I like llamas. They sit around and just eat grace and be happy. Don’t we just want to be like that? Living in a way we enjoy the world around us. I enjoy a good sunset and the stars in the night sky. One day I would love to fall asleep seeing the dust of our milky way galaxy. I live in the south, and in a city. A sky full of stars was something from my childhood, but I have never seen the dust clouds of our milky way galaxy with my own eyes. Such a relaxing thought to think about. Things like this can be relaxing. Thinking about how God created the stars, and knowing the stars we see are really far away galaxies of stars with their own dust clouds and structures with their own life. God is truly amazing. Why would I want to worry myself with day-to-day drama at that quiet moment?
Believe it or not, people out there do just that. The best place to see it is on social media. I see it most on Facebook. When I log into Facebook, I’m always slammed with post after post fighting over politics. It has only gotten worse since 2020’s quarantines. It’s all drama, nothing else. It’s once peaceful people, like a llama, full of drama. What’s worse, it’s becoming the norm. We all know those people in our lives. I just caught myself in drama at work. God opened my eyes a little and I started looking for signs of Addiction to Drama. Here are just a few things I found that are common among people, and myself, I have seen recently.
Caring but Not Caring
What I find amazing is people make these claims, but don’t really mean it. You can’t be a Christian and be pro-choice gets me every time. When I start digging, I always get walls. Do you believe in adoption? How about the adoption of different races? How about people in troubled areas, do you believe they need support? How about children in the holding camps away from their parents at the border of America and Mexico. Should those children be taken care of? That question always makes them mad if they want to fight. I personally don’t go deep into these things with people who want only drama, so I will not here on this post.
When I hear insults to our former president, I ask why and where is this coming from. How is this affecting our country as a whole, and why do they worry so much. I give other examples and often times get spit at with their screams. They only care about the one side of this picture but not the other side.
I always laugh at the last one. People who were once addicted to drugs can’t change. As I gave give examples of lives changed. I can call them up and let them speak their story. Then I ask the question, what if they could, what would you do to help? Or, How can you change your fact?
Often times Drama Llamas hide behind a fake mask of caring about something. It gives purpose. Someone who does something wrong to someone else that is worse than what is going on in their lives is the best way to escape the reality that is in front of them. Give an example, when the kids are fighting, I sometimes become the bad guy and break up the fight. They team up and fight the bigger bad guy. I become the distraction they needed at the time. Once they calmed down they saw the issue in front of them and forgave each other. However, some people don’t let go of that bad guy and keep going. They don’t remember why they hate the bad guy anymore. All they know is the hate, and the drama hides away these odd feelings. End the end, fighting for the “cause” generates stronger emotions than the painful emotions they are feeling, I am feeling.
Ant Hills to Mountains
Sometimes Drama Llamas want to make a drama out of whatever they can. A simple, “David, was bob called?” Suddenly turns into, “He’s out to get me.” That small anthill. That small question builds into something bigger, then it comes out of the mouth. Kind of like a stopped-up toilet, it’s normally just some paper towel stopping it. But people poop on top of that. After a while, that small stoppage is now a full-on replacement of the toilet. It’s easier to keep pooping on a problem than to deal with the problem. It’s pure laziness, with a purpose. The purpose is to feel the negative emotions instead of feeling something deeper.
Holds Pointless Grudges
Have you met someone who is angry at someone else for no reason? Yeah, oftentimes I see Drama Llama’s holding onto grudges over the smallest and sometimes stupidest things. For example, a friend forgot their birthday. I had someone recently remove me from their friends’ list because I forgot their birthday. I hardly remember my own. They then messaged me saying they defriended me because I forgot their birthday. They wanted to fight. They wanted that drama in their lives. In classical me, I said, OK.
Its easier to get mad at someone and stay mad than to deal with the emotion. Its also easy to turn that hurt into a mountain of hurt that ends up biting someone else.
They Can’t Stop
There is a really cool story about a room where there is no sound. The only sound you can hear is your own body. The longest time spent in the room was 45 minutes. Silence can be hardcore. When we stop for even a minute, our mind will bring everything to the table we need to address. Most of the time it brings it in backward or oddly shaped ways. If you are running from those things, then we will feel the need to run away. Stopping is almost impossible. The mind will find something else to complain about. SQUIRREL!
Root Cause
Like any addiction, the root cause is something deeper. Recently I found myself becoming angry with one of my coworker’s attitudes. It rubbed me the wrong way. I caught myself turning an anthill into a mountain in my own head. God Slapped me and said, “Why?” It shook me a bit. I stopped and asked myself why. God answered clearly, “because you haven’t forgiven **** *******.” I stopped right there and asked for forgiveness. I then asked God to grant me understanding. Of course, God said “Not Yet.” It was one of those, I had to let go and let God. Once I spoke it, I choose to Forgive you, **** *******, my heart opened and my shoulders felt lighter.
There is a root cause, just like any addiction. The Drama just covers the pain. Once you remove the negative thinking, once you remove the drama, the pain sits there looking back up. These root causes can be different. Sometimes it started off with something small and just grew. Sometimes it’s hurt from a spouse that hasn’t been addressed. When I was in Columbia, I turned anything small into a mountain. I was hurt because I felt like my wife drug me away from my home and then ignored me. The truth was, I choose to take her back to her hometown because I loved her, and didn’t get the quality time I was expecting. This fueled actions, along with unspoken sexual abuse as a child, that lead me down a dark path. I became a drama llama as well.
Another example is a co-worker during the pandemic who felt like we should have been working from home. Every time anyone asked, the results were always the same, No. Instead of going about this differently, he choose to sulk. He then started turning the anthill into mountains. He wasn’t able to do xyz. He asked for xyz for xyz that would help the company with xyz. The answer would be not right now. But he would report it as, “He said Beep you.” This example shows compounding hurt.
The final example of compounding hurt is a wife that dealt with addiction. The husband had to watch the struggle. He had to deal with her insults daily. Each time she used it, she hurt him over and over again. His anxiety grew loud and proud. In order to run away from the anxiety, he started focusing on politics. It got to a point he was crying like a 4-year-old who can’t get the phone from his mommy.
Solutions?
According to the Bible Drama’s weaknesses are control and mindfulness. Drama is oftentimes seen as the tongue in the bible and the bible has a lot to say about the tongue.
When we jump to the conclusions, we are like that sword. What is amazing about swords, they can cut both ways. Unlike God’s word, it does damage that takes time to heal.
What I find amazing about the tongue is, it reveals the sinful nature of our hearts. So, if drama is coming out of your mouth, what’s inside your own head? How are you talking to yourself? How far does adam and eves death fruit goes?
The sin in our hearts breaths the words we say. The First step is to ask forgiveness.
The second is to shut up and lesson! Let God handle that, focus on your own stuff with his help.
Accept the meekness. Yes, you have the power to say some hurtful things. Yes, you can win the fight, but should you? Why are you even fighting? Why do you want to stuff a conservative/liberal in a shoe?
It’s best to take on the meekness. To choose to not fight unless God himself tells you otherwise. Remember Samson’s anger, it caused the death of hundreds of God’s people. When God gave him his anger, He killed hundreds of God’s enemies. (Read more)
We can’t break free on our own. We are weak humans. This is why we have to accept God’s love through Jesus Christ. We have to accept God’s power over it. Once we do, meekness comes.
We can only do this by the daily, hourly, sometimes even minutely meditation of his words. We have to replace them. Basically, we need to clean the garage. I will leave you with this final verse.
