a 180 shift

Have you ever met a problem detector; someone who can see everything that is potentially wrong in any situation? This wee girl learned to be this way as she grew up during the war that devastated her country, her neighborhood, her family, and her life as a teenager. She felt like a huge, disorganized cloud of fury and chaos, not able to breathe while averting panic with every step.
Her job was to stay uber-attentive, trying to sense, see, and hear what might be happening next. Outside, inside, anywhere, everywhere, she was figuring out how to be okay with chaos in her family and her country, but the pressure was insurmountable. She was full of ideas about how and what to do, but sharing was pointless. She swallowed her words and became a handful for her parents who had essentially given up in the face of terror and uncertainty.
This girl became a highly educated woman who fled her country through marriage. She became very successful, and professional, raising her child with perfection. But her second husband and his son were chaotic, troublesome, and desperate. She recognized these feelings as if she had grown up drinking a measly broth of them every single day, and she hated it.
She had so many ideas on how to fix her husband and stepsons relational dilemma. She spied on them from the next room over in their upscale home preparing to fix them with her expertise. She was prepared. Ready. Precise. But they would not listen to her. The innocent arrogance that she had developed growing up shaped her sense of self so thoroughly that she could not, would not, let go, and it threatened her marriage and peace.
She had it all and her problem detector protector part was still vigilant. She lost sleep, was giving up, and more, began to disrespect her beloved husband. The desperateness in her saw the desperateness in him. That is the rule of thumb: What I don’t like in you, I don’t like in myself, and what I like in you, is what I like in myself. Whoa – a mirror! The desperate feelings of her youth crawled out of the depths of her deep, deep belly and sat right in her chest. Feelings of loss, being panic stricken, not belonging, and especially, loneliness. These feelings were as big as the fancy living room she sat in, filling her heart and home with agony. But now she could at least feel, sense, and see them herself. She felt them for her teenage part since she masterfully hid them beneath her problem detection systems.
She breathed easier, releasing years of denial that softened the way she saw her husband at war with his son, and herself at war with her husband and her original family too. She felt a soft empathy rising and a sense of belonging that reminded her that she has always known that angels were listening to her deepest desires. She sensed their grace now opening the channels of her heart, inviting her to relax into the life of her dreams.