Friday Confession: Annoyance Allowance

I am easily annoyed. If you know me well, this is not really a confession, because you have witnessed it. If you've read about my psycho behavior at school parties and on field trips, you are getting the idea. Even my kids recognize this, as in, “Look how mommy bites her lips and her eyes get real big when Daddy is annoying her.”

The thing is, I have a bit of a rep for being a generally pleasant person, but sometimes I struggle to be pleasant to the people I know well. I just get annoyed. I don’t think it’s right to be nicer to the super market checker than I am to my own flesh and blood, but that’s how it goes down most days. Sister (and best friend in the universe?) Snippy to her. Husband? Don’t ask.

Now I’m coming off a sleepless night because I was too easily annoyed and curt at a church meeting last night—so I spent the entire night tossing, turning, fretting and regretting. At the meeting I had diarrhea-of-the-mouth, when I should have let others talk. I was controlling. I shut down some people’s comments, and I got snippy. These are people who came out on the coldest night of the year to help me with a huge project.

I could claim that I was “meetinged-out” after a very long day. I could play the hormone card, since I had started my period about 12 minutes before the meeting. But in reality, I think I’m just too easily annoyed. And, to make matters worse, I think the reason I got so testy was that I felt safe doing so because I am very close friends with a lot of the women in the room. Nice, huh? I think it’s the same way you can keep your cool with a tough or aloof teacher, but then you come home and dump all over your mother. Ugh. Been there, done that.

A blog I enjoy which takes about 2 seconds to look at each day, is really just a photo w/ a caption. It is called “Annoyance Allowance.” It’s fun to go back through the archives and see pictures of all of the things that strike people as annoying. Some are strange. Some are universal. The best part about it is the concept that we are allowed ONE annoyance a day. The creators of the blog don't have kids yet, so maybe that allotment is too low, but that's a discussion for another day.

I think days like yesterday, when I let myself sink into the self-centered, “my way or the highway mentality,” I’ve gone way over my annoyance budget. I mean, aren't we always telling our kids that behavior is a choice? We can choose to be annoyed, or we can choose to give people slack and show them grace. I know what I want to choose today, and I hope my poor friends from last night have a little grace left for a very annoying Anna.

Beyond Myself

I am a closet introvert trapped in an extrovert’s body. To most people who know me, I am bubbly and very outgoing. I love to talk, exhibited by my frequent “diarrhea of the mouth” when I’m at parties. I’ll come home and rehash the evening, “Oh my, did I really say THAT???” I love to plan events to bring people together such as church functions, fundraisers, and get-togethers for no particular reason. I am the one who will go up to the person standing alone and try to draw her in.

Truthfully, however, I’ve spent most of the last 2 years alone in my minivan or alone at home. I’ll walk along the bike path and see everyone else paired up in twos, but it rarely crosses my mind to call someone to walk with. I like to shop alone. When we go to the beach with other families, you would think I’d be drinking margaritas and dancing on the table top, finally having other grown-ups to talk to, but I usually spend several days in my room devouring library books. When I do join the others to play cards at night, I have a blast and am energized, but I realize that cocooning has become my nature.

I think over the years I have put out a weird vibe when it comes to being intimate with people. I joke that I’m about as deep as a puddle when it comes to introspection, so maybe I’m just afraid of grappling with messy issues. When Tom and I were dating, we had two friends who were also dating. When I would hear about their deep talks that would last until 4 a.m.— on the meaning of life, etc. I would have a pang. Why didn’t Tom and I talk about those things? I came to realize that one of the reasons I was attracted to Tom in the first place was that he didn’t want to always be digging deeper and deeper and neither did I.

The past few days I’ve been thinking about how we are called to be God’s hands and feet on this earth. The way we do this is through loving and serving each other as an outpouring of His love. I love people and want what’s best for them. What I don’t seem to want to do is extend myself in the day to day way of relationships. I rarely make or receive phone calls just to chat. I have a structure to the day that I am reluctant to depart from if something comes up.

I think of friends I’ve had that I’ve introduced to each other. More times than I can count, they have become intimate, helping each other with child rearing, spending holidays together, and seeing each other through crises, while I have become more of a yearly Christmas card friend. This may sound like I’m jealous, but I’m not; I just see in them a willingness to openly share the stuff of life together while I hang back, again and again.

Please don't get me wrong-- being God’s hands and feet has nothing to do with being an introvert or extrovert—it has to do with love. I am awed when people show love in ways I wouldn’t consider doing myself. My mother was an excellent example of this. Whether it was inviting our 80+ year old babysitter to live in our house for 2 weeks when she decided (temporarily!) to leave her husband of 50 years, or welcoming a stream of friends to our dinner table, she extended herself in ways that were not convenient, but were real.

There are so many people around me who don’t stop at, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” They just do SOMETHING. I am in awe of them, because what they do is so different from what I do. I am much more comfortable writing a check for a cause or praying FOR someone in crisis than BEING there physically in the trenches or praying WITH someone in crisis.

I am not sure where I am going with this, but my prayer is that God enables me to step out of my comfort zone and live life with others. There is nothing wrong with down-time or alone time, but I want to be someone whom others can count on, not just at a party or during the good times, but in the messy, nitty gritty of life.