For this year

I know, I know....2016 started weeks ago and I haven't blogged yet. Normally I would have written about my theme of the year by now....but I've been thinking about a lot of things, and when I think about a lot of things I normally retreat into my cave and just, well, think. Don't worry...my cave is a nice little cave, filled with wool and crochet hooks, books, fabrics, music and movies, but it's the place I retreat to when I've got a lot on my mind and I don't come out until I have to....or feel like it.

Over the past few years I have had a theme word for the year. As I was meditating on a word for 2016 this verse kept coming to me. It wouldn't leave me alone....so in the end I decided that this entire verse would be my theme for the year.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. 

(Philippians 4:8)

I've been intentionally keeping away from  watching, reading and listening to the news for quite a while now. I can't handle the doom and gloom, the violence and hatred filling my screens. It brings me down, makes me depressed and affects my outlook on life. I start wondering if the world really is a horrible place. I start making generalized statements, such as "People are horrible," and therefore it starts affecting the way I relate to the world around me.

I think it was Mister Rogers who said that when he was a child and saw terrible things happen on the screens, his mother would exhort him to "look for the helpers". Helpers were always there, making bad times better. It helped him form a better outlook on life.

With all the therapy I have had over the past twelve months where I have unlocked some of the past and realised the root causes of why I do what I do, why I believe what I believe and why I think the way I think, I realised it could have been very easy to just dig a hole and spend a lot of time blaming and wallowing and being angry. But with this verse going over and over in my head like a soothing mantra I have been able to turn a whole pile of things around and learn valuable and insightful lessons from everything. The greatest of these is that people did the best they could with the tools they had and with the very best of intentions.

Sometimes people react out of their own stuff. Sometimes someone says or does something that touches sensitive trigger points in my heart and mind. It's up to me how I look at that and respond. Do I go the "easy" way and simply react, blowing up and causing more damage - both to myself and the person who touched a trigger point? Or do I stop, breathe, think and search within to work out what is really the issue? Did that person really mean it the way I took it or have I just reacted out of some unresolved issue?

All of us, each and every one, are fighting unseen battles. I think the kindest thing we can do for ourselves and our fellow human being is to remember that and grant each other some grace.