There's a Change A Com'in.

If I were ever to get a tattoo, and I want one really bad, I want to get something that pictures growth and change. A butterfly would be perfect, but I'd have to be super careful to not make it look like those skanky ones.
Or a flower. I have this shirt from Target that has this great print on it of this flower that could take up my entire back.
Scary, isn't it? And you know how impulsive I am.
I want something that shows growth and change because for a long time I have always thought things are what they are and the future will only get worse. Somewhere deep, deep, inside I believed I could not change, could not alter the way life goes and who I am.
But I have seen myself changing. It's grace pure and sweet, and it comes out in tender places in my relationships with my sons and my husband mostly.
Take last night for example. I got Joey all pissed off because I was criticizing his way of parenting Ethan. (This is a wonderful way, ladies, to make your husbands hate you).
He eventually said he was done talking about it and we went to bed without another word.
That's the miracle here. I didn't have to keep it going, didn't have to have some sort of resolution, and I wasn't upset at Joey.
I let him be. Sure it was hard to go to bed and not be all snuggly-cuddly, but not killer hard. Not I am a total emotional freak case hard. I knew I was loving him by letting him sleep. So it was sweet in that sense.
I love what I am learning in all the hundreds of relationship-help books I am reading. I swear the librarians must think I am a total loser. I am always a little embarrassed to pick up these books I get: How to Have a New Husband by Friday, Your Man is Wonderful, and other books for wives who have no idea how to love a man.
I think what it is is pride; picking up those books is outwardly showing I don't know how to love.
I am not perfect. And I am so prideful I care what the stinking librarians think about it.
Anyways, I am also reading Rob Bell's Sex God. The first time I tried to read this book I could not get past the weird, broken way it was written. It annoyed the crap out of me.
Then, out of boredom one day at nap time, I picked it up again and started reading somewhere in the middle. Something caught my attention so I started jumping around, reading until I was annoyed, and then going backward or forward a couple of pages and starting again. I don't know if it is important or not to read this book in sequential order but I am getting a little bit out of the pieces I am reading, especially this:
Love is giving up control (punch to the gut). It's surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two--love and controlling power over the other person--are mutually exclusive (so if I am loving Joey but still wanting something in return, I am trying to have controlling power over him? And then a flood of memories, of scenarios, of recognition that I don't love him for loves sake. I love him so he loves me). If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship (Shit).
This kind of love is scary as hell. It's "frightening" as another one of my favorite authors puts it. She goes on to say, "Yes I am married, but do I know how to love?"
My answer, so clear in the desperate and intuitive way I protect myself, is No.
This love means trust, and it means I could get hurt.
So this is the change I want--need--for God to do.