"You Are Not A Victim"

I am so glad that May is gone and we are now in June. Today is Candi's birthday and she turns 34 years old. She always plans her own birthday and after we all went to Golfland one year, she promised to never make me go again, they decided to just go camping with some friends. I hope they have a fun day with her. May was a really hard month for me. It started with Rich suffering with kidney stones and eventually having surgery. Who knows when the next one will come. Then Lance passed away and we just had his funeral this week. I turned the dreaded sixty and that is always traumatic. And then we have some other issues that have sent me into a spiral of disappointment and sadness. When I went to bed Thursday night my heart was heavy. I had listened to some things that I didn't want to hear. At 3:40 a.m. I was awakened by a voice that said, "you are not a victim." I didn't hear it with my ears but felt it with my heart. So for about an hour I just laid in the dark thinking about what the spirit was trying to tell me. How am I not a victim? I think all of us have times when we feel insecure, unappreciated and unloved. I have felt that now for a very long time. I don't feel normal, I know some of my thoughts aren't right and my anxieties in social situations continue to cause me great stress. I guess I must have been feeling really strongly about all the times I have felt like a victim and so I needed to be reminded that I am not. The older I get the more I realize the importance of agency. We all have our right to do what ever we want, but we won't be able to change the outcome of the consequences of our actions. I see that in my own life and that of my children and grandchildren. So as I celebrate the birth of my sweet daughter, I also feel the sadness of situations that are out of my control and don't involve me. So I will continue to remind myself that I am not a victim.