As a mom of a son with disabilities (and as a human being), I’ve often had people make cutting remarks. From how I’m not doing something right. Or how I should be handling a situation better. To even blaming my parental techniques, etc. These jabs bother me and often trigger my mom guilt. I’m going to refer to them as foolish talk.
To be clear I’m only referencing unhelpful negative or derogatory comments.
When I was a new mom (and not the powerful defender of the world I am today) I would pick up every foolish talk hurled at me. Every negative, condescending, condemning dig would instinctively be collected, polished clean, and put into the knapsack of my memory. Where they’d be bookmarked and ready to resurface at any time. As a general rule, they like to show up during times of fear and doubt to question everything I did.
I discovered pretty quickly it’s hard to walk through life carrying all that negative. It began to weigh on my spirit. While it robbed me of joy, filled me with shame, and made me dissatisfied with life. It was pushing me further and further away from who I was, threatening to turn me into someone I didn’t want to be.
The problem
I knew I couldn’t go on subconsciously collecting foolish talk. But they always get to me. I always get offended. Regardless of how much I want them to bounce off me like rubber, they stuck like glue.
I knew I needed to find a way to rise above it, so I wouldn’t be affected by it. But I didn’t know how. It’s not like I can stop people from foolish talk. Neither was I going to avoid people by never leaving my house (unless there’s a pandemic).
Somehow I needed to stop taking the foolish talk personally. Otherwise, it was going to make me a bitter, unhappy woman.
Then while studying the book of Romans, I came across Romans 12:2 and had an epiphany.
Clarity
Romans 12:2 in the NLT (New Living Translation) reads, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”
What stuck out to me was the phrase “changing the way you think”. I realized in my desire to change my behavior I was going about it backwards. I was trying to modify my behavior without changing my perspective. No wonder it never worked! As long as I continued to view foolish talk the same way, it will always bother me.
What I needed to do was change the way I thought about foolish talk first. Then it will stop bothering me.
What am I learning?
If I want permanent change, transformation starts in the mind. This means the only way I can break free from carrying around a mental knapsack of foolish talk was to change the way I viewed foolish talk.
Next post…
Five ways I changed my perspective about foolish talk.