Jilly Brandon

Blue can be a color, or a state of mind. The sky being blue is miraculous, but the state of feeling blue, not so much.

It permeates you’re being, and lingers longer than expected. Being blue is something you can just shake off, and get happy. It is there to be contended with and explored. It needs to be acknowledged, and maybe even welcomed. It can arrive when the quiet comes, and a person allows themselves to feel those feelings we are trying to keep locked away in the Tupperware air tight containers of our mind. Our carefully labeled boxes that gather dust and cobwebs. Some that haven’t been opened for decades.. too scary.

I’ve been researching lots, especially lately about narcissism, and how pervasive it is in our culture today. There is so much information on you tube about covert and overt narcissism, gaslighting, grey rocking, word salad, cognitive dissonance, trauma bonding… it’s an overwhelming search. There are many life coaches and psychotherapists that now have you tube channels especially dedicated to this subject. Many new terms to learn and its’ helping me understand, and delve deep into personalities, and what makes certain people live and move in society . I had never really understood narcissist personality disorder before. There is a lot to know.

There are a few therapists that I’m following that offer excellent guidance, and information, as well as therapy on how to cope and deal with these personality types. Very informative.

Our feelings need oxygen in order to be fully felt and experienced. One way or another they will be dealt with, our body knows. It feels and reacts to what our minds stoically will not allow.

Physical ailments arise in us when we don’t give proper care to what our mind knows intrinsically is hurting us.

Why the fear of feeling?

Is it about the opening up of Pandora’s box, and being unable to slam the lid down quick enough, so as to quickly stifle hurt and sorrow?

It is uncomfortable, this feeling. It is not being in control. it is vulnerability.

I watch a fascinating video of when hot red orange glowing molten lava flows into the sea. What a reaction when these two elements meet.. fire and water. It is cataclysmic… it is forceful.

When the volcano erupts and the hot liquid lava flows at staggering temperatures down the sides of the mountain, often obliterating, burying villages, people, animals, and anything in its path, the end result is black rock and solid.. as it cools.

The source only has power when its’ fury is liquid, once it meets the cool water, all of that boiling animosity subsides, and it becomes solid. The heat can’t fight against the cool of the sea.

Such as when our emotions boil, and churn, and are ruminated about within our skin. It’s as if we are being burned alive from the inside. There will be implosion if these feelings are not allowed to be felt and excreted.

So much rage, and boiling anger is all about us in our world. Violence, and mistrust, and seething animosity is being played out daily upon our streets, and in our cities. There is hatred, and a spilling of blood, that will most probably get worse.

It is a depressing onslaught to the senses on every front. When did taking a stand mean destruction of property, and livelihood, and one another? This is not new. Man is at animosity with man. It’s a tale as ancient as man has roamed the earth.

People tramping on one another’s’ rights, stealing, and violating with their fists, their boot to the back of the head, the bullets that pierce the skull, and silence the perceived offender.. and for what? How and where will it all end.

Peace is what we preach, and say that we want, but the putting down of our primary weaponry which is what we say, and how we think… cannot seem to be achieved.

“We want to be right. It is our right to be right, and we will fight for our right, even if we are wrong. “

It sounds cliche, but in the words of John Lennon, “ Love is all you need.” There was also a man named Jesus, who preached love being the answer. He was willing to die on the wooden cross nailed to Calvary, on a mountain over 2000 years ago because he believed that love was all you need.

We wear the cross around our necks, hanging from our ears, and around our wrists as jewelry. I wonder for myself, especially, do I even comprehend what it really means to “ take up my cross and follow Christ?”

This doesn’t seem like a simple, but an arduous undertaking. This will not be fun. There will often not be blue skies, but rather stormy ones, filled with heavy rain clouds, turbulent with tornadoes, and hurricanes, it will not just be a walk in the park on a pleasant summers’ day.

It will be hard, demanding, and consuming. If life is lived in this sacrificial way towards others, there can be hope, but if I live with the belief that I need to convince another that I am continually correct and right, than “ I am the problem.” If I can’t compromise for the good, and health, and love of another…then there is no hope.

Being out at the boys’ house in Oregon, the neighbor lady, aka, “ Debbie Bitchington,” is up to her old tricks of disliking my sons, and nephews. She is miserable towards them, spraying the sprinkler at them, calling them “ pot heads”, “ druggies”, “ heroin addicted,” to name but a few. She hurls toxic four letter language in their direction often.

I don’t like her. I don’t trust her, and I certainly don’t want to love her or pray for her.. However, if I call myself a Jesus follower, and am trying to carry my annoyingly heavy cross from town to town, then this is precisely what I’m called to do. Ugh.. This is not welcome, it’s not comfortable, and frankly, I don’t want to do it.

Perhaps a new name.. How about if I see her in a new light, that she has not allowed herself to be seen in. I have this feeling there is much sorrow that resides within her four walls. Something, or someone has hurt her so badly she wants to rage often. She wants to fight back, and to injure. The guys just try and ignore her, but they have said things in response towards her. I don’t blame them. I get it. I don’t even trust myself to walk the sidewalk in front of her house, and not want to scream things at her.

How dare she verbally assault these guys? It makes me angry. I love these young men, how can she not see them as I do? She has just made judgments about them. She doesn’t know them at all.

These guys get along with their other neighbors… but she has chosen to be an angry island… spilling lava of hate from her lips.. It is not easy to ignore her words.

She may never choose to change, or to heal. The great thing about prayer is that you can pray behind someones’ back without their permission. I can do this. There is power in prayer, I believe in it. I’ve seen prayers answered continually.

Loving the hard people.. the ones we want to turn away from. That’s the challenge. That is the change that is needed. Laying down of our weapons means laying down of our judgments, and our preconceived ideas of what I think human beings should be. Who am I to judge?… nobody that’s who. It’s above my pay grade that’s for certain.

I’m dubbing “ Debbie Bitchington” with a new name today. she has a new name to be prayed over, “ Joy Springfield.” It sounds much more pleasant than her previous nick name.

If I begin to see her in a new light, and refer to her under a new name, perspective adjustment that is simplistic, could it make an impact ? I’ll never know unless I change. That is after all, I can control, is myself.

Human relations… never an easy ride. People are prickly. They carry around dead wood that strangles the fresh growth that is just right there ready to spring forth, and bloom again, but the old dreaded limbs need to be cut away. It’s transforming to see the old cut away making way for the new. The old can become a lovely burning bonfire , which can warm and being comfort. It is time.

“Take your broken heart. Make it into art.” Carrie Fisher

I saw this simple sign yesterday in Marshall’s while poking around with my niece Jessica. It’s utter simplicity spoke to me..

I’m headed out for a walk. If I bump into “ Joy” enroute I’ll certainly inform you all.

I walked, and ran into her Mother. So that was a fine “ how do you do.” I said “ Hi,” to her, and she responded in kind. I walked up the stone steps into the kids’ house , without looking back over in the neighbor’s direction.I could virtually feel their eyes boring into my back.

And.. so..the saga continues.. a new week…endless possibilities .