Victors or Victims

When I hear someone say, “If momma ‘aint happy ‘aint nobody happy!  I imagine an ornery mother chasing children with a wooden spoon.  I’m sure that is not true for most families but as Mothers, we do set the tone in our home.

Life can either be a comedy or a tragedy and we have to decide to choose laughter over tears!  It is our Attitude that defines our Altitude.

An experience that helped me recognize the importance of laughter came when my husband Ron was just beginning to recover from a surgery that had left him as an “incomplete quadriplegic."

I was on high alert during the night in case he needed help.  Being a man he really didn’t want my constant hovering.  One night he quietly snuck out of bed on legs that could hardly function when I heard a crash. I flew out of bed trying to find him in the dark.  But in my haste I tripped over his leg and fell on top of him.  In a seductive voice he said, “Well hello!  I knew I could make you fall for me again!”  That was the first time after his injury that I actually laughed and it felt GREAT!

The key is to teach our children that we can’t always choose the path that we walk in life but we can always choose the manner in which we walk it.

Our family like all families have had our share of trials.  Through-out those challenges we have seen some of our family grow and become stronger, while yet others, sadly responded in destructive ways. 

The chilling words from a son-in-law have come back to haunt me as he looked down on my husband’s paralyzed body and said, “Dad, If I were you I would just kill myself!”  We had no way of knowing that five years later he would take his own life.

I wish our son-in-law could have embraced these words from Albert Einstein when he said, “There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle!”

I recently received a phone call from a friend.  She unloaded a pile of issues, from trials with her marriage to misbehaving children.  She truly had every reason to cry.

She said, “Melanie you have had so many trials and now you lost a son, how do you keep going on?!”  I told her that, “We have to Be willing and able to say to the Lord, ‘Thy will be done!’, and REALLY mean it!”  We are the ones that choose whether we are Victors or Victims.

When we feel we are Standing in the Middle of our Greatest Failures, we may actually be Standing in the Moment of our Greatest Triumph as we help our children learn how they too can Move Forward and Make a Difference!

Melanie Stoker

2014 Utah Young Mother of the Year