Drama-Free Zone

I’ve been hearing people around me say that they are tired of all the drama, and I’m not just talking about teens. I’m talking about women (and even men) old enough to know better, than to continue the drama cycle.

I see them repeatedly inviting drama into their lives, with the decisions they make.

Everything is a choice. Everything in our lives stems from decisions we have made. However, unless we actually pay attention to what we are doing, we will not see that we have made poor choices.

It is my firm belief that, if we truly want a drama-free life, then we need to make the pledge to live in a truly drama-free zone.

How do we do this?

There’s biblical principals that can guide us in making the right decisions, but before I list key verses, I would like to give a list of do’s and don’ts.

1. First, stop the lying. When we lie, we have not only the truth to keep track of (which is easy to do) but also the lies. Lying gets us all twisted, and then we cannot remember who we told what to, and then all hell breaks loose when we make a mistake and say the wrong thing to someone we have been lying to, or when the truth gets back to them through someone else. We can  lose our most important relationships through lying. Plus, we teach people not to trust us, when we lie.
2. Stop gossip in its tracks. Sure, it can be enticing, listening to all the juicy bits of someone else’s life, and it can be even more enticing to pass what we hear along to others, but when we participate in gossip, we kill our relationships. It is one thing to pass along details we have permission (directly from the person) to pass along, but it is another thing entirely to say things behind their back. As an example, if a friend made it public that she is pregnant, and she is full of joy about the pregnancy and doesn’t care if the world knows, then it is okay to share in her joy and pass it along. It is entirely a separate matter if her pregnancy was unplanned or the result of an affair and she is fretting over all the changes it brings into her life, and she told you in confidence because she trusted you. Basically, before you open your mouth, think, “Does what I am about to say hurt or help the person and his/her situation?” If it hurts, keep your mouth shut. If you are unsure, keep your mouth shut. It is better to err on the side of caution.
3. Stop reading tabloids. Tabloids gossip about celebrities. When we read tabloids, including the supposedly higher class gossip magazines, then we contribute to perpetuating the cycle of gossip. Gossip hurts, even if it is about celebs. When we buy and read these magazines (or watch such shows) then we are telling society that it is okay to spread rumors and gossip.
4. Be true to yourself and others. When we act one way in front of this person and another way in front of that person, then we are two-faced. If what you are doing is not acceptable in front of everyone, then stop it. Any behavior can be changed if you really want change in your life.
5. Know who you can trust before opening up. If the person is a known gossiper or liar, then don’t share important things with them. Some people can take even the most innocent of comments and twist them until they become hurtful. With these people, it is usually best to not say anything beyond the weather forecast.
6. Become trustworthy. Make every effort to be the type of friend they need you to be, to be the type of person you would want as a friend. Adding to the drama isn’t worth the price of losing valuable relationships.
7. Avoid drama. It may not be polite to walk away from a conversation, but sometimes that’s what needs to be done. I’ve had to walk away from conversations, when my acquaintances did not get the message that I did not care to hear about so-and-so’s troubles. Sometimes walking away is the only thing that makes them understand you are serious about remaining gossip and drama free. Don’t make excuses or debate the issue; just walk away.
8. It is unfortunate, but sometimes relationships must be ended if you have tried everything to make them understand and the other person still does not accept your unwillingness to participate in the drama. Have confidence that there are better relationships out there waiting for you.
9. And finally, forgive. Forgive others their mistakes and how they have hurt you. Own up to your own mistakes by asking forgiveness of those you have wronged. Forgive yourself for those mistakes you have made. And ask God’s forgiveness. His forgiveness will bring wondrous blessings and peace to your life.
   

And now to the key verses. As I’ve said before, memorizing Bible verses can and will help improve your life. Write them out on Post-its or 3 x 5 cards and display them where you can read them throughout the day.

“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

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 7:12

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” Proverbs 11:3

“Whoever derides their neighbor has no sense, but the one who has understanding holds their tongue. A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.” Proverbs 11:12-13

“Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.” Proverbs 26:20

“ The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart; whose tongue utters no slander, who does no wrong to a neighbor, and casts no slur on others; who despises a vile person but honors those who fear The Lord; who keeps an oath even when it hurts, and does not change their mind; who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken.” Psalm 15:2-5

“Cast your cares on The Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” Psalm 55:22

“Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’” Hebrews 10:17

My prayer for you today is that you may find the peace that is only found in knowing Christ.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy

 

Personal Best: Part Four: Well Grounded

This is the final in the series on raising the bar. As I mentioned in the first post, I believe that if we can achieve one, then the other three will follow. This is the one that I believe is the key. Being properly grounded makes everything else easier in life.

But what do I mean by being grounded? Many people talk about having their head in the clouds, or being flighty. These are the opposite of being grounded.

To be grounded means that we have a solid foundation to stand on. It means that we are focused and present in the now (not ten minutes from now and not two weeks from now). Our minds are not racing ahead to fantastical what-ifs. We are calm.

When we are not grounded, everything can become unraveled easily because we tend to be overly emotional. We get upset or angry for unworthy reasons. We get frustrated when things don’t go as we expect, often because our expectations are not based in reality.

So, how can we get grounded? For a quick situational fix, the easiest thing to do is breathe. Concentrate on your breath and let it bring you back to the present. This is not only for the negative events in our lives, but also for those events that are too stimulating to take in all at once. If you find you are getting too excited (about anything, get your mind out of the gutter, although that’s a good reason, as well) and you subsequently find your mind racing, then breathe. Deep breaths. In and out. Until the excitement is under control.

When emotions are allowed to run rampant (as in our over-excitement), we make decisions that we later regret. We react instead of act. What I mean by this is that actions are premeditated. We have spent time in making the decision to do the action. Whereas, reactions are spontaneous. We don’t think. We let the circumstances or the emotions or someone else make decisions for us. And this is not good.

So breathe.

And then when you are calmer, while you are still breathing, think.

Where can we find a solid foundation to stand on? We can find this by exerting wiser choices in who we choose to be in relationship with. This is a good starting point, but the most important relationship, the only one that can truly be our rock to stand on, is Jesus.

When we give ourselves over to Jesus, and we follow His teachings, then we have our solid foundation. If all our decisions are based on biblical truths, then we can be sure we are making good, wholesome, honorable decisions in our lives.

I hear you when you say that The Bible was written several millennia ago. You think its outdated. I understand your concerns. However, when we are in relationship with Jesus, and we have the Holy Spirit whispering truths in our ears, we begin to understand. We begin to see how The Bible is still relevant today. Trust me. Or better yet, trust God’s Word. If you earnestly endeavor to find life’s answers in The Bible, a whole new world will be opened up to you. It is as simple as saying a prayer and opening the book. If you are not sure where to start, the Psalms is always a good choice, and it can be found right in the middle of The Bible. The Book of John is another great choice. Galatians is my personal favorite. It teaches me that grace is based on faith and not on our silly human strivings. Through faith, I am a new creation. I don’t have to jump through any hoops or prove anything to anybody. God knows my heart, and so He reads my heart directly. Without striving constantly to prove my worthiness, an unspeakable joy fills me as I go about my daily chores. Since I don’t have to prove myself anymore, I eagerly work for His Kingdom, to share this wondrous joy with others and give them hope for their own joy, found only in the unconditional love of Our Savior.

So that is my prayer for you today, that you might be open to receiving the Joy of Christ.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy

Personal Best: Part Three: Trust

Honesty and trust go hand in hand. The more honest I am known to be, the more likely it is that people will trust me. If I’m not a trustworthy person, doors will close for me, instead of opening to greater opportunities.

Lying is a tiresome endeavor. Instead of just having to remember the truth, now the teller has to remember each twist and turn in the story he’s been weaving, usually to cover up the truth. Before long, the whole thing unravels, and people get hurt. The liar gets hurt as well, as his relationships suffer the consequences of lies that need not be told.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell the truth? Instead of weaving a fantastic story, just spit it out. The fantastic story is bound to unravel. The truth is bound to come out, sooner or later. Then the lies lead to a horrific aftermath, and we are left putting out relationship fires. Face it, there’s less of a mess to clean up, if the truth is told in the first place.

Being honest in our words is only part of the whole trust issue, though. To be trustworthy, our actions must also be held up to the light. If a person isn’t reliable, then people tend to judge him/her as not being trustworthy, as well. Idle promises, again, bring us down. If we make idle promises, then our trustworthiness is called into question. If we say we will be somewhere and then don’t show up, we are not trustworthy.

It goes without saying that if we take what isn’t ours, then we are not trustworthy.

If we expect others to trust us, then we need to prove we deserve to be trusted. Make all your dealings and all your words reach to the higher standards you are now striving for. As you walk this new, narrow path, you will discover that, even though it is narrow, it has many gates that open to wondrous new experiences and opportunities. It has many more and much better gates than that old, crooked path of the past.

As with anything that is worth having, this too will take patience and persistence. When we try to start fresh, with a background of distrust, it will take time for others to feel secure enough to trust again. Keep at it. Hang in there. Even if at first, old relations refuse to believe the change in you, please know that it is possible for relationships to be renewed and to overcome trust issues. It will take patience on your part, but I know that you are worth the effort to strive for better relationships.

As I stated a few days ago, take every word that comes out of your mouth seriously. Make each word count. Make each word truthful. Others take our words seriously, and part of this is because, as the Bible states, “For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). What comes out of our mouths matters.

If we like juicy tidbits, then we gossip. If we are prone to anger, then we will argue. These are examples of our hearts dictating what our mouths do.

But we cannot simply say, “the heart wants what the heart wants.” We must take steps to stop our mouths from blurting out every hurtful or gossipy thing that lands on our tongue. Bite that tongue if you must, for the tongue is the most powerful muscle in the body. It can do more damage than any thrown punch, but don’t go throwing punches, either. I wouldn’t want people thinking I advocate violence as a solution for anything. Because I don’t.

My prayer for you today is that a special person will surface in your life. It may be that you already know this special person, waiting there to be your helper. I pray they will be someone whom you can bond with in a wholesome manner. My prayer is that this person will offer you unconditional love and will be a shining example of strength and honesty of character, so that you can lean on them as you persevere in overcoming your challenges.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy

Personal Best: Part Two: Commitment

It should be a no brainer that when it comes to employment and to relationships, having high standards is very important. However, we seem to forget what commitment is, when we become complacent or disgruntled.

We get a new job, and we are all excited about having the new job. So we promise ourselves that we will learn all we can learn and do the best job we can possibly do, and we quickly learn how to do our new job. We even dare to believe we do our job better than the guys that have been there longer.

Then we begin to notice undercurrents. We learn the unwritten hierarchy and we learn how to leverage ourselves above the others. Then we start noticing how the others are slacking off. We start to hear conflicting messages from the higher-ups. An unfavorable attitude brews in us. “Why should I do my job to the fullest if they aren’t?”

The same scenario can play out in our relationships as well. At first, all we see is sunshine and rainbows. We see stars that blind us, as we travel through the early stages of a relationship. In a romantic relationship, this is the lust phase, when we are madly passionate about everything that has to do with our new beau.

But after awhile, we start seeing the blemishes and the flaws in our new beau. We then enter into a phase that will make or break the relationship. If time has been invested to really learn about our new interest, then the relationship will weather any differences of opinion that happen to arise. However, as in many romantic encounters, if the new couple chooses to explore each others bodies and they neglect their minds, there isn’t enough in the lust to keep the relationship alive. That’s why it is so important to spend some time really getting to know someone before hopping into bed—so that the relationship is built on a solid foundation of common ground, instead of heady clouds of lust.

If we are reaching for a strong committed relationship this time, instead of another painful fling, then we need to invest the time upfront to build that foundation.

Any beau worth having will understand waiting until you know each other better.

We need to set the bar higher for ourselves, if we expect to experience commitment in our relationships and in our work.

When it comes to our personal standards, where we choose to set the bar is a personal matter. What I mean by this, to achieve my own personal best, my standards cannot be dependent upon anyone else’s performance or demands.

I’ll go back to the work analogy to explain this better. When we accept employment, we agree to perform our assigned duties. We agree to uphold everything listed in our employment contract. Most companies nowadays have rules concerning our conduct while under their employ and while on their premises. Most of these are standard rules of etiquette. Others are specific to the company. Either way, when we sign on, we agree to follow all their “rules.” Their list of expectations is the baseline. Our bar needs to be at least this high for us to succeed in their company. As a side note, this is not basing our standards on their demands. This is us meeting the expectations of our job.

However, sometimes we must follow our own standards, rather than blindly following orders. As as example of times when our personal standards trump company standards, sometimes, after we have been in a company for awhile, we start to notice shady dealings at the management level or above. Even though this seems to be the status quo for the company and other employees are following suit, my own personal standards would keep me from partaking in those shady dealings. For instance, I once had a situation at work where I was informed that someone was in the process of stealing people’s identities, and he was using our company to do so. The higher ups knew the repercussions on their customers, if this criminal succeeded. Yet when the officials (police and/or feds) told them to carry on as if nothing were wrong, because they were on to him, my boss passed that official command along to me. Try as I might, I could not follow through with my orders. My personal standards would not allow me to partake in ruining the lives of all those strangers, when his call came on my phone.

Included in the expectations of employers is being a productive member of the staff. Being hired to do a specific job is a binding agreement between two entities, between employer and employee, and nowhere does it state that if so-and-so slacks off, then I get to as well. And this is the same in relationships. Just think of that thing moms used to say, “If Bobby jumped of the bridge, would you?”

When we disregard our work ethic to play the same games as everyone else, everyone else does not suffer the consequences for us when we get caught and get either reprimanded or fired. It is our own reputation that suffers. Our own paycheck suffers and our own family’s welfare suffers. Same goes for our relationships. When we neglect our morals, our reputation suffers, and it costs us other, more valuable relationships.

I’ve had problems in the past with thinking I had to play their games in order to be liked by the other employees. Being accepted was very important to me, and unfortunately I made decisions that didn’t always honor my employer. It didn’t take long before I figured out that my place of employment was not a social outlet; then I started putting my nose into my work and stayed away from the gossipers and those who tried to entice me to extra long breaks, and such. I am not placing blame. I made every decision. We like to blame things on that catchy phrase, “peer pressure,” but even though I was being pressured, I made the final decision to succumb each time.

My prayer for you today is for you to find strength to stand up against peer pressure. My prayer is that your relationships will grow and blossom, and that you will blossom where you are planted.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy

Personal Best: Part One: Reliability

I have spoken several times in the past few months about raising the bar and having higher personal standards. It is very important that we have honorable values and morals. It is important for our dealings with society and within our own family. It is important for our employment and financial future. Having maturity in these areas just plain helps us function in life. Today, I would like to share about some of the best qualities we can exhibit. If we strive for these, we can achieve the things we wish to achieve in life. It’s not a long list, only four characteristics to work toward. I believe that if you master one, then the other three will automatically follow. This I will explain more in the fourth and last post in this series.

• Reliable
• Committed 
• Trustworthy
• Well Grounded

Being unreliable, nowadays, seems to be part and parcel with being young. Somehow, we have managed to not teach the younger generations how to be upstanding citizens. We yell and scream at the younger generations, that they should be more respectful and such, and yet we forget that we, the older generations, neglected our duties as the younger were growing up. However, I am not here to lay blame or make excuses. I am here to help bring harmony to our communities and families. As such, being unreliable begets disharmony, and reliable people bring harmony to the table.

As an example,  when we regularly call in sick, (in those times when we know darn well we aren’t really sick), we portray our unreliability. The fact that we are not reliable can be seen like a big neon sign around our necks. Everyone soon discovers this about us, upon meeting us or hiring us. We cannot hide this character flaw for long. Once in this habit, it is difficult to break. I know this from personal experience. There were jobs I hated and there were plenty of times I believed what I had to do at home was more important. No matter what was going on at home, if it wasn’t a life-threatening emergency, then I had no business placing my priorities ahead of my boss’ priorities for my time. It is not about who is more important in the situation. When we accept employment, we make a commitment to be there and to do our assigned tasks. Yes, we are putting our boss and coworkers in a bind by not being there, but the bottom line is that we disgrace our own good name; our reputation suffers when we flake out by calling in sick all the time (or however else we show our unreliability). When we flake out at work, we also have a tendency to flake out in our relationships.

Friendships, relationships, intimacies, work, they all suffer when we are unreliable. If you do not believe it, just have an honest conversation with someone you spend a lot of time with, someone you can trust to be honest with you. Or, if you are in a self-punishment mood, ask your boss what he honestly thinks about your absenteeism.

You can ask what others think about you, you can even ask their advice on the subject, but no one can fix this issue for you. You must do the work for yourself, to reset your own bar above what people now expect from you (having lived with an unreliable you for some time now). I cannot tell you how to be more reliable. I can tell you that the most obvious way to be more reliable is to act reliably from here on out.

One thing that worked for me was taking every word out of my own mouth seriously. I made a vow a long time ago that I would not make promises, because promises have a tendency to be broken. Life has a habit of getting in the way of things. By not making idle promises, I know I won’t be what gets in my own way so often.

So many times, we jump to say yes to everything asked of us. Before our brains have even engaged on the subject, our mouths commit us to it. If you have an inability to say no, commit the following phrases to memory: “I need to check my schedule.” “I need to think about it.” “Can I give you my decision tomorrow.”

Those simple words will give you the time you need to make sure you can commit, or it can give you the time to decide if you really want to commit or not.

But sometimes our best option is to just learn how to say no. Work is work and has priority. If social or family requests are getting in the way, maybe its time to sit down your friends and relations and have a serious talk about your commitment to your employer and that being able to feed and house your family is more important than the drama being pushed in front of you. I’ll talk more about drama another day.

I must caution, however, that when it comes to accepting change in us, people can be gun shy. If they know us one way and one way only, they may have trouble believing we have changed. In this situation, it is best to just keep plugging along, doing the right thing, making better choices, demonstrating our new, reliable self, and eventually our relations and friends will see the new pattern emerging, and the more they see of it, the more they will be able to believe.

Remember that change takes time. Change is possible, and once it truly occurs, it is amazing, but it takes patience to get there. Hang in there.

My prayer for you today is that you can see more clearly the person you can be, and that your steps to become her/him is made easier by the love in your relationships.

In His Grace,

Jennifer Joy