January 22, 2023

Do you ever find yourself looking at s person’s life and think, “boy, if they just do ABCXYZ, all their problems will be fixed! Why don’t they see what they need to do?! Isn’t it as plain as day?!”

In Celebrate Recovery, we are reminded, “we are not there to fix”, but oh sometimes you just want to. The best thing we can do though is listen and pray. There will be times we need to intervene, especially if someone is going to hurt themselves or someone else OR if this is a child of yours that you need to redirect. Even in these times, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink”. This can also come across as controlling so be careful how you go about this.

Below is something I had written a few years back:
So I had a few things bothering me today so on my way home, I called my hubby to do a “mini vent” session telling him I needed to speak my frustrations (there were 5 things – none about him by the way).
After telling him the first, he wanted to respond, and I quickly interrupted and said, “I’m not done venting”, and he respected that. I was done once I pulled up in the garage. I calmly vented while he patiently listened. This was all I needed. I think it was pretty good for me to get out five “big” things to me, in that time frame of approximately 5-7 minutes.
We can all learn something from this as we are still learning after 28 years! 

Okay so now being married 30 plus years, I still agree, and I will also tell you that sometimes my husband and I have stayed up hours in the evening to talk through things. Thankfully the longer we are married, the quicker we’ve learned how to resolve things. That, or we are just getting older and too tired and need to finish talking quicker so we can go to bed. 🤣

Ladies, don’t keep your feelings bottled up or you will eventually explode, and you won’t look pretty. Vent daily if needed. I use a journal but also have amazing girlfriends but there are times I just need my husband to listen. I will also say I have had counselors throughout my adult life. This is helpful as well!

Guys, be there for your ladies and just listen. It’s pretty simplistic but you can try so hard to fix or verbally ask out loud why something so “little” bothers her. If it’s important to her, it needs to be important to you, and you need to try to understand we process things differently. You’re from Mars, remember?

Even if it seems like an easy solution, don’t fix. Just listen. Watch the below to understand this. You may laugh but you will also say, “Oh shoot! This is SOOOOO true!”

Blessings,
Jennifer