HURT PEOPLE HURT OTHERS

I once heard Bishop T.D Jakes preaching on this specific topic but it didn’t make sense to me at the time. You would think that someone who has been hurt is in a better position to love and nurture the next person because they know the pain of being hurt and wouldn’t want to inflict it on anyone else. That is sometimes the case but not always the norm. Hurt people hurt others.

Take someone who has grown up in an abusive family, they grow up watching their parents fight and in more cases than not, the fights are physical. This person grows up seeing this as a norm therefore to them, this is the way that people live, this is the way that life is supposed to be and this is how people in love treat eachother. Because this is seen as normal and internalised from a young age, they are more likely to go into an abusive relationship themselves, either as the perpetrator or the victim. As a perpetrator this is how they exert their control, this is how they maintain the “status quo” and as a victim, they rationalise that I grew up seeing my mom or dad take this from their partner so this is part of the dynamics of a relationship.

There are no set signs to spot an abusive person and sometimes you never even see it coming until it hits you (literally). We all say it will never happen to me until you find yourself in that situation and don’t have the courage to walk away. All the things that you ever told yourself about how you would react to it should it happen are soon forgotten and you find yourself taking it. Abusers are usually very clever and manipulative and long before it even gets physical you realise that, the abuse had been there all along but in the emotional form.

They isolate you from your family and friends and tell you all these things that break down your self-esteem, so that when it gets to the physical part, you don’t have what it takes to walk away and you believe that you deserve the treatment that they are giving you. Your self-worth is compromised if not already non-existent and it is that much more difficult to walk away because nothing in you believes that it deserves better.

Abuse carries with it a vicious cycle that is often to hard to curb. You see it, then you experience it and leave only to turn around and turn from victim to perpetrator. This is how hurt people hurt others. They haven’t dealt with the demons of their past and that makes it difficult for them to thrive and grow in a normal relationship. So they create drama and pick fights, just so they can have something to ignite their anger. The sad thing is that, the anger seldom has anything to do with the person that they are with now, but more to do with unresolved issues from their previous relationship.

It is important to understand that, one does not just leave an unstable or abusive relationship and pick up the pieces of their heart and go on as if nothing happened. The anger and bitterness and hurt of that relationship may not show themselves until later on. Then it finds ways to manifest itself in other ways in your life, conflict with others, constantly looking for fights where they aren’t any, misplaced anger etc. Everything that we do not deal with in the present always finds its way back to us in the future. When it first happens, you may not even recognise where it comes from until you retrace your steps and look back.

Abuse has devastating effects on those who are affected and it is not just a matter of walking away and thinking that you are ready to move on. It is advisable to seek help, to deal with what has happened to you, how the abuse affected you emotionally and your current state of mind. Once you have worked through the past and made peace with it, you can truly try to be in another relationship. Abuse affects the way that you see yourself and what you think about yourself and those are but some of the issues that you need to deal with before you attempt to even love someone else or be in another relationship.

If you do not deal with the hurt of the past, you will find yourself in a situation where you cant even embrace love from another should you find it. You may end up hurting the next person because you have not dealt with your hurt.

SEEK CHRIST

A friend of mine send me a piece today that she wrote and wanted to know what I thought about it. So many thoughts crossed my mind as I was reading it and for a second there it felt like she had written down my exact thoughts. 

 How many of us can proudly and honestly say that our life is grounded in Christ? I sadly can't say that, the last few years I have been going to church, being actively involved in church activities and even prayed but the truth is, when I look at it now I realise that my life was not rooted in Him.
What I mean is that life was so good that I forgot to seek Him in the things that I was doing and the decisions I was making. I went with what felt right instead of praying that I was doing what He wanted me to do with my life. I lost my focus and instead I turned to the world to find my happiness and what I thought was joy in this life.  And for a second I was in control and I needed nothing from Him or so I thought.

 It's only when you sit down and realise what you have lost that you now begin to trace back your steps to see where you went wrong. I found that place where I tripped and fell and was not even aware that is how I was failing. I began to walk in front of God and believed that I knew better and in the process I made decisions I was not supposed to make and did things that were totally out of character. I look back in disappointment at the person I had become but never hopeless that once we accept our wrongdoings we are now in a better position to change things and change ourselves.
It is easy to run to God when we have messed up but the sad reality is that when we back on the wagon, we soon forget about Him again. But I learnt a lesson that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and that is to seek Christ at all times,  whether good or bad.

 It's to get to a point where all I do is rooted in Him as a foundation. Where I find myself in His love and act from His principles. We can never take back the past, but we can change the present and therefore the future. By seeking Christ and never moving away from His wisdom and presence, it's acknowledging that we don't know it all and that we need Him in our lives.

 I am seeking Christ, to heal and to live once again as the woman He had always intended me to be. I am seeking Christ to be my peace and to be the voice that guides my actions from here onwards. And I am seeking Christ to build such a strong relationship with Him that I never default again in being His child.

I am seeking Christ, to heal and to live once again as the woman He had always intended me to be. I am seeking Christ to be my peace and to be the voice that guides my actions from here onwards. And I am seeking Christ to build such a strong relationship with Him that I never default again in being His child

FAILURE IS NOT FINAL

We have all at a point in our lives tried to do something but failed, but failure is not final. It is only final when we stop trying and give up.

The truth is failure is a learning curve, it is life’s way of teaching us what we need to know so that we may be better people and better equipped to deal with the things that life throws at us. We have all gone through failure, whether it be in business, relationships or other areas of our lives. It can be devastating to deal with, it can even make one hopeless because you believe that, you will never get right, whatever it is that you are trying to achieve.

The truth is some of the most valuable lessons we will ever learn, we learn from failure. And when we don’t let that define who we are, we then gain experience that we wouldn’t have otherwise learned from life.

Failure is a lesson. A chance to try again, knowing now what you didn’t know when you started out before. Failure is a chance to change direction, when we realise that we have been travelling on the wrong road. Failure is an opportunity not a rejection. Failure is what you go through, not who you are. Just because you failed at something doesn’t mean that you are a failure.

Anything that we want in life is never handed over to us, we have to fight for it and work for it. Along the way, we encounter failures, we trip and we fall and things do not work out the way that we planned. Sometimes we make the wrong choices and that is what leads us to fail. Our dreams and aspirations should be so firm that not even failure or the fear of failure stops us from pursuing the things that we want. Sometimes we do not even fail in the literal sense but we fail in our heads, we convince ourselves that our dreams are too big for us and that we don’t have what it takes to achieve and accomplish the things that we want.

When you encounter failure in any area of your life. Here are 3 things that you need to do:

1.    Reflect

We are usually quick to write ourselves off or become despondent because things have not worked out the way that we hoped. We concentrate solely on what went wrong that we miss the lesson that is carried in the experience. So the next time, you are faced with failure in your life. Sit and take the time to reflect, what went wrong? What choices could I have made differently? What lesson can I take from this experience?

2.    Make a decision

Once you have reflected and gathered whatever information lies in your failure, you are now equipped with experience and the know how that you did not have before. Now you are ready to make a decision, plot a way forward. Where will you go from here? What will you do differently to ensure that you do not fail again? What lessons will you embrace from this experience?

3.    Get up and try again

When you are done reflecting, you have looked back and seen where you went wrong, you have made a decision to try a new method or new way to do what you want. Now you get up and try again. Not with the attitude of a failure but as a completely different person, one who now knows all the things you didn’t know before. And you tell yourself that failure is not an option.

None of us sitting here today can say we don’t know what it feels like to fail or to try something out but it doesn’t work out. We have all gone through that road and we know the feelings that come with not getting things right. But we should also realise that without falling as we did in the past, none of us would be the women that we are today. We have the strength and experience that we have today because we failed at something and learned from the experience.

Whatever failure you are facing today, embrace the process with a smile because you will not be the same person that you were before your storm. You will emerge refined and you will be a better person for having faced what you did. Failure is not final, it is only final when we give up and stop trying.