed up. Aside, ahem, from the "drive" that brought about the "stint". :-D So I didn't know it was coming and didn't know it had until a couple days later when my temperatures started to rise. Eight days later, I registered a significant temperature dip. It's risen every day since then. I've been tracking my temperatures for a year and it's only done that twice. Once led to nothing. The other was on February 28th. I'm only barely hoping and not really expecting anything. But, well. you know how it goes.

Sigh.