Category: Wisdom

Posted in Blessings of Habit, Health, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

What to Do if You Are Under a Manipulator – Part 1

Posted on by Katharine

If you and a manipulative person are thrown in together in a way where you cannot escape, what can you do?

  1. First, realize this does not apply to your God-ordained authorities. This means your pastor, husband, parents (if you are young and single), boss, police, mayor, judges, etc. These people are supposed to have some say in your life and you should do what they say if it is not illegal.
  2. Be careful of receiving gifts, compliments, invitations, etc., especially if they have implied debts attached to them (strings attached). You may feel that God wants you to accept the item, but always remember that anything given to you is yours to do with or about as you see fit. A gift is not a contract. If you did not say you would reciprocate with a certain favor because of what you have received, you are not bound to do so when such favors are brought up after the fact.
  3. Seek God daily about your daily activities. Make God your daily planner, not the person who is trying to be God.
  4. Plan ahead. Decide before the telephone rings how long you need to spend on the telephone today. Decide before you receive an invitation for dinner whether or not you are available to go out. Decide before the next time the person is trying to cry, just exactly what your response should be, then . . .
  5. Do not back down! Make “no” mean NO. you can be very polite and still say “no” and make it stick. Do not worry about what the person will think; these people are not responsible for their thoughts and their thoughts are mostly irrational and unpredictable, anyway. No matter what you do, you will invoke base thought from a manipulator.
  6. Be merciless with the sin of control; love the sinner. You can be very distant from a person for his own good, out of love for the person. You could deny an alcoholic liquor because you loved him, right? This time, you are the addictive substance that is being consumed to the point of abuse. Someone has to stop it.
  7. Don’t major on minors. Allow a little control, if you see that it doesn’t matter, especially at first. Let the person choose your ice cream, parking spot, whatever will soften the initial blow of weaning. Save your insistence for choosing friends, movies, books, etc. Also, if the controller lies about the laundry, for instance, let it go, but if lies about your children pop up, expose them.

Hope this is beginning to make sense. More coming tomorrow!

Posted in Health, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

Ten Ways to Spot a Manipulator a Mile Away

Posted on by Katharine
Breguet_manipulator
Breguet Manipulator

Oh, don’t we all find ourselves caught in a web prepared by some manipulator, sometimes?

It can be so hard to extricate ourselves. I am sure we would love if they wore beepers, so we could walk far around them.

In a way, they do.

I would love to share about this, in hope of sparing someone out there, if possible. Following are a few of the many signs of a controller/manipulator personality:

  1. They usually do not have their own lives under control. You know the ones–3 times the size they should be, scream at their children lots, talk too loudly, abuse substances, have barely a pathway through their overly-stuffed home, etc.
  2. They do not delegate well, and want to be the only one able to do the job right. We wish!–Because they volunteer too much and think they are good managers, even assume bogus titles to prove it, right? They are prideful and want you to think they know everything.
  3. They ignore you, flatter you, change the subject, or know someone ELSE it applies to, but don’t self-apply good teaching; usually can’t get the Spritual application of it.
  4. They gossip and gripe. Gr-r-r!
  5. They want special privileges and unnatural private time. A lot.
  6. They are resistant to, or even terrified of, proper authority, proper control.
  7. They are long on doctrine, short on loving understanding; they try to confuse the mind.
  8. They can become quite angry.
  9. They often have been deeply wounded in the past and may be driven by avoiding further hurt.
  10. They always, always have the person they manipulate, or “own”, foremost in thought and speech.

Okay, this is the short list. There is more, but the big thing to remember is that these people feel so insecure, it is sad. They do what they do to feel more secure, usually, to try to keep everything under control and at arm’s length, to avoid pain.

Note: Just because you have a PhD in blogging, need to lose 70 pounds, like me a lot, and send me personal notes of encouragement, it does NOT mean you’re trying to manipulate me!!! Just don’t google my phone number, call me, and rant at me for an hour, and we’ll be fine! 🙂

Oh, and the mother/child relationship is different. You are supposed to devote lots to your children, cherish them, think of them always, manage their little lives, etc. Most manipulators, although they should, do not do this.

Just remember one day, when they’re grown, you will have to let go of your children. Manipulators usually do not do that, either.

To see these concepts in action in the Bible, read about the lives of King Saul and Prince Absalom, in 1 Samuel 9 through 2 Samuel 19. David’s reaction to both was mostly good.

Click here to read the next page of this series!

Posted in Believe it or not!, Inspiring, Rain, Wisdom, Womanhood

Fayetteville Prayer Vigil Greeted with Sprinklers, Vulgar Music

Posted on by Katharine

This is how it is, now, in the land of the free and the home of the brave:

The people who arrived for the 40 Days for Life kickoff event last week, outside the abortion center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, got a bit of a surprise–a brand-new sprinkler system, with the sprinkler heads pointed directly at the prayer volunteers.
“The owner of the business complex turned the sprinklers on as soon as we set up all our equipment,” said Tiffany in Fayetteville. “And they kept the sprinklers on for two hours.”

One co-owner spent the entire two hours “pacing and walking up and down the parking lot, yelling at us and telling the police to arrest us,” she said. “Needless to say, the police officers were polite and explained they could not arrest us.”

The prayer volunteers were then greeted with loud, obscene music from inside the building. “We sang and played worship music and lifted our voices to God,” Tiffany explained. “Our God songs drowned out the vulgar music.”

Through it all, the prayer volunteers refused to be discouraged. “The bottom line–God triumphed,” she said. “Praise the Lord!”

40 Days for Life is a peaceful assembly. Participants gather on public sidewalks outside abortion facilities, and pray that God will end abortion in America in our lifetime. That’s really all there is to it. I don’t know why someone would feel the need to try to stop a group of people from exercising their religious right to pray publicly, but that appears to be what happened in Fayetteville.

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Posted in Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Sayings, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

A New Kind of Countdown . . .

Posted on by Katharine

Do you “count” you kids down?

You know, you tell them to do something and they don’t do it.

So you say, “One . . . ”

The implication is that you have told them once and you are keeping track, so you must really mean it. Or something.

Then you tell them again, and you say, “That’s two,” a bit more firmly.

Then you tell them again, and you say,  “Don’t make me get out of this chair!” They yawn.

And the countdown begins again.

The children learn they do not have to do anything you say because what you say does not really mean anything at all, and your frustration level escalates.

Well, I was at a craft show this weekend and met a lady who “counts” her grandsons and it is all different. I liked it.

She has taught these two boys to repeat a chant with her. It goes like this:

–Grandmother: One.

–Grandsons: One–I am going a wrong way.

—Grandmother: Two.

—Grandsons: Two–I need to find a different way.

You may wonder where the expected “three” is. On “three” she gets out of her chair. That’s one reason this method works.

(However, as a child, I am sure I would have been saying inside myself, “Three–I need to get OUT of the way!”)

As I observed these boys I marvelled. They had been without Mom for a week and were at a boring craft fair where it was not appropriate for them to do anything. They shared one toy truck and played on the ground with it.

When one boy decided to drive the truck on the sidewalk, Grandmother perceived he was causing a tripping hazard for the shoppers. So she told him to stop and return to the grassy places where her tent was.

He did this only briefly, then strayed to the sidewalk again.

Then she said, “One.”

He replied, “One–I am going a wrong way,” and he sighed, returning to the grass.

In less than a minute his toy truck had strayed again. And Grandmother said, “Two.”

He answered, “Two–I need to find a different way.” Then my jaw dropped, I am sure, as he calmly walked over to his brother, handed him the toy, and wryly said, “See if you can keep this thing off the sidewalk. I can’t.”

I imagine these two little guys, someday at age 35 or so, filling out a tax form or zipping down a highway, temped to “forget” some benefit or accelerate too much, and hearing Grandmother say to them, through the ages, “One . . . “