Stop being a victim!

The other day I shared one of Linnea Molgard’s stories. She, along with her husband Scott, is one of my favorite World Racers. I love their authenticity and vulnerability. But deciding to go on the race was not easy for her. Here she relates how she stopped being a victim.

My senior year of college, my roommate, Loreen and I started having issues. My original roommate started hanging out with her all the time. I was fed up with it all.

Apparently so were my roommates. They sat me down and told me that I was an attention-seeker. That everything was about me. That I cried at the drop of a hat, and looked for pity. That they felt I always had to have things my way. And that I was looking for too much attention from the guys. OUCH. Ultimately, I denied it all, and pointed the finger right back at them.

I said that I’d try to move out if it were at all possible. By the end of winter break, I had a new room, all to myself. A nice big, clean, solitary room, just the way I liked it.

I look back on that now, and think, wow, I was a victim. I had such a victim mentality. I’m a little embarrassed by myself. I know I’m a different person from that now, and I can see all the places where I’ve been healed.

I sought a lot of attention from guys, whether by just being friends with them, or dating them. I was a serial dater in an earlier life. I was a pursuer and a striver. I wanted to make sure I could get and hold a man’s attention in just enough time to tell him I didn’t want it. And I got good at doing that.

And it wasn’t until Scott and I started dating that I stopped being a victim. I stopped blaming everyone else for what was wrong, or wounded in me. Scott wouldn’t let me pass the bill. God wouldn’t let me go through life as an attention-seeker. He was jealous of what I was doing. He decided that when Scott and I got together that it was time for me to face some of those wounds, send the lies to hell, and get on… start owning who I was (and am).

I’m in the school of life. I’m learning to receive criticism and say “thank you,” instead of turning it around to protect myself. Something that Seth spoke about at debrief was that we’re all in school. We can either audit the class or take it for credit. What do I do with my circumstances or tough situations? Do I blame others, get mad, explain things away. Or do I “take the class” and look at myself and see what needs to change, what can I do better, what would Jesus do in this situation? I’ve decided that I’m taking the class.

I look back on that year in college. I think I was auditing life that year. I wonder how life would have looked if I accepted responsibility.