We Are What We Believe We Are
We are what we believe we are.
C.S. Lewis
It really is true what C.S. Lewis says in the quote above. We truly are what we believe we are. That is why you must speak life into yourself. If you wait on others to do this, you may be waiting a very long time in complete unhappiness. While there are some that will validate, compliment and even praise you, the vast majority will snub their noses at you and pick you apart. I’m not sure if this is due to jealousy or bitterness deep within their hearts. What I do know is that it is up to YOU to be your biggest fan. Yes, it is nice when you receive recognition, but don’t get down in the dumps or sink low in depression just because someone hasn’t lavished you with words of affirmation. Know your own worth. Don’t wait on others to tell you how valuable you are.
Words have power – those both spoken and unspoken. Your thoughts swirling around in your head have the potential to make you or break you. If you look at the reflection in the mirror and don’t like what you see, then maybe it is time to change a thing or two. I’m not talking about physical looks, though. I’m more referring to you looking yourself in the eye each and every day and not liking who you have become on the inside. Constantly bashing yourself will only bring you further down. Take action, instead. Do something about what you don’t like. That is the only way it will change. Work at it!
Retraining your thoughts to be more positive instead of focusing on the negative is hard work. It takes very little effort to find something to complain about, but sometimes we feel like we’ll work up a sweat trying to find a positive in the situation or even in us.
Think about the words that you speak to yourself. Now ask yourself if you would say those same words, with the same tone and all, to someone else? Would you say it to your spouses? Your children? Your parents? How about your best friend? If not, then why are you saying those hateful things to yourself? Ease up a little, because chances are that you aren’t as bad as you make yourself out to be, but if you are … work on yourself so that you can face that person in the mirror and be a little bit better tomorrow morning. Show signs of improvement until you can smile back at your reflection and know that you’re trying hard and it is paying off. That is something to take pride in, working on yourself from the inside out. Believe me, others will notice. If you don’t like yourself, how is anyone else supposed to? Embrace who you are, change what you can, and learn to LOVE yourself!
God created you, and Jesus died on the cross for you. You are a child of the King. Keep that in mind.
Unoffendable
In this day and age, it seems that EVERYONE is offended by something. Recently in our state, they were offended by the Confederate Flag that was flying high above the State House. After several rallies and protests, the governor sought, and later succeeded, the removal of the flag.
If it’s not the flag that people are offended by, they are easily offended by other things. It seems that people feel they are entitled to be offended. As Brant Hansen points out in his book, we think we are entitled to our anger and resentment that go along with being offended. It is like we’ve got something on someone, and as if we have moral superiority over them when we are offended. However, you can choose not to be offended. That is not an easy concept to swallow, but it is a choice that we can make in the moment when we feel it rising up inside of us.
Ask yourself this. Is your anger, resentment, and bitterness pleasing to God? I realize there is a bible verse that people love to quote where it says not to sin in your anger. A lot of people don’t realize (I didn’t) that this often quoted scripture also goes on further down in the passage to say NOT to be angry or bitter. Take a look:
26 “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, 27 nor give place to the devil.28 Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. 32 And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” Ephesians 4:26-32
What would our world look like today if we all chose to be unoffendable? What if we actually lived by the above bible verse? Now isn’t that something to consider?!
Being unoffended strikes at our pride and forces us to be humble. Being unoffendable also takes us from being the center of attention with our anger, our hatred, our resentment, our feelings of injustices, and our raging emotions, and it puts the focus on OTHERS! That is a hard one for us, isn’t it? We are all, whether we want to admit it or not, self focused and self absorbed. We don’t want to put others before ourselves, and yet, what if we DID just that? If we were to forfeit or deny our anger, and give up our “right” to be angry as if it does not even exist, and we FORGIVE and let go of our anger. Christ calls us to do just that. We are to love, offer mercy, and extend grace. Truthfully, how often do we do this when others have offended us?
Do we stop to put ourselves in other people’s shoes for just a minute? Take the flag situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post. People on both sides of the argument thought they were RIGHT! The ones that wanted the flag to remain said it was heritage and not hate. It is a part of our history, and yet the ones that had so much hatred toward the flag saw it as a sign of when their ancestors were in slavery. One side refused to see the other side’s point, though, and so they continued with their bitterness and anger. What if the side that said “Heritage, not hate” put themselves in the shoes of the black people saying “All I see is a symbol of slavery of my ancestors.” What if the blacks put themselves in the shoes of the white people and recognized that it was a part of our history and heritage instead of choosing to see it as a symbol of hatred? If we stop to consider where the other party is coming from, maybe … just maybe … it would make an impact on us and how we respond. Maybe then we could truly become unoffendable.
I’d like to challenge you on this, just as I feel I have been challenged by the words in Mr. Hansen’s book. I will not issue this challenge, though, without offering you the tools in his book. I have his brightly colored orange and white book in front of me so I can soak up all that he has to offer on truly being unoffendable. I’d like to equip you as well with the tools to fight against anger and, instead, be able to offer the love, mercy, and grace that we are called to extend to others.
Below is a giveaway for a $25.00 certificate from Family Christian. In just a few clicks, you’re entered to win. This certificate can be used to purchase the book, OR to purchase anything you desire at their store. They have so much to choose from, and I, personally, love shopping there!
I will be going through this book in more detail, and I intend to share it with my family. We all can benefit from being UNoffendable. Just as I talk of choosing joy a lot of times on this site, you can also choose to be unoffendable. Mr. Hansen will show you how, and I will share with you the knowledge I gained from his book, spread out in separate posts so you really “get it” and not just skim through the post.
Here’s to being UNoffendable!
And here’s your chance to enter a giveaway for a $25.00 certificate from Family Christian! A special thanks to Family Christian for this opportunity to partner with them as a blogger and to offer such awesome giveaways!
Here
Today I got a rare opportunity, and I took it. I seized the moment, right here and now, to let my long lost niece know that I love her. I let her know that things are not as they seem, nor as she was told. While it started off kind of rough in a Facebook message, with my detecting her sarcasm and angry tone in her postings, I knew deep down inside that this 14 year old child needed to hear what I had to say. And … I think she wanted to or else she would not have engaged me in conversation. It would have ended with a few cross words from her, but it didn’t. I have been waiting for the past four years to tell her, and I had the chance I’ve been looking for. The chance to tell her I love her, even with no response back from her. That was okay that she didn’t return the words of love to me. It is okay if I tell her a million times and never hear it from her lips or see it on a screen. It is only important that I tell her, and I let her know. I also had the chance to tell her that she was taken from us years ago, and we were forbidden from having any further contact with her. At one point, she was to come live with us as her father asked this of us four years ago, yet shortly thereafter, her father and his family snatched her back away from us. I told her that I wish things had been different and had I been given the chance, I would have raised her as my very own. She is bitter, and I can sense through her hostility, that she is just a lost little girl that needs love. She needs to know that she matters and that above all, she is loved completely despite how she is right this very minute – distant, bitter, cold, and hurting deep inside. I told her that today. I let her know that I am still a part of her family – whether she wanted me to be or not – and I love her. Oh, how I wish my sister was still here, things would have been so much different if she would not have ended her life 14 years ago due to postpartum depression. But today, here and now, I got a chance to tell her daughter that her mother — my sister — loves her (I refuse to use past tense), even still today from Heaven. She loves her daughter — my niece — so much, and this little girl, who feels so lost, unloved, and unhappy, is still her mother’s pride and joy. All the way from Heaven’s door, here and now.
I thank God for this opportunity today and my niece’s openness to a conversation with me. Although she made negative remarks about her dad and step-mom, I focused on stating what I knew for a fact from my perspective, as I am sure no one told her why we are no longer a part of her life. It is not by our choice. She learned the truth today. Here and now.
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This post was inspired
by the prompt word of “Here”
for Kate’s Five Minute Friday.
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One of the last pictures we have of Melanie from 2011 when we were allowed to have her. I treasure our time together.
