Happy Memorial Day! I just yesterday returned from Ocean City Maryland. I'm a little crispy (well, not as much today, thankfully) and very relaxed. It's nice to spend one day lying on the beach listening to the waves, feeling the breeze, and frying like the pieces of batter in a deep fryer that get stuck on the bottom! :) What was even nicer, was the trip to Seacrets. For those of you who have never been to O.C. M.D., Seacrets is a Jamacian bar/eatery which sits on the beach. There are various little tiki bars located throughout the sand. Friends of mine have made this trip every year for the last 5 years. But, my favorite part was the floating rafts and the "water waitresses"! Anywhere you can float on a raft with friends in the sun and have someone come to you and ask, "Can we get you another one of those?" Has got to be a great place! :)

On my trip home yesterday I was thinking alot about Karma. Saturday night, as we were leaving Seacrets I ran into one of my former field hockey players, Jen. I loved Jen. She was so geniunely nice and even in her frenzy to get everything done she continued to heap onto her plate, she was concerned for other people. She was filling me in on the lives of some of her former teammates. One of which was Kristen.
For those who don't cringe at the mention of her name, as I did, Kristen was the field hockey/softball player Ryan began a secret relationship with 2 days post-breaking up with me. The reason this relationship was secret was because Kristen had a boyfriend. Kristen's boyfriend was a former SSU football player named Burt, who was at the time living in Pennsy. pursuing a Master's degree. As if her "dating" my Ryan wasn't bad enough, she would only talk about the things they did together is I was around and no one else, but her friend Megan; otherwise, it was always about Burt. I didn't have verbal confirmation of their being together, but I could see it in Ryan's eyes whenever he looked at her. (Could also tell Neil what Neil was or wasn't up to by his eyes, but that's neither here nor there.) For years the only person I could ever truly say I hated was Kristen. (Not that I carried this hate with me, or thought about it often, but if anyone ever asked...Kristen was the only name that popped to mind.) Somehow, doing something which purposely hurts another person warrents this level of emotion in me. (So, in case you haven't gather...the list has been topped by one, some days two new people - I haven't quite fgured out how "intentional" he was.)

So, Jen was telling me about Kristen. She informed me Kristen and Burt married (which I knew from our SSU alumni newsletter) and were living in Pennsy. Sometime recently Kristen became pregnant. According to Jen, she miscarried late (7th or 8th month) and her body never got the message. Her body is still in various stages of early motherhood functioning. I was confused. No matter how much of me hated her for hurting me, that is NOTHING I would ever wish on another person. But, some of me wondered, Does what go around really come around?

I pondered this all the way back to New Jersey yesterday. Does it? Even if no legitimate connection is made, do the things we do to others in life really come back to us in the end? Yes, makes so much sense and oddly enough, I find it comforting. There were things I did (somewhat subconsciously) in being with Neil that hurt other people. So, maybe THAT's the explaination I've been looking for in why I feel so hurt and tortured by his leaving me to go back to her, and my feelings of loneliness for deserting my friends to be with him. It's my punishment for hurting her and them. Somehow, it just came around faster than most. In the same comforting respect, it means that for "doing unto me" (to reference an earlier blog), they too will find some level of unrest and hurt in their lives. If Trish's theory is true, (she believes Christy's punishment is having to live with a man who will never love her completely, will never put her first in life and will treat her more like a roommate and friend than a happily wed spouse {if he is ever able to marry her}; and that Neil's is having to live never finding love or a woman who treated him as well as I did, and living with a woman who is bossy, pushy, manipulative, and "wears the pants" in the relationship.) maybe they have already experienced their just sentance too.

The part that disturbs me is it means God punishes. I have always believe God is a loving, caring God. That if you ask, you will receive; he will carry you and "bear the brunt" of whatever is troubling you until you can take the weigth yourself (think Footprints); that he may not calm the storm, but will calm you in it; that he eases suffering and looks after those who believe in him...none of these thing explain punishment. It becomes harder and harder to believe these things as I've always believed them when you look even further into the world than me. What about the homeless? The innocent shildren in a war torn country? The starving? The sick? The poverty stricken? What have they done to experience the karma they experience?

I have a hard time believing God is looking down upon this saying, "but you did it to another". Even harder still, is that one might be in this situation and ask him for help, guidence, relief of some sort and it is not given? The phrase, "everything happens for a reason" seems to imply that God is into "teaching lessons and punishing, or 'ignoring' hurt for some greater 'lesson'". If hurting, and crying, and aching, and losing much of a will for life (such as an elderly widow who has just lost a spouse of 50 years), is to "make you stronger" or "help you appreciate further the gold at the end of the rainbow", then it also means that God ignores us in times of need. However, as my friend Karen suggests, how do we know that the degree of our suffering is not significantly lessened because of the presence of God in our lives?

I don't have any answers. I think if I did I'd stop wondering and hurting at the thought that I could've been wrong all these years! :) the only one who truly knows the answers isn't sharing them with us. Perhaps, the interpretation is all part of the journey toward a very common end.