Hi guys, sure enough I have a thought, so I thought I would share. We have 3 residents who just can’t seem to get along. Doug and I encourage our tenants to be friendly to each other but not to be friends if that makes any sense to you.  When the residents become friends, say a whole side of a building are all friends and then someone gets mad, or jealous, or whatever, it becomes a mess.  Guess who they want to fix it when they can’t? You got it me or Doug. Our job is to rent apartments and collect rent, not to be baby sitters. 

O.K. here is a quick summary of about 6 months of incidents.  A lady and her family live upstairs in a building, she cannot get along with the 2 women that live below her. All of the women have tempers and would really like to fight each other.  So here comes the husband to the lady upstairs to tell us all about it.  We tell him that we really don’t want to get involved in it, please just ignore each other and don’t talk to each other and basically mind your own business. Doug and I talked to all 3 women, of course in their eyes, they are all innocent, everyone else is at fault.  Acting like children, they did this to me, so I did this to them.  We don’t know who is telling the truth because we are not there and we will not take sides. All of them pay rent and are pretty good people on their own.  They just can’t get along with each other. Finally, someone calls customer relations, who in turn call us. Since they insist on getting us involved, Doug and I gave all of them a final warning that said get along or you’re all evicted and will have to move.  That sent all of them down to the office to say “Why did they have to move, they we’re innocent”. 

O.K. by this time I am at my limit and tell the husband that if the women really want to fight that bad take it off property and let them have at it, but everyone will still have to move. The women are really trying to ignore each other but just can’t seem to walk by each other without saying some snide remark under their breath to get the other person all riled up and then rush to the phone to tell me all about it.  We really don’t want to have to evict them all.  We thought that they would see how childish it was and quit, but alas the relationship is beyond repair, they won’t stop.  One of the tenants is on housing, if we evict her she will lose her housing and will really have a problem.  Not one of them have a car or can afford to move.  The only solution that Doug and I can come up with is to split them up. No problem for them but a lot of work for us.  If only they would just LET IT GO! and honestly they would probably not be able to get along with any neighbors.  Woe is me.

We are only in control of ourselves.  We can not make anyone behave the way we want them to.  Everyone is responsible for their own actions.  If we look hard enough for an excuse for our own bad behavior, we can find something that will turn it back on someone else.  Doug is in a cycle that with God’s help is going to break.  Doug has taken on his own pain and everyone elses for so long that it is embedded in him until he is now enveloped in this deep, dark depression.  When it gets too much for him to handle then he wants to escape, which brings on what he calls withdrawals.  I see it just as the overwhelming desire to use because he wants to escape.  He has just got to LET IT GO!  Sometimes, we live in a grey world, sometimes it’s black and dark.  Those are not good days for either of us.

This brings me back to the fact that we are only in control of ourselves. Doug slipped. He faced it and has done everything that he can do.  He is not responsible for how other people handle it or think about it.  He can’t control how his children think about it or friends or family.  It is theirs to do with however they will.  We would hope that they would talk to him to hear his side of the story but we don’t have control of it, the ball is in their court.  What I know is this I don’t want this to happen, but I have no control over Doug, only Doug has control to take that pain back into himself, make a dark and depressed area for the cycle to gain speed, or allow God to use him as a vessell, there will still be pain and dark times, but God is able to use them.

 It seems so simple to me. Let it Go! You can’t, I can’t, nobody can change the past.  What is done, is done.  We all have regrets.  We can only hope that we don’t keep making the same ones and grow from our experiences.  That’s why I am so grateful that God put Doug and me together. I have grown so much spiritually with Doug. God is working so much in our lives, it’s exciting, it’s wonderful, and I feel so blessed to have him as my husband.  Doug has been in a funk this last week. He really had a hard day last Sunday.  He made an appointment with his alternative medicine person, to get what I call de-funked.  He always seems better after he sees her.  She takes the black and makes it grey so that he can cope better.  I know that God is going to take the depression away, which will take the wanting to escape away, which will take the wanting to use away.  All that Doug has to do is LET IT GO!  God is just waiting to take it from him. As much as I would like to do that for him, I can’t it’s for him to do.

I believe that all of us struggle with taking on things that aren’t ours to take, or fix. We just make a mess. The only way that we can be at peace is to just take care of us.  We have to take the serenity prayer serious.  Can we change anything?  Is there something we can do to make a situation better?  If the answer is yes, then we should go for it.  Do what we can to make it better.  If the answer is no, it’s out of our control. Leave it alone and forget it.  God wants us to live in the light, be joyous, and have hearts like children.  We can’t do that if we are busy trying to help him do his job.  Let Go and Let God, it’s the way we will survive.

Praise God,

Noreen