Throughout my life there have been times where I have been the victim at the hands of those who purposely caused me pain at their expense of pleasure or satisfaction. For years, I carried that anger and frustration within me which kept me from enjoying parts of my life that should have been filled with joy, laughter, and making memories. Yet, I carried on, not thinking about those particular events or the people involved, because without realizing it at the time, by not giving in to such thoughts, I withheld the power to feed them and to allow them to rule and ruin me. Still, every once in a while there would be a twitch of reminiscing, of "what if's" that would spill some doubts on the way in which my life turned out.

Now, fast forward to today.......my life is still complicated, although not by  those who wanted to hurt me, and I find myself again having to decide to forgive someone, not because I want to.........but because I HAVE to or else have to live with the anger, rage, and disappointment with others, which would make trusting nearly impossible. To have someone commit an act of vandalism can be taken personally as it is usually involves something near and dear to you.  Such is the case with me....my car (which my son drives to school), was vandalize by someone for reasons unknown. Yes, my inital reaction was to just blow up, thinking of nothing but finding out who would do such a childish and immature act, without giving any thought to the consequence of their actions. But as I started to settle down and think about it, the first question I thought was..."What good is it going to do for me to get angry?"  NOTHING....by dwelling on the act itself and the person involved only adds fuel to the fire and does not bring  about a resolution.

What DOES help is a calm attitude and one of thankfulness that no one was hurt (physically). We don't know what goes through a person's head with they commit an act of violence like this, only that they should be caught and punished. Well, to an extent that is true, because yes, a law was broken, but I would like to know what they meant to accomplish by doing such an act.

My hope is that I can take something positive from this negative act.


Amanda  :)