V-I-C-T-I-M alert
What a week it has been. For the most part, good, but a few hiccups. Namely, Jed has caught a cold of sorts (reminds me, I should buy some Vitamin C tablets again...) and Miss Abby had a doctors appointment to check her tummy that seems to be getting sore more times than is normal, in a week. We thought it harmless just to get it checked out to see if anything was noticeably wrong. My mothers intuition is that it may be a bread thing (like my mom gets) although even after 'gluten free' lunchboxes at school, she will still sometimes come home and complain of a tummy ache. So go figure. Part of our lovely doctor's plan to get to the bottom of it was for Abby to do some bloods just to rule out a few issues.
I thought, seeing as my brave girl had previously had an injection in her mouth for a filling as well as her immunisations, that she would be OK with the tiny needle they use for kids blood tests. I was wrong... The lovely (Irish) nurse tried everything (along with myself) to get Missy to comply, but the damage was done. She had seen the needle. So after heading to Apollo Labtests, only to find the wait was an hour, heading to Browns Bay and waiting only half and hour, then to get into the room with her (and Jed, God bless him for being well behaved while we tried to do what was needed), it was less than ideal to have to call our efforts quits and try again the next day. It was slightly chaotic with Abby crying (fairly loudly), Jed sitting on the floor with his mechanical Paw Patrol toy that was super loud, the lovely nurse kept saying she had to step out because the noise was doing her head in, needless to say it was NOT our finest hour, especially leaving in defeat without the bloods done... (big sigh). So we talked it through overnight and tried again this morning. There were still tears and a small amount of worrying when we finally got into the nurses room but my brave girl did it!! (minus the noisy younger brother) and we had to celebrate with something with caffeine for me and I let her pick something for breakfast before we headed back to school. Thank GOD that's over...
Medical dramas aside, my thoughts this week have been quite convicting on a number of fronts. I don't think I'm alone in feeling like sometimes life is such that I feel justified in throwing myself a pity party. Whether it be trivial stuff like not getting to the gym for the second week in a row because of circumstances out of my hands or more serious stuff like how my marriage or my parenting is going. There are times in life where things are crazy, hectic, complicated and sometimes just plain bad. Lets be honest. And when we sit and weigh up our problems against a crippled person or a poor person living on a rubbish heap in India we feel the insignificance of what we're fretting about but in the moment, in the here and now, our problems are real and need dealing to.
I don't know about you but I find my inner dialogue pretty entertaining. There is the fighting spirit in me that will give myself a pep-talk mirroring much of what my mom would say or what I'd say to a friend if they came with the same problems. Then there's the contrary voice on the other side of the spectrum, the 'woe is me', 'life sucks' voice that tries it's hardest to talk me into the pity party I so badly want to wallow in. The bottom line is, it's easier to be a victim than a victor in life.
Being a victim works on many soulishly satisfactory levels.
1. We don't have to take any responsibility because we can blame everyone else and 'life' for where we are.
2. We don't have to change because it's everyone else's fault
3. We need someone to 'save us' because we have no power to change things
Here's some things about being the victim that make it so much less appealing when you look into it..
1. Having a victim mentality will lock you out of your next level in life because you'll always stay trapped where you are
2. Choosing to play the victim will keep you from learning valuable lessons from life's hard seasons which are the whole reason we go through hard seasons...so we will keep going through them until we GET this...
3. As long as we are the victim we imply that our victory or success in life is purely circumstantial
What if our life, where we find ourselves and our circumstances have less to do with what's happening around us and EVERYTHING to do with what's happening IN us? What if this mentality that everyone or everything else is to blame, locks us out of ever growing past the point we're at?
There are a few truths we need to settle before we can reach the point of becoming a VICTOR and not a VICTIM, in my humble opinion... we need to realise;
1. In life we cannot change anyone else and to hold anyone ransom to our ideals or ideas is wrong. All we can do is change ourselves, work on what we see coming out of us in relationships and under pressure that needs working on and leave the rest to God.
2. There are some situations we can change and some we can't. We need wisdom to know what we can change and strength to make the changes.
3 People are often the key to which voice we feed. I have made a conscious effort to surround myself with people who will not allow me to have a pity party. They cut off any negative, victim speak and feed into the 'pull yourself together' inner voice which is ultimately the voice that initiates change.
4. Going from victim to victor requires a mindset change! I enjoy that I am naturally an optimist but even for someone to whom this comes fairly naturally, I have to consciously decide to apply this frame of mind in situations. If life is turning to custard, I'll remind myself that this will make an excellent chapter in my book. If a person I love is doing badly, I'll be encouraged by the huge testimony that will come of it when they get that 'lightbulb' moment.
This was in no way meant to get all deep and depressing. Only that it's good to realise sometimes we can adopt a victim mentality in life, some in a smaller degree than others, only to never see that it blinds us to any personal responsibility to be able to overcome, change, challenge our perceptions, grow and learn from situations. I think this has become more real to me as I have gone through situations that are completely out of my control. There really are only two answers; play the victim and find some people who will come hang out at your pity party OR change what you can in yourself, change what you can about your situation, believe for the best, PRAY for everything and trust God that when He is done with me, things WILL shift.
Praying that someone out there is encouraged by my revelations as I work things out in my own life, cos lets be honest, situations change but we all have the same struggles and challenges at some level or another!
On a lighter note, SUMMER is here (ok, included in that is a random thunder and hail storm) but it's heating up none-the-less. We have a week of celebrations, my friend Josie, my sister-in law, Julz, our Heaven baby, Eli and my dad, all have birthdays this week! Talk about a bad week for cake when you've missed the gym for a while!! Anyway, celebrations must go on.
I am also 'Christmassing' up (I totally just added that word to my online dictionary). Each time I go to the shop I am trying to buy quirky things and activities to make an advent calendar for the kids for December. So far I've found Christmas cookie cutter shapes, flashing LED reindeer glasses for when we go look at the lights at Franklin Street and also paint-your-own Christmas mug that you can bake in the oven.... bit more to think about seeing as that's literally 3 days out of 25! I'm looking forward to sharing all my Christmas plans and activities as we get closer to Christmas, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself :) But our tree is going up this weekend if all goes to plan - here's hoping!
Have a wonderful rest of your week if you have gotten to the end of this post! God strength as we make our way to the finish line that is the end of November and embark on all that is festive, holidays and Christmas!
I thought, seeing as my brave girl had previously had an injection in her mouth for a filling as well as her immunisations, that she would be OK with the tiny needle they use for kids blood tests. I was wrong... The lovely (Irish) nurse tried everything (along with myself) to get Missy to comply, but the damage was done. She had seen the needle. So after heading to Apollo Labtests, only to find the wait was an hour, heading to Browns Bay and waiting only half and hour, then to get into the room with her (and Jed, God bless him for being well behaved while we tried to do what was needed), it was less than ideal to have to call our efforts quits and try again the next day. It was slightly chaotic with Abby crying (fairly loudly), Jed sitting on the floor with his mechanical Paw Patrol toy that was super loud, the lovely nurse kept saying she had to step out because the noise was doing her head in, needless to say it was NOT our finest hour, especially leaving in defeat without the bloods done... (big sigh). So we talked it through overnight and tried again this morning. There were still tears and a small amount of worrying when we finally got into the nurses room but my brave girl did it!! (minus the noisy younger brother) and we had to celebrate with something with caffeine for me and I let her pick something for breakfast before we headed back to school. Thank GOD that's over...Medical dramas aside, my thoughts this week have been quite convicting on a number of fronts. I don't think I'm alone in feeling like sometimes life is such that I feel justified in throwing myself a pity party. Whether it be trivial stuff like not getting to the gym for the second week in a row because of circumstances out of my hands or more serious stuff like how my marriage or my parenting is going. There are times in life where things are crazy, hectic, complicated and sometimes just plain bad. Lets be honest. And when we sit and weigh up our problems against a crippled person or a poor person living on a rubbish heap in India we feel the insignificance of what we're fretting about but in the moment, in the here and now, our problems are real and need dealing to.
I don't know about you but I find my inner dialogue pretty entertaining. There is the fighting spirit in me that will give myself a pep-talk mirroring much of what my mom would say or what I'd say to a friend if they came with the same problems. Then there's the contrary voice on the other side of the spectrum, the 'woe is me', 'life sucks' voice that tries it's hardest to talk me into the pity party I so badly want to wallow in. The bottom line is, it's easier to be a victim than a victor in life.
Being a victim works on many soulishly satisfactory levels.
1. We don't have to take any responsibility because we can blame everyone else and 'life' for where we are.
2. We don't have to change because it's everyone else's fault
3. We need someone to 'save us' because we have no power to change things
Here's some things about being the victim that make it so much less appealing when you look into it..
1. Having a victim mentality will lock you out of your next level in life because you'll always stay trapped where you are
2. Choosing to play the victim will keep you from learning valuable lessons from life's hard seasons which are the whole reason we go through hard seasons...so we will keep going through them until we GET this...
3. As long as we are the victim we imply that our victory or success in life is purely circumstantial
What if our life, where we find ourselves and our circumstances have less to do with what's happening around us and EVERYTHING to do with what's happening IN us? What if this mentality that everyone or everything else is to blame, locks us out of ever growing past the point we're at?
There are a few truths we need to settle before we can reach the point of becoming a VICTOR and not a VICTIM, in my humble opinion... we need to realise;
1. In life we cannot change anyone else and to hold anyone ransom to our ideals or ideas is wrong. All we can do is change ourselves, work on what we see coming out of us in relationships and under pressure that needs working on and leave the rest to God.
2. There are some situations we can change and some we can't. We need wisdom to know what we can change and strength to make the changes.
3 People are often the key to which voice we feed. I have made a conscious effort to surround myself with people who will not allow me to have a pity party. They cut off any negative, victim speak and feed into the 'pull yourself together' inner voice which is ultimately the voice that initiates change.
4. Going from victim to victor requires a mindset change! I enjoy that I am naturally an optimist but even for someone to whom this comes fairly naturally, I have to consciously decide to apply this frame of mind in situations. If life is turning to custard, I'll remind myself that this will make an excellent chapter in my book. If a person I love is doing badly, I'll be encouraged by the huge testimony that will come of it when they get that 'lightbulb' moment.
This was in no way meant to get all deep and depressing. Only that it's good to realise sometimes we can adopt a victim mentality in life, some in a smaller degree than others, only to never see that it blinds us to any personal responsibility to be able to overcome, change, challenge our perceptions, grow and learn from situations. I think this has become more real to me as I have gone through situations that are completely out of my control. There really are only two answers; play the victim and find some people who will come hang out at your pity party OR change what you can in yourself, change what you can about your situation, believe for the best, PRAY for everything and trust God that when He is done with me, things WILL shift.
Praying that someone out there is encouraged by my revelations as I work things out in my own life, cos lets be honest, situations change but we all have the same struggles and challenges at some level or another!
On a lighter note, SUMMER is here (ok, included in that is a random thunder and hail storm) but it's heating up none-the-less. We have a week of celebrations, my friend Josie, my sister-in law, Julz, our Heaven baby, Eli and my dad, all have birthdays this week! Talk about a bad week for cake when you've missed the gym for a while!! Anyway, celebrations must go on.
I am also 'Christmassing' up (I totally just added that word to my online dictionary). Each time I go to the shop I am trying to buy quirky things and activities to make an advent calendar for the kids for December. So far I've found Christmas cookie cutter shapes, flashing LED reindeer glasses for when we go look at the lights at Franklin Street and also paint-your-own Christmas mug that you can bake in the oven.... bit more to think about seeing as that's literally 3 days out of 25! I'm looking forward to sharing all my Christmas plans and activities as we get closer to Christmas, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself :) But our tree is going up this weekend if all goes to plan - here's hoping!
Have a wonderful rest of your week if you have gotten to the end of this post! God strength as we make our way to the finish line that is the end of November and embark on all that is festive, holidays and Christmas!
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