Responsibility? Or blame...

I remember once, long ago, a statement made by the priest who counseled me through my divorce. He said, quoting a psalm (which one, I no longer remember) that the fact is we can trust no one but God; that it is the fundamental nature of the human condition that each of us is primarily self-absorbed.

I wonder, now, some 28 years later, if he still believes that to be true. I wonder, too, if that message to me was a gift or a curse. The gift in it, of course -- and I very much took his statement to heart -- is that I learned to turn my need for support inward and upward; to rely primarily upon myself and God.

But this morning I find myself wondering if, in internalizing that statement as "gospel truth," I may have done myself a disfavor. Have I somehow, in assuming that I alone -- in company with the divine -- am responsible for my own emotional health, have I cut myself off, created a wall, ceased to seek out people and circumstances which would provide vital connections and support? Is it just a matter of lowered expectations?

Does that sense -- that I am the only one I can count on -- come from that statement he made, or from a damaged childhood? And have I, in operating out of that space, in some way harmed my own children; lowered THEIR expectations?

At the root of all these questions lies a new betrayal, a small one; a friend who failed to answer a cry for help. It wasn't even help for me, it was help for one of my daughters. But it does make me question my judgment, and leaves me spinning in a sea of unpleasant choices which circle primarily around questions of responsibility -- always a challenge for a parent.

And, curiously enough, a dear friend xeroxed a page for me just a day or so ago which speaks exactly to this question (I'm sorry; I can't tell you where this is from):

"This word responsibility and your concept of it can be frightening, because you are afraid that things you have done will end up hurting other people...[but] That is not the kind of responsibility that I am talking about. I will tell you again that you do not move in random patterns. You move in a cohesive, beautiful, exciting, extending pattern of power. The responsibility of which I speak is the realization that, if you observe the movement of your life and do not like what you see, it is YOU that must make the changes in it. Growth comes through change; exciting growth comes through responsible change...

How do you know when you need to make new choices? When you look at your life and see parts of it that are not rewarding to you or to others. Then YOU have to be responsible for becoming aware of what new choices would restore that balance again."

So there it is. Something appears to be out of balance, and it is my job to sit with that, in what seems for now to be a cold and lonely place, and assess my contribution to the problem; to see what change might need to be made.

In the seasons of life, another winter has arrived. The blessing in that is knowing spring cannot be far behind.

-------------------------------------
An addendum: I have, since writing this, learned that what felt like a betrayal was in fact a completely predictable and entirely understandable oversight, compounded into what looked like betrayal by my assumptions, my lack of trust, and my lack of persistence. I am SO GRATEFUL that I took the time to sit with it, and took the risk of believing... and now I get to look at what thought patterns I have that are getting in the way for me; now I get to decide how I might begin to make different choices.