Stirfry~Audrey

“A bowl of vegetables with some you love is better than a steak with someone you hate.”

Proverbs 15:17

Eating healthy is something I try to do often so the above verse almost seems odd to me. I love vegetable and fruits and am not fond of big hunks of meat. But the point of the verse isn’t about the food anyway; it’s about the company. Your time should be spent with those you love eating what you can afford rather than hanging around people you don’t like just because they have money and can offer you steak. The people we love, not money, are our real affluence.

I claim, like the vegetables I eat, to understand that thought. But somehow there are times when I don’t open up to those closest to me. I’ve grown up with the understanding that my problems are less important than other people’s problems. My friends have seen the worst of the emotional backlog: the tears, the fear, the anger. They’ve let me vent furiously, wiped away my tears when I cried in fear, and been there through the most scary time in life.

You would think by now I would be used to the chats over vegetables and sharing my emotions with my heroes. But there are still times when I lock up my emotions. Not one person in my life knows everything about me; there are some things I just don’t talk about. If I leave them buried, they can’t hurt me any more. But some things I keep locked away which does cause me pain.

Case in point: my mom is having another surgery. They are removing the rod in her back and putting in a longer on to cover three of her vertebrae. This is a pretty big surgery with a horrid recovery time.  I’m not worried so much about the recovery time, but the surgery itself. I am scared.

I am the most sane person in my family, and I end up taking care of them. Though unfair to me, someone has to do it. So while my mom works through her issues, my dad stresses and my brother worries, I am the one saying everything will be alright. So I compartmentalize my emotions, and somehow this makes it hard to talk about. I haven’t even gone to my prayer group with it.

But no more. Here is my pain, my bowl of vegetables. I need your prayers for my mother’s health and need your prayers for my strength during this time. Here I am honest and open which I can’t be at home.

So to all my girls, I’m sorry that I haven’t felt I could come to you. It’s that old cliché: it’s not you; it’s me, me and my mal-adaptive issues. So here’s to you ladies; I’m pashing my vegetables bowl to the right.