9/16/2016 0 Comments Causing ChangeHave you ever gotten mad enough at a situation that you forced yourself past your old ways and changed things?
I have tended towards mental blocks, fear, and just plain familiar unproductive patterns since birth but have gotten frustrated with myself enough on many occasions to break through and change things. One such thing would be the buildup that accumulates in my house, basement, garage and sheds. The truth is that I have minor hoarding tendencies and it hasn’t been proven yet but I bet it would show up in my DNA. Frustration and energy spent trying to sort and organize stuff made me learn that these items were and are not only taking up my space; they are taking up my time. And my time is valuable. Other things I had to get sick of were some of my attitudes and restrictive thoughts that were like prison bars that held me back. There were thoughts of being too weak to handle situations. I handled them but I did it with a weakling’s attitude or self-pity poor me thinking. I felt like my issues were bigger than me and there was no way to overcome them so complaining about them was my only way out. I call those my muck and mire days. I put up with those attitudes until I got mad enough at them and chose to do something about them. Recognizing what was holding me back and allowing myself to be pushed to change was a good thing. Not that I’m done, there are always things to change. Here is a funny example from my life where I was pushed to deal with and change things. Finding out you have a mouse in your house is a frustrating thing. When I was a single mom with young children, I fought with a raging mouse problem. I had a trap line set up that covered the whole area of my house. This worked great to catch them; however, I didn’t like to deal with them after they were caught. I would call my cat and chuck the gross occupied trap outside and hoped the cat didn’t come back in with the mouse trap stuck in its throat. I even remember calling my mom numerous times to come and extract a mouse from a trap. One day I had a brain wave. If I got a live trap, I wouldn’t have to deal with this gross dead thing or worse yet, the still alive seriously hurt thing. It was getting expensive buying new traps every few months when the other ones couldn’t be found. Co- habatating with these rodents wasn’t an option, so I purchased a live trap called a tin cat. When I caught a mouse in this trap my first thought was, now what do I do with it? I looked through the metal bars and fought off the tug that made me want to feel sorry for it. I didn’t want to let it go free. It would just come back into the house again. I was pretty sure they had a secret entrance that I hadn’t found yet probably with little revolving doors. It would go out and create hundreds more of its own kind and show them the secret entrance and they would haunt me for the rest of my life. I grabbed my cat and the tin cat and took them out on the deck, being sure to shut the door behind me. I put both cats on the deck railing. I tried to pull the tin cat door towards myself so it would open on the other side. It wouldn’t budge. I decided to push it the other way which left me closer to the opening. It slid open easily and fast. The mouse came out the hole and ran straight up my arm. It made it to my shoulder by the time the cat clued in and reacted. Fortunately he was fast enough that he had the mouse in his mouth before it could jump down the front of my sweater to hide. That was the last time I used the tin cat. I diligently went through my house and stuffed every hole I found with steel wool and I haven’t had a problem ever since. I take it as a challenge now to change my circumstances, and my destructive and limiting patterns of thinking. I don’t always wait until I’m overrun with the problem to try and fix it. I’m trying to be more proactive and assertive instead of under it and fighting back. Matthew 6:19-20 (AMP) “Do not store up for yourselves [material] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal;
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