FINE! I'll make you happy!

Three months later, and many dollars shorter but memories richer, I return to the blogosphere. I could apologize for many paragraphs, but we'll just leave it with, "friend, it's good to be back!"

The other night I went running, as I have many nights this summer [reason #951 to love the cooler northern summers]. As I was running through one of the crowded areas of the city, I passed a woman in her mid-twenties, talking on [and when I say talking on, I mean screaming into] her cell phone. I'm not entirely sure what the conversation was about, but I do know that the average conversation soundbite that I can actually catch while running the opposite direction is about 10 seconds. This one, I caught about 30 seconds of due to high volume of said individual and the language in that 30 second soundbite alone would have required a R rating...

So I'm guessing the conversation wasn't necessarily a happy go-lucky one.

At any rate, the one phrase, screamed into the phone, that most caught my ear was this:

"FINE! I'll make you happy. I won't be [...] happy at all but I'll make you [...] happy. I hope you know how [...] miserable this makes me."

Man. What a picture of love. Truly the self-sacrificing martyr that one... chances are high that she will [and by that I mean, will not] receive a metal of honor for that sacrifice...

Yet, as much as I roll my eyes and am shocked by her angry, loud, ugly response [to an unknown prompt, in an unknown situation], I wonder how often my own heart response is very similar...

"FINE! I know it's the right thing to do, so I'll do it, but I'm not going to like it..."
"FINE! I know I need to be talk to her/him, so I'll do it, but I'm going to hate every minute of it."
"FINE! I'll go, because it matters to you, but I'd really rather be anywhere else."

I might not verbalize those things... in fact, given my semi-southern culture, you might never know what's going on inside. But the ugliness is still just as ugly.

May I be as convicted of my own bent-ness, as I am of hers...

Have mercy.