Hello from my corner in Panera,
I ate breakfast, and I am currently waiting for my to-go order to be prepared. It has been uncharacteristically cool a number of mornings, a harbinger of the Fall which is to soon arrive. A drive on I-80 had already revealed the changing of colors, so I am not sure what that forecasts for the winter. Are we ever prepared for weather or do we merely adapt on the fly? I know the returning of students, the seemingly always poor planning of managing street projects (resurfacing the main street in town as traffic exponentially increases), or the unexpected closure this morning of other main thoroughfares has made a simple drive from point A to B seem like I made it halfway through our alphabet.
As noted in almost every platform, retirement, which has been a focus, is now a reality. I have a week of not being required by any entity to be somewhere at a given time. That has allowed for other things (e.g. packing, selling, donating, mailing, managing paperwork, or planning) to find themselves front-and-center. Last night I had my first experience of trying to manage my medications on new things like Medicare Parts A,B, and D and my supplemental. It appears this two week period from my actual retirement date to the beginning of the month as well as where the prescriptions are managed (in terms of Medicare or Blue Cross) are something I will need to manage differently. I have a kind pharmacist who had a coupon code, and his understanding saved me a couple hundred dollars. Thank you to my Weis pharmacist. While thought I had everything covered, I found out I was underprepared. There is much more complexity to all aspects of simplifying than I knew. I am a person who prefers not to fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, but can if by necessity. And yet, I do everything I can to prevent such a situation. Alert: what you will read below could perhaps shock some because it is a painful confession of profound failure on my part, and it might change some opinions. It is a guilt that has affected me for over half my life. It was how I acted earlier in my life.
I find myself pondering this: when are we actually prepared for much of what life presents? When do we completely comprehend the parameters or adequately plan for the contingencies? Too often, we manage neither. Today is an anniversary of sorts, but one that did not happen. It would be a 40 year wedding anniversary if I were still married to my college girlfriend. We were married about 9 years when our divorce was finalized. While some of the reasons for our marital demise were issues created by both individuals, there are certainly things that were my fault. They were my failures, and for some of those things there was (and is) no excuse. I better understand today what contributed to my actions, I am accountable for everything I did (or didn’t do). Failure to support her adequately when she struggled; failure to be able to manage my frustration or anger when I was in my late 20s or early 30s. Was I abusive? Yes. I was, and there is shame connected to that yet today. Failure to be as faithful as I should have been. There is much more one could say here, but I need only look at myself. I did not maintain my fidelity as well as I should have. Those are terrible admissions to make, but I need to make them.
It is here there is both a profound degree of failure and a connection to being unprepared. Even as a former pastor who stood before others reminding them of the importance of trust, I was not as trustworthy as I should have been. I was selfish and stupid. It is something I never did in my second marriage, so perhaps I learned through my own self loathing. Failure that affects another is much more significant because it has a kind of concentric, exponential consequence.
Some 40 years later I look at the picture (the one at the top of this post) and I think about that Friday evening. I was almost 29. Perhaps there is something strangely apropos that it is a bit blurry. I was in seminary, and I thought I had things pretty well figured out. Nothing could be further from the truth. I was a mess on so many levels, and yet I believed I was doing the appropriate thing by getting married. But I was nowhere close to being prepared for such a commitment. And yet, exactly what prepares us for such a set or level of promises made to another?
When I think back to my mindset 40 years ago, I thought I was prepared to be married. In spite of a return of a ring during a Summer Greek program, in spite of a failure to breakup with their former boyfriend, in spite of people warning me about some potential issues, I believed I could handle it all. That is both foolish and a failure; it is both egotistical and unwise. I am guilty of all of it. Therefore, the question appropriately asked is a simple why? There is no simple answer. The truth is, however, very simple. Regardless the actions of the other, and I will not give any specifics, my choice to do what I did, what I didn’t, my emotional responses or reactions are mine. I need to own them. That is still painful. I remember that night thinking I could not be more in love with someone. Now 40 years later, I wonder if I had any idea what it meant to love another. I think I was in love with the concept of being in love, of having a family, of creating my own version of the American dream. Of course, at that time, I was more clueless than intelligent; I was more unprepared than underprepared. In spite of the many things I did that were appropriate, loving, and supportive, I failed at some of the most foundational. And much like the Biblical house on the sand, a marriage was destroyed by a lack of trust from either person. I could belabor the specifics, but to what end.
At this point in my life, as I noted with someone the other day, keeping my word, being trustworthy, and having integrity matter to me as much as anything. I did not manage those things earlier in my life, with grave consequence. It is interesting that some things people believed to be true weren’t, and some concerns were unfounded or inaccurate, but there were things perhaps even undetected that destroyed both a marriage as well as my own personal sense of self-worth. It has taken decades to face that failure. And the irony of confessing it today does not go unnoticed or understated. That night I sang at my own wedding, and I know in my heart I felt and believed every word I sang. It is the video below. The song will always hold a special place in my heart because, in spite of my failing, I am a hopeful (and hopeless) romantic. To the person who wishes to be such: I wish you success where I failed. I hope you are prepared for the storms in ways I was not. I hope for those pondering their life shared with another that you will manage it much better than I. If I have created some dilemma for those who thought better of me, I hope you might find that the person you know now is more genuine, more trustworthy, and more believable than the person I was 40 years ago.
Thank you as always for reading.
Michael
thewritingprofessor55 