Maryann Austin

When I went through a divorce years ago, it was a lot of work. I should say, the bad marriage and leaving it were a lot of work. By the time the actual divorce happened, I was adjusting. It was all the back and forth and contemplation of a decision that was draining. Oh how draining. Raised with lots of guilt, I constantly questioned myself. Am I doing wrong by splitting this relationship up? Am I giving up too easily? Am I just a drama queen who is exaggerating how unbearable it is? Separate from that situation, I had total faith in myself. I try to live with integrity. I try hard at everything and it takes a lot for me to throw in the towel. I am definitely not a drama queen. Just ask my extremely functional second husband to whom I am very happily married. Lastly, I bear a lot before I complain. All this knowledge about myself went out the window when it came to that bad relationship. What I ended up doing was this. I made detailed notes of all of the things my ex-husband had ...

He asked me, “Mom, would God ever damn someone because I didn’t do something?”                                                                                                             Wow. “No.   That’s not how God works.” I wondered where he could have ever gotten an idea like that.   We talked a little bit.   In a few minutes it was clear to me what was happening. I told him how, when I was small, when my mom w...

Did you ever feel like you are going to die from either exhaustion or guilt?  It's like there is no escape. One or the other is going to do it. Moms are often guilty (there I go again with the guilt) of this thinking. I know I do it all the time.  I'm sitting in my living room on a Wednesday morning. I happen to be off from my outside-home job today. There are at least two loads of laundry waiting for me downstairs. There are a few dishes in the sink, full litter box, full trash can, lots of clean clothes that need to be put away, shed cat hair in every room of the house. You get the idea. I'm not quite a hoarder or a crazy cat lady. But I have a huge fear of becoming one. It doesn't take long for things to get out of hand in a house. One or two days of lolly-gagging, and you're living in an embarrassment. Guilt sets in (if it ever went away in the first place).  You got a day or two's rest out of it, but now you have guilt AND a dirty house. As the young ...

My sister Karen and Me. The last Christmas that my father was living. 11:00 PM December 24, 1970 whatever... In Lake Ronkonkoma, NY, several Sekulski kids gathered in the living room, surrounded by shredded Christmas wrapping and bows, cardboard boxes, plastic, twist ties from things like stretch Armstrong and Barbie Whatever.  It was a joke and a custom in our family that my mom would start asking us in October, "Do you want one of your Christmas presents?"  What normal American kid would say no? So, it's understandable how on virtually every Christmas morning, we had already opened all of our gifts. Not the type of household where gifts sit nicely under the tree on Christmas morning until everyone had eaten their special Christmas breakfast. No, it wasn't like that in the Sekulskis of Arlington house. (There were also 5 Sekulskis on Webster Ave...our cousins, not to be confused with the Sekulskis on Arlington.) So, when many other families in the neighborhood we...

A day or two ago, a friend was lamenting on facebook. It seemed that a "friend" of hers with different beliefs had "unfriended" her. Her situation struck a nerve with me. I had been in the same boat. And I shared her disbelief. The kneejerk reaction for each of us was something like this: How could they unfriend me for something like that? They share all kinds of things that I don't agree with and I wouldn't unfriend them. I have been through it a number of times in my life. It may not have always been on facebook. But it was the same scenario. There is a good explanation for why lopsided "friendship" happens and will continue to happen--and it may be of special importance for Christian people to know why. First, lets look at what the general population considers friendship to be. All you need do is look at the typical facebook share about friends. Friends are always there for you. They support you no matter what you decide to do. All tha...

There seems to be an epidemic of simplistic thinking these days.  And I don't mean that in a good way.  Today I witnessed the following situation in a retail store.  Two crotchety old men walk in and tell the clerk that they need a manual for a particular item that one purchased a couple of days before.  "My wife threw it away," one stated.  The clerk spent several minutes scouring the computer for a way to print a new manual for the man.  As she worked on a solution to the problem, the men had a loud conversation about how there is no consideration for customers these days.  Why can't "they" be more customer-oriented and stock extra manuals for just these situations?? I mean, people lose things all the time. A little while later I had a chance to ponder the exchange.  All I could do was shake my head.  Rather than take responsibility for his losing the manual, rather than thanking the sales clerk for trying to remedy his problem, he chose t...