Tri-tip and Horseshit
(Note: This is not a recipe)
So I used to attend a Kingdom Hall that was adjacent to horse property. On hot summer evenings the smell from the stables could get pretty ripe.
As one Brother used to say, "You don't need to see them to know they're there!"
One particular day, as I was getting out of my car and heading toward the hall, a curious thing happened. Another neighbor was barbecuing some tri-tips. You could smell the spiciness of the Santa Maria rub wafting teasingly on the hot summer breeze.
But it wasn't only the aroma from the cooking meat I could smell. It was mixed in about equal proportion with the smell of the fresh, steaming horseshit coming from behind the Kingdom Hall parking lot.
It was really a very strange experience. The smell of the beef cooking on the BBQ was quite delicious. I love tri-tip, especially with hot-buttered corn, ranch-style beans and a cold beer. The idea of that was very appealing at that precise moment. I wanted to breathe it in deeply in big, huge gulps, but the equally present rank and bitter stench from the horseshit made me want to gag.
There was a definite tension between wanting to smell and not wanting to smell, to breath and to not breath, to hold my breath. But you can only go without breathing for so long. And so, with every breath I could smell equal parts of both the barbecued meat and the horse manure. Oddly, the presence of the good smell seemed to make me even more aware of the unpleasant one.
I often think that our life is like that: Tri-tip and horseshit.
Right now, almost everything in my life is good, really good in fact. I have a great job, a beautiful wife that I love and that loves me too. I have fantastic friends that care about me for who I am and not what I pretend to believe. And since leaving Jehovah's Witnesses I have been able to rebuild some long broken relationships with family members that were never JWs. I even have time to work on some long-neglected personal projects now that I don't spend every free moment "out in service" or in endless elders' meetings.
Still, there is one area of my life that is not good: my relationship with my adult children that are still in the cult of Jehovah's Witnesses. Because of the WT shunning policy my own kids will not even talk to me. It's been years. It hurts. I think of it all the time. Sometimes it hurts like hell. I would do anything to reunite and reconcile, but I can't do it as long as they are under the spell of WT mind-control.
Even when I'm enjoying the many blessings of my present life (and there are many), the pain and sadness from the separation and alienation from my children is always there. The pain is the horseshit that pervades my every thought, my every breath.
You'd think after all this time that maybe I'd get used to it. I haven't. It still stinks.