birthday thoughts

Well, I’m a year older.  I’d like to say I’m a year wiser, but I’m not a very fast learner (lol).  I was just thinking as I drove in to work today how blessed I am.  I have an awesome family who I think the world of.  I have amazing friends who encourage me.  I go to the greatest church on the planet, and I pretty much on most days still think my job is incredible.  I have everything I need and most everything I want.  I’m overwhelmed with how good God has been to me.

So much of life is perspective, though.  If I wanted, I could choose to focus on all the negative aspects of my life (because if you really want to, you can gripe and complain about anything).  But who wants to live like that?

Maybe this is a silly revelation, but it hit me today that even if our lives are sucky right now, we can believe that everything is for a reason.  Let me see if I can explain this the same way I realized it this morning.

I was driving in and realized that half the parking lot behind the library was blocked off, which meant that there was no way I was getting a parking space anywhere close to the library this morning.  I had two choices–I could park a long way off and gripe about having to walk all the way to the library OR I could park a long way off and thank God for the opportunity to work off the pumpkin cream cheese muffin from Starbucks I had indulged in that morning (It is my birthday after all).

I realized that every trial (physical, emotional, spiritual) is a gift that God allows into our lives.  And we can either look at it like a gift–a chance to praise Him for the awesome way He’s going to make it all work out in the end–or we can grumble about it.  And if you can look at it that way, any trial (no matter how big or how scary) is reason to be utterly, entirely, and totally happy and excited.

So I praised the Lord as I walked half a mile to work today while I burned off all the calories from my yummy pumpkin muffin.

God is good. =)