finally.

How do you finally face the fact that you tries to help, but never even had a chance with someone who can't be helped?

That for almost half of your life, you thought by being kind and patient and good and tolerant that things would get better. That somehow, some way, by being an example, magically, the other person would finally see what you had pleaded for and fought about so hard, for so long, that it almost destroyed you, and most certainly destroyed "us."

I figured out that it's when enough is enough. When it hurts more to allow things to stay exactly as they are, than it does to do something completely different. When you are finally ready to risk being hurt, failing and accepting change, then you finally face that fact head on.

Yes, Dr. KA. I get it now.

The X pushed himself over the edge of my cliff of tolerance this past week.

It wasn't any different than the many scenarios I had faced over the past 15 years.

I disagreed with something he wanted to do. He didn't like it. He started off reasonably enough, pleading his case, then quickly moved on, reminding me that I was ruining his life.

Then the emails came. Cruel, crazy emails, one after another.

I answered the first one. Calmly and rationally explaining why I felt the way I did and that was it. Done. Finito.

A couple more arrived in my inbox. I hit the delete button and went to bed.

The scenario is the same. He rages, he spews, and then he's done. Everything in his world returns to normal, and I am left wondering what happened, scarred again from the verbal and emotional abuse that is so familiar.

He's not doing it anymore. I decided that night it was the very, very VERY last time.

I've said it so many times before, but this time, I felt the conviction rise from my toes to my shoulders.

You stop being the victim when you stop allowing someone to victimize you.

This is very different for me. I always, always, always held out hope that things could be different. Better. Calmer. At least civilized.

It's never going to happen. And I am done trying.

Finally.

mother f-er, may i ever get through this month?

All my worlds collide from mid-April to mid-June.

And as luck would have it, it's been a fairly busy time for my blooming photo biz as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love the work. More than my "real work." Which I currently and fondly refer to as the "death chamber," with all the good news flowing about and all.

So... work (any kind) = happy me.

Add dance, a recital, softball for the girls, softball for me and all the regular commitments we keep every month, and it's a lot like paddling through wet cement.

Today we had to decide between two softball games and dance.

Dance won, and my secret prayers for rain on this gorgeous day may have been heard. Clouds are rolling into town and perhaps a nice long downpour could happen right about 5:15PM. Bec can get to dance without having missed a softball game. Yay for us!

That's just so I can complain when the game is re-scheduled, don'tcha know.

Minnesota in July is sounding better and better all the time.

And just to keep life extra-interesting this week, I got an email from a former friend. I lost the friendship when I wasn't sure I would, and it hurt a lot. But I thought I was doing pretty well with that.

Until the stinkin' Crackberry buzzed and the email popped in.

It was no big deal. Just really unexpected and pretty weird to hear from someone I once used to talk to with some regularity. You hope, however, that life moves forward. Relationships are lost or irrevocably damaged, and you either adjust or you spend a lot of time paralyzed by a situation you can't control anyway.

Dr. KA tells me all the time that you do the best you can with what you know at any given moment. That life hands you lessons and you can either choose to learn from them, or you can react the way you always have and get the same result.

Today, I talked through the email with Patti, and together, we got me off the ledge.

I learned something new, and in the midst of everything else that is going on, I chose not to hurt anymore today.

It's 5:10 PM and the rain has arrived.

God always hears me. Even when I think He might be too busy to listen.

why am I so blessed?

I listened to a Holocaust survivor and incredible speaker at an assignment this week.

Gerda Weissmann Klein, is now in her 80s. Her family was forced to live in the basement of their home in Poland when she was 15. They stayed there three years before being separated from her parents and only brother. She never saw them again.

Klein's story brought me to tears. She talked about a childhood friend who died in her arms while in a Nazi labor camp. The 350-mile death march she was forced to do, and her liberation one day before her 21st birthday. She spoke of being sick, hungry and near death for many very long years.

What kept her going? Klein said in the darkest hours, she thought back, in her heart and in her head, to times before her family's life was forever changed. She said she could picture her family in their living room. Her father was smoking a pipe and reading the evening paper. Her mother did her needlepoint. She and her brother sat at the table doing their homework. "It was what I called then, a very boring evening at home," Klein said.

Klein continued on. "When you go home tonight, approach your home with the eyes of a hungry, sad, homeless person," she said. Go in, and be thankful for all that you have. Don't think of what is missing in your life, because everyone's life is missing something. But approach your home like a hungry, homeless person, with their eyes.

And when you are there, look around you.

Then ask yourself, "Why me? Why am I so blessed?"