There is much of my life that I didn’t have much, if any, control over preventing the trials that I ended up persevering through. Navigating my parents divorce as a child, ending up in a dysfunctional marriage with a husband with mental illness or caring for my mom’s affairs for years after she survived a debilitating stroke. I was left with responsibilities from circumstances outside of my control. These are a few of the things that influenced me to see things through the lens of “victim”. I knew I felt this way, and still struggle at times, but I would have never labeled myself as a victim until a few years ago. I finally started to unpack how deeply this life view had crept into my everyday thoughts and responses. The injustices of the things going on around me became unbearable and often led to struggles with depression. After surrounding myself with people who had walked through this or didn’t operate under this lens I was able to slowly retrain myself to look at things differently.

I may always have to be conscious of looking on the bright side or looking for the good in my trial, but every day with God’s help I do better. For example, today I spent over 1 ½ HOURS talking on the phone with tech support because I could not process credit cards for my business because of a glitch in THEIR system. Tech is kind of my nemesis, so it gets me frustrated faster than anything. Internally I was furious. I didn’t lose my cool though and we got through it. When all was said and done and fixed I was so mad that I had had to deal with this and was now behind with appointments and clients because of something that wasn’t my fault! I could have easily entered into victim mode and stayed there. Then I thought, no I am not going to do that. What is good about this? I kept my cool! I was respectful under a pretty stressful situation, the IT support basically didn’t believe I was having the problem I was having and made me prove it…that was a test of patience right there and that went on for 90 minutes. But I didn’t lose it! That basically makes me victorious! I felt like anything was possible if I could remain calm through a technical difficulty!! I kicked victim mode to the curb and decided with my new super powers I could save the world! This mind shift potentially changed the rest of my day for the better. There is always something good to be gained out of a situation, even if we have no idea what it is. Maybe you are being strengthened or stretched to learn something new. Why not look for the growth instead of feeling defeated? It is a choice…a hard choice.

Recently a friend of mine was trying to switch locations within a large corporation. She was having some difficulties with management at her current location and also wanted to be closer to home. After discussing possible options with management of a closer location she realized that in order to get a different position that management from both locations would be talking to each other. She began to lose hope of ever being able to transfer if it was based on a good review from her current management. My immediate response was if your current management hates you so much then what makes you think they would want to keep you? Why would they say anything bad that would prevent you from leaving? She laughed.

We need to actively work on our perspective of what is going on around us. There is so much we don’t have control over. Worry accomplishes nothing. Believing that we can’t influence or change our circumstances accomplishes nothing. If you can see nothing good from your current situation I can almost guarantee that you are being strengthened for a greater purpose that God needs you to be prepared for.

Romans 5:3-5 “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”