For I am Sick of Love

I visited my dad at the ALF again yesterday. Things went very well. He keeps surprising me.

When he first moved out, he was very insistent on trying to find ways to work it out so he could come home to live. On one occasion, at his first ALF, I had to walk off and leave while he was trying to chase me out. It was disturbing. I had tried to find a place where he would be content, and it didn’t seem to be working out.

He used to get upset when I said I was leaving. He would start up again, trying to convince me we should live together.

As of this week, he no longer becomes agitated when I talk of leaving. He says things like, “I completely understand that you have things to do.” That’s a tremendous blessing. I don’t want to have to leave while he’s still fighting it.

Speaking of blessings, he keeps saying good things about me. He tells me I’m a success. He says I’m the best son imaginable. He even tells me I’m good-looking. I used to let this stuff blow by me, but I started thinking about the power of a father’s blessing, and now I try to receive it as such. I watched Derek Prince teach about the power of the things fathers say to their kids, and it reminded me that I shouldn’t turn my nose up. When I was a kid, both of my parents said a lot of things that were not blessings. They said I was lazy, selfish, fat, and so on, and they sometimes despaired of my prospects to amount to anything. If I had to take that, I might as well accept the blessings.

Occasionally, my dad will exclaim, “I love you!” He says it as if he can’t contain it. He says it as if he is concerned that I might not believe it.

I have thought a lot about the difference between 2019 Dad and, say, 1970 Dad, who was so unpleasant my sister and I used to urge my mother to get a divorce. Yesterday I realized I hadn’t thought enough about how different he is from 2018 Dad. I have been feeling guilty because I used to get mad at him and even avoid spending time with him. To be angry with 2019 Dad would not make sense because he is so much nicer to be around, and I look forward to visiting him. Last year, however, he was not like this. He was often selfish. He thought very little about my welfare and the very serious problems I endured because I had to care for him. He made things difficult when my friends visited. Sometimes he cursed at me when I was trying to help him or explain things to him. In retrospect, I can’t feel too bad about limiting my exposure to him. No one could tolerate it without long breaks.

I got angry at him from time to time, but I also used my supernatural tools to fight and get rid of anger. I never accepted it or approved of it. I was not that ignorant.

Maybe I didn’t do so bad. I didn’t have the benefit of a real baptism, and I was dealing with someone who was controlled by spirits that devoted a great deal of their time to pushing my buttons and trying to make me miserable. I had no help from other people, apart from prayer.

Now I wonder…what would he do if I brought him home and hired a CNA? Would his new self persist, or, with the threat of assisted living removed, would he revert? It seems like idle speculation, though, because I can’t make it work. Even now, with him 7 miles away, looking after him is a pretty big burden, and if he were here, I would not be able to cope with my other obligations.

I wish I could make it work.

I believe the staff at the ALF likes him. That’s a good thing. They don’t like all of their charges. There is a lady named Emma who wanders around making trouble. She takes food from other people’s plates, for example. She offends the other patients, and there are quarrels. I saw one of the attendants grab her and drag her away from another resident. The attendant was very angry. Not appropriate, but I suppose she has dealt with this dozens of times. She had to wrestle her across the room, and while she was doing it, she started yelling, “DON’T START TO FALL, EMMA!” Emma slowly dropped to the floor and refused to move. The attendant asked for help picking her up. Emma let out loud, strident shrieks, like a toddler throwing a tantrum at Walmart. She had to be dragged a few feet, or at least the attendant saw it that way.

I thought the attendant was a little rough with her, but I can’t solve everyone’s problems, so I did not insert myself in the situation. I am also reluctant to offend people who will have power over my dad when I’m not around. I did pray for them later.

My dad could have been an Emma. God spared him that.

A friend of mine put his mother in an ALF, and she fights the attendants. She’s obese, and when they lower her to the toilet, she drops suddenly in order to frustrate them. Of course, this makes it more likely that she’ll break a hip, but that apparently doesn’t matter to her. The remainder of her life will be harder than it has to be, because of her personality.

I continue to rearrange the house, and every change I make feels like an execution. I have a special refrigerator I got to keep my food free of contamination, and this morning I took everything out of it, moved it to the kitchen fridge, turned it off, and left the doors open.

I have frozen food I bought for my dad. He used to eat it every day. Maybe I should be ashamed, but I just did not want to spend an extra two hours every day, cooking and doing dishes. I got him Jimmy Dean biscuits, which are actually very good, and I also got him things like frozen Italian food, which I will never eat. I want to throw the Italian food out, but I will feel like I’m throwing my dad out with it.

I will keep it a little longer.

It feels as though I have been surrounded by death this week. A couple of days back, I checked my dad’s Facebook account to see if anything important was going on, and I learned that his Aunt Gladys had died during the first week of February; she was nearly 103 years old. I wrote about Gladys a long time ago. I met her in 2007, I believe. She was an incredible person. She got out of Eastern Kentucky and made something of herself. She spent her life teaching school. She also hunted and made her own furniture. I knew she had started to fail, but it was a surprise to learn she had died. Toward the end, dementia set in, so she had to move to a nursing home.

The next day, I found out her son Wade had died. He died roughly a year ago. Because my dad lost the ability to use computers, he didn’t keep up with emails and social media, and I suppose no one tried to contact him. Wade was a writer. He sold one book. He was a leftist, unlike his mother, and I believe he was also an atheist. He was about 8 years younger than my dad, and the last time I saw him, he looked very good, so learning of his death knocked me off balance.

I belong to a machining forum. Yesterday, I read that a guy I used to interact with had died suddenly. He had fluid around his heart, and when he went in to have it removed, his heart stopped, and he was placed on a ventilator. His doctors concluded that he had very little chance of recovering, so his wife let him go.

Ordinarily, I would not be all that moved by the death of an Internet forum member, but this week, it was just icing on the cake.

I prayed last night, and I let God know I was not feeling very good. I felt a lot of grief, and I was not interested in having it increased in the near future. Because God has given me a lot of supernatural weaponry, I am usually able to bounce back from things quickly, so I blame myself when bad feelings persist. I talked to God about that, and suddenly, I felt the grief abate. I felt as though Jesus were inside me, shining out love and peace like a lantern.

That was very nice, and I accepted it, but I wasn’t completely on board with it. Part of me wanted to be upset. When I was a kid, I learned that if I were upset, and people knew about it, they might give me things I wanted. I learned to manipulate. Last night, I realized I had pulled this trick on God a lot.

Part of me wanted God to fix things and make them perfect, instead of fixing me.

God has the power to make you feel peaceful and happy regardless of your circumstances. Human beings tend to set goals for themselves with the idea that once they get what they want, they’ll be happy. Life doesn’t really work that way. It feels good to get what you want or need, but in reality, you should not let your circumstances determine how you feel.

I mentioned that to my dad yesterday, and he said it was a deep truth. It made a big impression on him. I have him on my side.

Many times, I’ve asked God for things, believing they would alleviate my suffering. I should have asked him to help me not to tie my emotional state to my circumstances. God wants to give us things, but it’s more important that we become impervious to distress. Remember the story of Jesus, sleeping in the boat during the storm? He got up and calmed the storm, but while the storm was still raging and threatening to kill everyone on the boat, he slept in peace. He did not worry. We should be like that, and it’s possible to get there.

If God gives you peace without changing your circumstances, you can feel cheated or disappointed. I can, anyway. That’s childish. Something for me to think about in the future.

Covetousness comes from linking your happiness to your circumstances. “If I have my best friend’s girlfriend, I’ll be happy.” “If I have my boss’s job, I’ll be happy.” “If I have this year’s Iphone, I’ll be happy.” Satan puts bait in front of us, and we chase it. Then we find out the happiness it brings is shallow, fleeting, or nonexistent.

Speaking of circumstances, I had a weird dream last night. A woman I know showed up at my house. She was sort of adrift, like a homeless person. She needed rest and a place to get it together. I gave her a bed here. Oddly, she had her own food. She had saved a drink and half a sandwich from meal earlier in the day. She went and got it, and she ate it while lying in bed. We felt very close to each other, in a way that was romantic, which is not how our relationship works in real life. I haven’t heard from her in a long time. It seemed as if I had been given to her to provide shelter, rest, and comfort, and she had been sent to me for comfort and for the simple benefit of having someone to care for.

Someone who is not demented or close to death, I mean. A Christian, not a missionary case.

She leans to the left politically, because she grew up among self-pitiers and social justice warriors (redundant). We talked about that in the dream. I asked her if she prayed in tongues, because people who pray in tongues become more conservative (more appalled by leftism) over time, and she said she did it for 90 minutes a day. I wondered why she hadn’t experienced a shift. She’s a proud lady, though, and pride kills growth.

Since I woke up, I have been experiencing odd feelings of warmth and attachment for this woman.

Strange dream. Did it come from God? Did it come from another spirit? Time will tell.

It was not the kind of dream I would have asked for. When there is a lot of grief in your life, you don’t particularly want to be reminded of the things you have failed at. I am old and single. When I want to move heavy furniture, I have to wait until someone visits. When I have work done on the car, I have to sit in the waiting area because I have no one to drive me home. I am thinking of buying a back scratcher. I don’t want to have my face rubbed in that while I sleep. On the morning of Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is a phony holiday, like Mothers’ Day, made up to sell jewelry and flowers. For that matter, the “saints” are not legitimate; they were elevated and worshiped to please Christians who didn’t want to give up pagan deities. The day has never meant anything to me. But still.

To make things worse, the woman in the dream is very, very attractive. I would feel better if she looked like Captain Lou Albano in drag.

Next month should be more cheerful. Let me think. What’s coming up? St. Patrick’s Day (useless for sober people) and the anniversary of my mother’s death, not to mention her birthday.

Okay, April will be easier. I am sure of it. Let’s just plan on that.

If most people I know could just remain alive through the end of this week, I would consider it a big favor.

Anyway, I will pursue the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit instead of grasping at temporary fixes. If I can get the solution that works, the mirages and mermaids won’t cause me problems.