Happy Wednesday, folks. 

When I was a young woman, my parents often told me that I should be a lawyer when I grew up.

They thought I liked to fight.

But the truth was that I didn’t like to fight {and you can’t make me do it now if you try}.

I had a deep-routed sense of right and wrong.  

My first boyfriend was older than me {aren’t they always?}.

From the moment we met, he made me feel beautiful, fun, safe, and happy.  He gave me a nickname, which made me feel oh-so-special.  He drove me to school, which made me feel oh-so-cool.

But after a year or so, my feelings had changed.

I felt ugly, sad, smothered, and oppressed. The nickname lost its luster and I felt unsafe when he drove.

So I was honest with him.

And I paid a dear price.

You see, at that time, I didn’t realize that there are people who don’t receive truth in a healthy well.

So instead of releasing my hand and letting me go, he held me down by the throat in an abandoned summer house just after Labor Day and raped me.

He wasn’t ready to hear my truth, and he intended to punish me for speaking it.

It was unfair.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

And so began years of lying in love.

Because telling the truth had hurt too much.

To myself, I’d lie…

No one will ever accept you as you are.

You brought this on yourself.

No one would miss you if you were gone.

It’s ruined.

And to everyone else, I’d lie…

I love you.

Sure, I want to do that.

You can’t hurt me.

It’s perfect.

To this day, I feel a burning sensation in my throat as the truth catches half-way up and reacts in my body.  But it’s not his hands around it anymore, it’s God trying to tell me something.

So I put on my listening ears.

Years ago when I felt the heat, I would blurt out how I felt believing that purging the truth would make the feeling subside.  But it mostly just hurt people.

After that, I tried biting my tongue when I felt it – so I wouldn’t hurt people.  But it mostly just hurt me.

So now, the heat in my throat gives me pause.  I wait for a moment of kindness, and speak it.  If that moment ever comes.  And if it doesn’t, I don’t rush it or force it.  I’m more careful with my words now.

I don’t think I’d make it as a lawyer after all.

But the bottom line for me is this:  As I’ve gotten older, the truth has relentlessly set me free.  And I’m determined to instill that in my kids. When my son is old enough to fall in love, I want him to give his first girlfriend everything she deserves.

She deserves to hear that he thinks she’s beautiful and that his heart races when he sees her.  She deserves to know that he thinks of her when that song comes on the radio.  She deserves to know that he wants to hold her hand and kiss her check.

I want him to mean all of the wonderful things that he says to her.  I want her to receive my son’s open heart.

And if the day comes that he doesn’t feel those things anymore, she deserves to know that too.

To her face.  Tell her the truth.  Kindly.

My Juicy Glad-I-Caught-That: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. ~William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well 

I want him to mean all of the good things so that when he needs to share something not-so-good, he can do so with as much conviction as when he told her he loved her.

And…

So that when he meets the woman he’s going to marry, he can tell her the truth.

That he loved that girl.  He thought she was beautiful and he loved to spend time with her.  But that she wasn’t the girl for him and so he released her hand and let her go.

And…

So that when she meets the man she’s going to marry, she can tell him the truth in much the same way.

Because treating someone unfairly, lying, inflicting pain, cheating the system will resurface in your life {I pinky promise you that}.

The life we are living is not based on an arrow shot at an upward, momentum-filled trajectory.  We don’t master something and move on. It’s also not circular [unless you choose your own stagnation] – an endless monotony of circumstances.

At least mine has never been.

Have you ever noticed that the same issues come up for you?

The same types of people cross your threshold?

I know that I do.

So it’s not a well-aimed arrow.

Do you feel yourself getting stronger [I hope not harder] as time goes by though?

I do, too.

Which means to me that life is not an infinite loop, but instead an upward spiral.

Whatever I pass along the way, I expect to meet again.  I believe, however, that if I do it well today, then I’ll do it even better when it finds me the next time.

And it will find me again.

And it will find you.

Your child will behave in an ungrateful manner.  You’ll have an awkward exchange with a parent.  You’ll be tempted.  You’ll find yourself in a dangerous relationship.

There’s no use fighting it – even if you are a lawyer – but there is good sense in living unwaveringly in your quest for right and wrong.

See you on the flip side.

In love,

Noelle

xoxox