Life Lessons

Victoria got a book some time ago....I believe October 2011, from the Imagination Library. The book was actually written by Dolly herself, I am a Rainbow. I LOVE it! I particularly love this part, "It's not always up to you, the way that you feel. But how you act is a different deal." 

That's a great life lesson. I try to tell her all the time that if she is sad or mad she can't act out. She's definitely allowed, encouraged really, to go sit by herself for a bit and think about her feelings, but she is required to talk about them. I'm so mad because..... Mommy you hurt my feelings by.....  

I blame that on my mother. We had to talk about everything when I was growing up. I think it's a valuable life skill though to be able to verbalize why you feel the way  you feel. In order to do that you have to know 1) what you are feeling and 2) why you are feeling that way. I feel it's important, necessary really, to be able to talk to the person you are upset with and work past it. I'm not the best at returning calls and such...(which makes people think I'm upset with them) so I have to say.....my sister and one of my besties are totally the same way. They will message me and say, "Are you upset with me? If you are, let's talk about it." I feel like it really shows you care when you want to talk about a problem and fix it. Sweeping a problem under the rug never fixes the problem....it masks it for a bit but it always raises it's ugly head again and usually in the form of the person that didn't want to talk about it is overly sensitive about everything. They didn't work past it so they think about it all the time. 

Which leads me to that whole saying of "forgive and forget." That's a stupid saying. As humans we don't just say...."Hmm....I would like to hit delete on this event." That's just stamps it further into our memory. I really like this very long explanation. We can act like we forgot and not hold something against somebody, and maybe several years down the road we might forget, but it doesn't just happen. I also really enjoy the information about forgiving there. It jives with what my pastor says. You can forgive and move on in different directions. Hmm...really because in Matthew 18:21-22 it says I should forgive my brother not 7 times but 7 times 70. Well....it also says in Matthew 18: 15-17  15"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private ; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 "But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church ; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 

So there we go. You really should forgive....the Christian idea of forgiveness is that you love them, don't wish them harm, don't be vengeful. Christian love is not speaking ill, doing good deeds, and praying for them. I have to say I have a personal issue in my life and I feel covered here. I have been questioned and accused of those that feel like I am against them (even though there is no reason for them to feel that way). I have been told that I don't apologize correctly and that I haven't really forgiven. Well, I have. I pray for them, I don't wish them ill-will, I tried to reach out and talk about our disagreements. No go. Oh well.I have learned in life that as long as you know who you are and what your intentions are it really doesn't matter what others think. You can't make someone that has no intentions of giving you a chance believe or understand you. God knows your heart. I guess that all has come with age as well. It still hurts and still makes you question yourself from time to time when someone has such horrible things to say about you. You just have to say oh well. So that all ties back to the "It's not always up to you, the way that you feel. But how you act is a different deal."

Sometimes we are hurt or mad but we can't act out. We forgive and we pray and hopefully discuss with the person that has hurt us or made us mad and we work past it. We don't ever treat others badly. Ever.

Oh....BTW.....I also loathe the whole..."don't let others control how you feel." Umm....okay. Well, that's really hard...especially when you want something to work so badly and the other party really doesn't care. Sometimes there are toxic people in our lives though and we have to recognize those people and just let them go. Forgive and move forward......in different directions.