I Want a REFUND!

I refuse to go to stores the day after Christmas.  If I have something to return, I surely hope it doesn't have to be returned within the week after Christmas.  I am out of luck if it does.  I will not go stand in line for two hours to exchange a sweater.  Most of the times, I will just deal with it.  However, occasionally, you get a gift that is so unsuitable that you are willing to wait all day and all night if you have to in order to return this ridiculous gift.  

This year I was given the gift of divorce, and I can assure you, I could have lived without it!  First of all, I made a list of what I wanted. I know for a fact that divorce was nowhere on that list.  I just hate it when you tell someone exactly what you want, and then they give you something that you never even mentioned.  Furthermore, on numerous occasions I had specifically said that I had no desire to ever own this particular gift.  But the items on my list were overlooked, and I was given a nicely packed divorce.  

This gift does not even come close to fitting me.  I am a forty-two year old mother of two teenage girls.  I am supposed to be guiding them through the windy roads of dating, not dealing with these roads myself.  Now if I could go back as a teenager and date, I would have this thing figured out.  I would be a pro.  But dating at my age is complicated, to say the least.  You see, as a teenager you just pick out a cute outfit and a matching purse, and you are good to go!  As an adult you pick out the perfect outfit, but then you have to make three trips to the car to carry all the baggage that has to go with you.  Once you lug it all out, you find that it barely fits because their baggage already fills up half the car.

In addition to the gift being something I didn't ask for and not my fit, it was very expensive.  Now while one would usually welcome a costly gift, I just couldn't appreciate it.  I don't mean to be ungrateful, I just would have preferred something like a car or maybe a dream vacation.      

Well, I wanted to return this gift.  I was even willing to fight in the long lines and deal with nasty, disgruntled employees.  I spent a great deal of time waiting just to find out that this gift could not be returned.  It was mine to keep, like it or not.  I argued and even made a little scene, to no avail.  I was stuck with it.  I was forced to keep it and just begin the process of stretching it here and there and making it fit.

I was leaving the store, and I noticed a book, How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed.  I resignedly purchased the book.  If I am going to be stuck with this gift that I don't want, I may as well try to understand how to get the very best use out of it.  Slowly but surely, I am working with the gift and making it fit.  Since it is mine to keep, I may as well do the best I can with it.  While it still doesn't look great on me, I am beginning to make it work.  I just hope that I am not stuck with it forever.  I certainly don't want to give it to anyone else.  Trust me, this gift will not be regifted, but I would be more than happy to retire it at some point later on in my life!

John 16:33 (New Living Translation)
I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”