betrayal

And there she stood, hands braced on either side of the bathroom sink, gazing at her reflection in the mirror, feeling…smug satisfaction. She looked goooood.

She’d totally nailed it. The evening, the party, a good hair day—and her introduction to HIM.

She smiled at the thought and that’s when it suddenly became clear to her—crystal clear.

As close as she claimed to be, as much history as they had shared, after all of their years together – she was NO friend of hers—because there, in the mirror, staring back at her, was the biggest piece of spinach – lodged between her two front teeth. It was a piece of greenery so large, it could be seen from space, and she had let her circulate, and smile, and flirt without alerting her to this fact.

That’s right, she was not a friend; because friends don’t let their friends talk to HIM with spinach in their teeth.

Ladies, am I right?

You Have A Good Saturday!
Xox

I talk an awful lot about forgiveness on this blog – please forgive me. (wink)
I do that because I love you, and I want you to be free of the toxicity of hate, hurt, anger and grudge holding.

Read on. Liz wrote an amazing essay about the ultimate in forgiveness.
It’s a good one, it’s gonna make you cry.
-you’re welcome.

XoxJ

Take it away Liz-

ULTIMATE FORGIVENESS

Dear Ones –

This weekend’s Oprah’s The Life You Want Tour in Houston was incredible. THANK YOU to all who were there, for your energy, your passion, your open hearts.

As usual, I was in the front seat during the all the talks and workshops, leaning in hard to catch all the wisdom I could.

And as usual, it was Iyanla Vanzant who got to me — as in: She made me weep.

This is a photo of me clutching a scarp of paper upon which I wrote something she said — something that, if I can put it into practice, could truly change my life.

Yesterday, Iyanla was telling the story about how her husband of 40 years recently left her for another woman — for a friend of hers actually. She was talking about the anger, the indignation, the grief, the shame, the humiliation of this event. All completely understandable, of course, for such a large-scale betrayal.

Then she spoke in detail about all the steps she took to try to work her way out of her anger and back into grace — because she knew that if she held onto her rage forever it would only burn a hole of bitterness through her soul.

In the end — after all the crying and fighting and suffering, and after working hard to arrive at some model of forgiveness for both her ex-husband and the other woman — she had a revelation of love. She decided to love them. She decided to actually BE IN LOVE WITH THEM. Not just to forgive them, but to LOVE THEM — for their humanity, for their weakness, for their own strange grace, for their intimate role in her destiny.

She said that at first she thought she was going crazy, with this idea of loving them. (“Are you out of your mind, Iyanla? You’re in love with the woman who took your husband?”) But she knew in her heart that love was the only way out of this emotional hell for herself. Huge, holy, magnificent love, And then she said this, about her husband and the other woman, which I wrote down (through tear-filled eyes) on this scrap of paper:

“My love of you — it’s got nothing to do with you. I’m trying to save myself. So I love them. I get to choose my relationship with them. Doesn’t mean I will invite them for Thanksgiving. But I can love them from my altar and from my prayer table IF IT MEANS MY FREEDOM.”

I wept when I heard this.

Your forgiveness of people who have harmed you has nothing to do with THEM.

Your forgiveness is about YOU trying to achieve liberty from the prison of your own suffering, your own anger, you own grief, your own darkness, your own obsessive thoughts, your own indignation.

Love is the only way out of that prison. Radical, outrageous, nearly impossible, superhuman LOVE.

Please understand that — even as I write these words — I do not entirely understand how to get there.

But I really want to get there.

Because I want and need this kind of love and forgiveness in my life so desperately, I can’t even tell you.

And I believe in it, even if I don’t always know how to do it.

I’m gong to cling to this scrap of paper for a long, long time.

(Actually, I’m going to more than cling to a scrap of paper. I should tell you that I just signed up already for an e-course that Iyanla Vanzant is teaching on forgiveness. Because I really need that shit — and there’s something about the way this woman speaks and teaches that goes right through the spine of me and really works for me. I don’t even know what an e-course is, actually, but I signed up for it, anyhow. Because all I know is that her e-course is called HOW TO FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING, and that’s exactly what I need to learn how to do in this lifetime. What we all need, maybe. Here’s a link to the course, if anyone wants to do it with me: http://bit.ly/1wdp8mf)

I just want to be free.

If anyone out there has had this experience — working through your anger and into forgiveness…and then even further into LOVE — please share it here. I want to learn all I can about it.

ONWARD EVER…INTO GREATER AND GREATER LOVE,
LG

“I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” 
― Maya Angelou

And here I thought you’d all run me out of town with pitchforks and torches.

Whoa and Wowza you guys!
The post about “becoming the other woman” went viral! 

Once again it just proves my theory (which over a lifetime of study SO extensive, that I’m going to seek Government funding) is this:
There are more of you tramps out there than I ever imagined.
NO! NOT THAT ONE!

Whatever we’ve all done in our lives, the good, the bad and the ugly; there are others out there that have been gooder, badder and uglier. (Tweetable – oh maybe not)

In other words, it’s human nature.

Some of you were brave enough to share your stories with me by commenting on Facebook and the blog, while others of you are still in the Dating Married Men Witness Protection Program, so you just emailed me, using an alias, or wrote something in lipstick on the inside of a matchbook and left it on the windshield of my car. 

Hey, no judgement here.

I think the take away is that no matter at which stage you realize something is wrong; it may be being confronted by the wife, or temporary incarceration (what?) you can turn the ship around and do the right thing.

Sorry, I don’t care WHO you are. If you’ve had the privilege to live into middle age, this I know FOR SURE:
We ALL have rips in our moral fiber.

We’ve ALL made some questionable decisions that lead to some really shitty mistakes.

We’ve hurt people. Innocent, decent people; and maybe we didn’t even know it – or perhaps we did.

We’ve spent money that wasn’t ours, or pretended to be something we weren’t; we told lies.

That’s one of the biggest things about cheating and betrayal – the breech of trust.
It leads us to always wonder; ‘If they lied about THAT, what else are they lying about?’

I’m actually glad I had that experience with lying and sneaking around, so young.
After the fact, even though I could justify it to myself by thinking, ‘Oh, my husband ignores me, and I’m in an unhappy marriage’, it required me to do some heavy soul searching.

I wondered, ‘Am I someone who cheats? Am I someone to whom lying comes easy?’ and the answer was…NO.
A resounding NO. I had tried it and I sucked at it. It made me sick and a nervous wreak, THANK GOD.

I knew if I ever got married again, I would be faithful AND I could never get a job with the CIA.

I’ve met, numerous times in my life at this point, the people to whom this is a piece of cake.
It is effortless, smooth as silk.
Holy shit they scare me.

You are not them and neither am I. They don’t read or write blogs like this.
Blogs like this cause them to spontaneously combust.
So does introspection of any kind.

When you come across these people from now on…cross the street.
Save yourself the trouble.

And hey, don’t make a career out of feeling bad about the times you didn’t.

“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.” 
― Maya Angelou

Xox