Finding peace in the chaos

It’s crazy how things can go from nearly perfect to completely upside down in a matter of moments.  How you can feel like your life is finally falling into place the way you feared it never would. Then in an instant, its gone. Things have changed. You no longer feel content and comfortable with your life.  To make things even more interesting, it seems like other tragedies are being added to that along with a few slaps in the face from people you thought you knew.

Honestly, times like these aren’t usually personal. It feels personal. SO personal. But when someone makes a decision that hurts you they don’t think of it the same way. They justify it and most of the time it seems like the logical thing to do. Completely not personal in their mind. I think that’s the first step in dealing with the unfair things that people do in your life. Is it coming from an evil place? Most of the time, no. Are they selfish? Thoughtless? Probably…but that isn’t about you. That’s them. Maybe they don’t even realize they’re hurting you. Maybe they’ve been so hurt before they don’t even see it. You really never know what a person has been through and why they do what they do. Understanding that is key. The way they hurt you is not about you, so don’t let it haunt you.

In fact, maybe that person needs you. In NO way am I recommending that you go into that person’s life and offer a helping hand after they have hurt you. But you can pray. Praying for someone has never hurt anything. There is no danger in hurting yourself by doing so either. Steer clear if you need to protect yourself but prayer is never bad.   I find peace so much faster when I do this. Forgive even when they aren’t sorry and you’re free from it.

I’d like to be clear that I am not saying you need to roll over on your back and tuck your tail every time someone hurts you. Stand up for yourself in the moment. Defending yourself is not wrong but trying to hurt someone back is. Watch your tongue and don’t sink to their level. This is probably the hardest thing for me. Ask anyone that knows me and they’ll say I have a temper. My brother even calls me hair-pin trigger lol. So when I feel I have been wronged, what do I want to do? LET THEM KNOW! My emotions get in the way of my compassion and I am ready to dig up skeletons and whip them around.  I can tell you from experience that doing this is really not helpful. I’ll admit, it does make me feel better in the moment. How do I feel the next day? Or maybe even a week later? Like shit..because now it’s not only them hurting me but I’ve also attempted to hurt them. We are so caught up in getting an eye for an eye. You hurt me so now I have the right to hurt you. Noooooo, knock it off. Grow up, that’s not going to help.

Honestly, every line I’m writing right now is teaching me. I’m basically calling myself out on all the times I’ve been in these situations and haven’t handled them properly.  So I’m not writing this to say this is how I always deal with things. I’m writing this to say that after all is said and done, when I reflect on my own behavior, this is how I wish I would have handled it. I’d be able to get over things a lot faster if I actually took my own advice sometimes and put this into practice. I also feel the need to clarify, NO, this is not about a boy. Sure it works for those situations also but that is not what spurred me to write this. What caused me to write this is something that I’m going to keep to myself for now, consider it my way of taking my own advice and shutting my mouth.

Ok, so I’ve said you should pray for the people that have hurt you. How in the hell do you do that?? First of all, forget about what they did for a moment. Here it goes..Literally, pray for God to bless them. Matthew 5:44 says, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you,”  and basically it goes on to say that it’s easy to love and pray for someone that loves you but the true reward comes from loving and praying for those that don’t.

This got longer than I expected it to be and surprisingly this is only one part of what I wanted to talk about. So, that being said, I guess this will be part 1 of 2. I’ll let you in on a  little secret, if you didn’t like reading this one you reaaaally won’t like the next one. So, you’ve been warned. However, if you did enjoy reading this and you feel like me typing my thoughts into a blog post is somewhat entertaining or even helpful for you, check out the next one too! I seriously appreciate all the people that supported my blog from the beginning(even when I went MIA for months..) and I hope that you guys can feel that this post comes from a good place in my heart. ❤

Much love,

Brooke Louise