The purpose of assigning blame…

themomfred shared her perspective on assigning blame and accepting responsibility:

http://themomfred.com/2015/12/06/refiners-fire/

She made some great points, and I agree with her. Her post also gave me an opportunity to do a bit of introspection. Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for a while but unable to put the thoughts in any kind of order. Thank you.

As I’ve mentioned before, things with NM and EF haven’t changed, except that it doesn’t bother me as much. The manipulating continues, and still annoys me. However, the annoyance doesn’t last as long. It isn’t worth the trouble. They fail to recognize that their choices are the reason I maintain a safe distance and in fact are the reason why I increase the distance further. Instead, I’m still considered to be unreasonable and hurtful. I’m also more at peace.

What triggered this post was the idea of assigning blame.

Yes, there are those who will see it as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s someone else’s fault, so I can’t be blamed. What a luxury. The bad stuff isn’t my fault.

Here’s the problem: I still have to live with it.

Assigning blame properly opened the door for me to recognize that I needed to stop accepting responsibility for what someone else did. I needed to release guilt that wasn’t mine. Assigning blame is really about giving back the baggage that didn’t belong to me. Knowing who started it didn’t change my life except to relieve me of a huge weight that didn’t belong to me.

Assigning blame is a starting point for recovery.

I still had to live with the fallout. The only way to change my future was to accept responsibility to change me.

Without the excess baggage suffocating me, I was able to honestly examine my own life and see what changes needed to be made. I honestly believe that carrying someone else’s baggage is heavier than carrying my own. It’s difficult to see mine when theirs clutters the view. Perhaps it’s because when I accept the responsibility of someone else’s baggage I’m not only carrying my lifetime’s worth but all of theirs.

Being relieved of all that baggage doesn’t remove the damage done in attempting to carry it. There are still ruts in my life that mark my path from lugging that stuff around. Releasing the blame doesn’t automatically smooth out my life to only my problems. Now the challenge becomes overcoming what I picked up from carrying the burden than wasn’t mine.

Yes, the above paragraphs have a lot of repetition. I needed to look at it from multiple angles. I still have a habit of picking up someone else’s baggage, and I’m hoping that I’m gradually drumming into my head to stop it.

How did all this mess manifest in my life?

One example: I keep thinking about my battle for integrity. I thought I had it, but then God brought to my attention how often I lied. I didn’t understand because not lying was so important to me. I was devastated. I didn’t want to believe it. I denied it for years. Sigh. Yes, I lied to myself.

Here’s where assigning blame became necessary: Years of struggle and counseling eventually helped me recognize that my world had been built on the lies created by others. I couldn’t change without accepting that truth.

All my lies were built on the lies of others.

I had to strip away the lies in order to build a foundation of truth.

There are those who will rip out the entire foundation and start over with everything new. I couldn’t. My faith I knew was rooted in truth. However, I still had to examine every aspect. Some lies had been built onto the truth; I ripped those away. It wasn’t easy.

Sometimes, it’s easy to believe that tearing everything apart and starting over is easier. This may be true of a house, but it isn’t true of people. The rebuilding process is painstaking, labor intensive, detailed oriented.

What I’ve noticed is that as I’ve torn out even the little lies I’ve become more adept at recognizing lies. I’m not perfect, of course, but choosing truth as a foundation makes the fight to maintain it ever so much easier.

In a way, no longer needing to maintain lies is a huge relief. I hadn’t realized how much work it was to keep straight all the stories in order to maintain a semblance of the truth. No wonder those who have built their world on lies frequently contradict themselves. They lose track of the thread of lies.

Building my life on the truth, I don’t have to keep track. Truth keeps track of itself.

Perhaps the reason this topic grabbed me so forcefully is that I must daily remind myself that I always have a choice: Choose the truth or choose the lie. Sometimes, the lie is tempting. It looks good. It looks easy. It’s often more acceptable. I also have to remind myself that those things only apply for a short period of time. Sooner or later, a price must be paid for the lies. Often, the price is paid out of sight, which I suppose is what those who choose lies prefer. What they don’t understand is that sooner or later, truth draws everything into the light.

Though the truth is often painful and difficult, there’s no fear of the light. The truth is light.

When you live your life in lies, the dark is safe, but only for a time. Sooner or later, the sun rises and burns away the dark.

I’m choosing to live my life in the truth. The dark invades, from time to time, but light always wins. The tiniest light is stronger than the dark.