From Weatherwax: Confessions of a Muddling
Submitted by Weatherwax on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 1:55am.
At the risk of embarrassing poor Muddle, I have a few things to add to the above.
To further illustrate the type of man Denise inexplicably sought to destroy, let me clue you in on a few things. Muddle married his childhood sweetheart and has loved her and only her his entire life. There has never been anyone else. His marriage to Mrs. Muddle serves as an example of what almost everyone has idealistic hopes for when they say “I Do”, but very few actually experience. It is what I strive for in my own marriage. He is the kind of man who, although going to school full time and filling his head with Kant and Kierkegaard, working menial jobs involving other people’s trash and supporting four small children and a wife, still somehow managed to find the time to read Lewis and L’Engle to those four children – memories which would be among their very fondest from childhood. A generation later he plays with and reads to those children’s children, even in the midst of a cancer diagnosis, the sudden passing of his father, the mysterious and terrifying illness of his wife and the severe blow to his financial security dealt to him for no identifiable reason. He can still be counted on for a laugh any time of the day – for as my paper in first grade proudly stated, there is nobody with a better sense of humor. He has never asked anything from anybody as long as I can remember. Quite the contrary, he will suffer the most ridiculous forms of discomfort just on the off chance that someone else might feel a slight breeze or would perhaps be unable to look out of an airplane window. He gives almost to the point of Doormat status, were it not for the fact that he gives out of an inherent generosity and loving nature, not out of the need for acceptance. He is the very definition of “Christian”; in the traditional, admirable sense of the word, rather than the overchurched, undereducated, hyperjudgmental variety that he spoke up against. Of everyone I have come across in my life, Mr. and Mrs. Muddle are quite honestly the ones who are the most faultless and the most deserving to cast first stones, if they were the sort of people to cast them. And yet they aren’t. They aren’t judgmental in the slightest and have supported their four children (and their spouses) in everything they strived to do. Even the dreaded “rock stars” and “artists” received their full support. At one point they opened their home to half a dozen extra twenty-somethings who migrated to the area and were, for several months, tripping over sleeping hippies on couches and front porches, up to their elbows in dirty dishes and bellbottoms and constantly awakened in the night to “Layla” strummed at high volume from the pond. I don’t know of anyone else on earth who would have put up with that. It is the Muddles’ loving, giving nature, I suppose. And it is this nature that made it possible for Muddle to stand in his kitchen and openly forgive one of the possible key players in his “undoing”. I know. I was there.
It is true; our Muddle, who art in Fayetteville, hallowed be his name, is not “destroyed”. But, given the circumstances, that says so much of his character right there. Many men would be flattened by such a blow – being asked to resign so suddenly, without warning, and at his age when, in all fairness, he should be leisurely contemplating retirement and perhaps the purchase of a sailboat rather than worrying about finding another job and the stresses of possible (probable, rather) relocation. The latter of these things being my main source of anger at those involved in his “resignation” since I, as one of the other Muddlings, have greatly enjoyed being a short drive from “Mama and Papa’s”, the place that my daughter considers “home” as much as her real one. If that is taken away from me, my daughter and my unborn son I cannot tell you the grief that it will cause us. If you sought to punish Muddle because his beliefs differed from your own, Denise, did you take into account that your “retribution” might have a negative impact on those who are innocent bystanders? If Muddle must move, my daughter will pay for it most of all because she will have her grandparents taken away from her. If Muddle must move and my son is denied the chance to know “Mama and Papa Pirate” the way that my daughter does, he pays dearly as well. If Muddle must move, and with him goes Mrs. Muddle, then I am denied a best friend. Muddle is not destroyed because Muddle has too great a character to allow the actions of others to destroy him. But your actions, Denise, have potentially torn apart a family. You cannot possibly know how tragic it would be for Muddle and Wife to have to move far away from their children and grandchildren. I can’t bear the thought.
Somewhere in the darker parts of my soul I have a desire to wring D.C.’s neck and scream out things that can only be uttered here by hitting Shift and punching furiously on the number keys. But then there is the Muddle-raised side of me which has been taught (and shown) forgiveness and so, D.C., all I can do now is ask you, if you are a person of God as you have claimed to be, to do some honest praying about what you have done to Muddle and whether or not that was truly “God’s work”. Because I think you’ll find, if you have such a strong relationship with God, that He would have no desire to see one of His greatest defenders flailing blindly in the dark. And perhaps, if you do realize that you have condemned the wrong man, you’ll do something to make amends. And if that time comes, I have no doubt in my mind that Muddle’s response to you would be a genuine, “Shalom”.
Know that, though the length of this post has gotten to the point of ridiculousness (apples and trees), it has been edited several times. Know that there is so much more I could say about the man who raised me, to try to get the point across to a certain handful of people that they have greatly harmed an innocent, rather amazing, man. To those few of you I say, I am not as strong as my father. I can wear a sunny disposish with the best of them, but at the end of the day I am heartbroken to watch everything my awesome parents have worked so hard for begin to unravel around them. I am furious, I am confused and I am sad. I am almost to the point of envying Job because, what with everything going on in the Muddle family at present, boils are looking kind of appealing right now. And know that, as I am currently typing my family history in the hopes that certain people will begin to realize what they’ve done, as everyone else out in the Blogging world bickers about “Muddle’s Demise”, Muddle sleeps on a cot in a hospital, yet again, next to his childhood sweetheart. This man was such a threat to someone else’s religious beliefs that she had to do everything within her power to shut him up? It boggles the mind.
To the rest of you who were not conspiring against Muddle, the Muddlings appreciate your words and support more than you know.
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