Why can't I just be happy

I'm sure there are plenty of people with blogs full of depressed rantings. Well, here's another.

I don't know what happened to my hope. There are two people specifically that I could point to and say that because of what they've done or haven't done has really dealt a blow to my optimism.

I just don't like it when things are broken and are just left to remain broken. It's like my house. There's this section where my brother and I were looking for where the water pipe from the road came into the house. We crawled around under the house and couldn't find it and then we started poking around outside the house. We knew there was a sewer cleanout at a certain place and we were poking around there. There was metal skirting stuff over the crawlspace openings and we bent it down, thinking the pipe might have come up into the wall near the laundry room. It didn't. We later crawled around more under the house and found it under the kitchen/bathroom wall. I didn't do anything with that bent down metal because the house was a total wreck at the time and lots of work needed to be done and I figured the guy that was replacing that wall from the outside might remove it.

Well, he didn't remove it. He didn't even bend it back up. He replaced the plywood on the outside of that wall and put nice new siding up there and left the metal bent down and raggedy. I'm sure nobody even really notices it except me. There are plants growing around there and it's not very obvious, but it's there and I know it. I must not have been paying attention the day he did that siding. Maybe I wasn't home. It's annoying though. I wish he had called me and just said, "hey, this stuff isn't right, what do you want me to do with it?" So anyway, I don't think it can be bent back into place now because the new plywood and siding is lower than before and it won't fit. So I don't know what to do with it now and it just annoys me. Maybe it's my own fault that it's just left undone. I mean, I could go out there and dig it up and replace it with something else, but I don't. I suppose I'd rather just be mad at the contractor guy for not doing what I thought he should have done, which was to point out that something was wrong and find a solution with me. Instead, he just went on like there wasn't anything out of place.

One of the people I blame does the same thing. He just goes on when things are out of whack. He'll say things are messed up, but not really look for anything he can do to improve the situation. Hmm.

So anyway, I don't have any control over what others do. And frankly, I'm tired of praying about it. Maybe I've never prayed about it the right way in the first place and my disappointment is my own fault. Besides, if I point to them and think that if they do this or that, it would make me happy....it probably wouldn't work anyway.

I've been unhappy and had peace before, though. I can't say that I have peace now. I'm certainly not happy. I can name a whole list of things that I think would make me happy, but even then, I'm not sure I would have peace. It is a problem.

People used to tell me I was so strong when they knew I was going through a tough situation. I used to respond that it wasn't a matter of strength or weakness, it was a matter of hardness or softness. I think that was true. But over time, and even after getting through that unbelievably hard time(rather softly and "successfully" I might add), I guess I thought things would just improve since then, and they didn't.

Maybe I'll just spill it and not be vague. Maybe another time...there's daily grind to attend to.