Stop Eating Worms

Please weigh in, and correct me if I'm wrong.

When I was a little girl and I was determined to be upset about something, my mom used to say I should go eat worms. This makes sense to anyone who knows me, because I'm kind of a princess about food and, well, a lot of other things. It was her ultimate way of bringing home the point that I was the one choosing to feel ill-used.

And with that introduction, I want to talk about passive aggressivism. This is on my mind because not long ago I listened to a motivational talk that was mostly about marital relationships but can apply to just about anyone's dealings with other people.

People, no matter how much they love you, can not read your mind. Period. It doesn't somehow mean that they love you more if they happen to guess what you want or need at just the right moment. It doesn't mean they love you less if they actually ask you what you want or what you need.

This is one of the big problems I have with Relief Society and Visiting Teaching culture. And maybe friendships as well. Maybe I'm trying to rationalize how bad of a visiting teacher I am (although in my defense, I try to see my ladies, but they are very upfront about the fact that they would rather just be friends than have me stop by their house with a message from the Ensign). Maybe I'm just bad at reading people. Maybe I'm too self-absorbed to anticipate needs and wants. I dunno, but I'm tired of stressing about it.

It seems to me to equate to the story about the wife who sits around sniffing audibly and then gets massively offended because her husband doesn't automatically know that he was supposed to take out the trash before it got smelly. Um ... how about just asking him to take out the trash?

Yes, we've all heard those sweet stories about women who just called up on a prompting from the Spirit and it happened to be the moment when her visiting teachee was going into premature labor and needed to be rushed to the hospital immediately and provided with childcare and meals for her family. Those are great stories. They are powerful stories. I do not discount them.

However, there is another side to this. The Spirit does not tell us every little thing we are supposed to do that is good and right and saving. Sometimes we honestly don't know what someone needs, and the Spirit is not going to tell us. Because that would make us lazy.

At the same time, we seem to have built up this culture that says our visiting teachers and our friends— and whoever else—is supposed to just know what we need and do it without being asked.

That's stupid. If you are offended by someone asking you what you want or need, that's your problem. If you choose to believe that it is a lazy question that is intended to avoid the responsibility of anticipating what you need, well, you have big issues and you need to work through them. Almost every time someone asks you what you need, it is from a sincere desire to help. And if you don't believe that, go have a little therapy. I'm serious.

And what's more, it's really ok to have to ask someone for help. Don't wait for them to offer and feel ill-used when they either forget or aren't specific enough. Just ask.

I'm done feeling bad that I actually have to ask how I can help. There is only so much you can observe about someone, especially when they are too busy to have you come into your home and hang out with you for half an hour (no hard feelings ladies, I totally understand). And the Spirit works better when your mind is informed. It's not magic, it's inspiration. Two completely different things.

Takeaway: I will continue to come up with random acts of service that I offer to my visiting teachees and friends, but if they choose to believe that I'm supposed to just know, and that I should automatically know what they want or even that I should randomly know what they need before they even know they need it, I'm not going to worry or assume that I don't have the Spirit. I love serving people, and I love helping them in ways that are actually helpful—this is not a case of "I'm going to do this nice thing for you so that I can feel good about myself while it's not really doing much to help you and may even be adding stress to your already stressful life."

I want to help. I am not going to read your mind. And I am going to continue to ask how I can help.

Addendum:
The Church is true. The more I think about it and the more I live it, the more I know it. There is not another organization that is so perfectly designed to take people who with all their hearts want to be good and systematically teach them how.

Critters

I should probably blog about something important, like my wedding plans or the insanity at my job. But instead, I want to talk about critters.

First, I love butterflies. Who doesn't? I have fake butterflies pinned up on the walls of my apartment, and they make me so very happy. When the nice photographer who is doing our wedding announcements was asking me what my "style" was, I wasn't sure—Man said butterflies. And he is right.

So I was actually a little bit thrilled when I discovered that the other night when we were saying goodnight on the doorstep and occupied with things other than what was coming in and out the door, a butterfly (well, it's probably a moth) came in and took up residence. The great thing about it is that it attached itself to the wall in very close proximity to the fake butterflies so it blended right in. So cute.

It did leave me wondering what it was going to do for survival, and I made a mental note to check on it in the morning. Of course it was gone by then. Somewhere else inside, I figured. As long as it didn't end up landing on my face while I was sleeping, I wasn't concerned.

Then I found it today. In a spider web. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Anyway, the other thing I have to say about critters is that some people just need to understand that not everyone thinks that their yappy dog who gets excited/angry on a regular basis in the middle of the night (and at various and sundry times of the day) is as cute as they think it is. I want to be a nice neighbor and not go straight to apartment management about it, but how would it look if I showed up in my jammies at 1am and just told them straight up--your dog is keeping me from getting some desperately needed sleep? Let's work on some conflict resolution here.

But I can't think of any good way to ask them to work with me. For now, I'm just praying they move soon, like it seems everyone else in that particular apartment does. People must hate living below me. Maybe it has something to do with how often I drop my liter-sized shampoo bottles while showering. I dunno. And maybe that is just as rude as having a yappy dog. I guess everyone is unintentionally rude sometimes. Even spiders who let butterflies get caught in their webs.