How to get your rights respected!

For years I had nagged, whined, demanded, reasoned, and out and out fussed with, “You should look after the kids because you’re a parent too!”, “I need some time off, you have lots of it.” and other statements that brought about nothing more than annoyance on his behalf, and volcano-erupting frustration on mine. I tried different tactics, read umpteen self-help books, and talked to an endless number of people to discover their secret for success – all to no avail. Everything I read confirmed that it WAS my right to have timeoff, it WAS my right to have the parenthood load halved by the other parent. Most other parents had opted for the forced approach and simply threatened to leave, or did temporarily, shocking the partner into fulfilling their role – I didn’t think this was a good option for me – there had to be a better way.
Then along came, The Pineapple Story THE PINEAPPLE STORY FULL INSPIRATIONAL – YouTube. Otto Konning describes his experience with dealing with natives who continuously stole his pineapples while he is in the role of doing missionary work for them within their village. He is so open and humourous with the way he recounts his story that I watched it twice in the first sitting. I then purchased the set so I could listen to them all while driving. The whole set can be purchased by emailing Gordon on: ati@iblp.org.nz from the website: http://ati.iblp.org.nz. Otto’s doctrine on life after death differs from mine but other than that the messages are ones to change your life. Once slotted in my car CD player I became fixated on listening to the story over and over again, intuitively knowing that within this story was the inspired answer and solution to my problem. After the sixth time of listening to the story I realised that his message was based on a principle that was taught by Bill Gothard and so jumped onto Bill’s website and read the article on rights: http://iblp.org/questions/what-principle-ownership.  After reading this I realised I had just been given the escape route from anger, frustration and helplessness. This was message I finally got:

1. Just as it was Otto’s right to keep his pineapples and not have them stolen, so it was my right to have to time off.
2. Getting angry and demanding my rights like Otto did over his pineapples did not make the people respect his rights but just increased his stress, just like it did with me.
3. Realising that God is interested in our rights and that it is His responsibility to ensure our rights are respected gives peace, and the ability to be serene regardless of how the other person is treating your rights.
4. Once the control of the situation has been given over to God He can then sort the problem – ownership, and His right to work on our behalf needs to be done before He can work in our lives – or we think we have sorted the problem ourselves.
5. God has a myriad of unique and ‘out of the box’ ways of sorting the problem and He will do it – if this is the best thing for us and the other person – but the outcome isn’t our concern – He will look after our wellbeing. I had no idea that having two full days off once a year was all I really wanted and needed to recharge my batteries – but God did, and He has been working it out ever since to give me time when I need it.
6. Letting God sort my problems was not only beneficial to me, but my whole family were taken out from under continuously brewing storm conditions – which made for an alround happier marriage and parenting experience. I feel far more content with being with my children and husband rather than continously fixating on when I will have ‘me time’ because I know I’ll get the time when I need to have it.