A Matter of Perspective

“Each morning God gives us a rose. And some of us will spend the day complaining about the thorns.”
Author Unknown

This last week was a humdinger of a week. It seemed every time we turned around another thing was breaking down around the house, something else was going wrong, an unexpected thing was happening. With each new occurrence my heart and mind became more and more focused on the things going wrong, rather than the things going right, to the point where I was getting up in the morning wondering what was going to go wrong that day.

Needless to say, I was forgetting to look for God in each day. Which started to make for a very cranky, faithless, worry-filled wife and mom. In steeling myself for the next hit, what I was really doing was putting my faith out towards the negative, just waiting for the next shoe to drop. And in doing so, my eyes were taken off all the little gifts that God gives us throughout the day. I was becoming blind to the everyday miracles that God presents to us, because I was no longer looking at anything through the eyes of faith and trust. Even those things which in and of themselves were good things, I was now looking at through negative eyes, faithless eyes, and they were no longer good but another thing that was going wrong.

When my children were little, they used to love going for walks around the neighborhood. And they especially loved whenever they could find dandelions. It was on more than one occasion that I was presented with a sticky yellow bouquet with dandelion milk dripping from the ripped stems from a precious little fist. A bouquet picked with love. I remember, as a child, spending hours making crowns out of those yellow blooms And even more exciting for the kids was when those yellow dandelions turned into white fluffy balls. It was heaven, getting to blow them, and watch them turn into myriads of floating white “parachutes”, meant to be chased on a hot summer day. But as adults, those little yellow flowers and floating white heads somehow became seen as something not lovely anymore. Somehow instead of flowers they had become weeds, not something to be chased but to be gotten rid of at all costs. When had our perspectives changed? The dandelion went from being a splendid flower in my eyes and had turned into a weed. Instead of greeting the finding of that flower with happiness , I was now greeting the site of them with groans. It was all in way I looked at it. Perspective.

In looking back on my week, I saw that had I been looking through the perspective of thankfulness and faith, my attitude probably would have been a whole lot different. My eyes would have been focused more on celebrating the little things in the day that God provided rather than letting little things going wrong knock me down. A thankful heart overflows into grateful praise and focuses me on God rather than on everyday little occurrences. It causes me to see the splendid flower, rather than be complaining about the thorn or the weed. And I thank God, that He used some bloggy friends “Thankful Thursdays” to open my eyes to my negative perspective. I saw how they were choosing to intentionally look for God in their weeks and be thankful for all sorts of little things even when I knew their lives were going through a rough time.

So the next time everyday life throws a list of things at me, I will have a choice. I pray I will remember this lesson of perspective and choose to look for the blessing with eyes of faith and trust on my God. May I look for the beauty in the flower, and not be focused on that it may have a thorn or two or that it may be a weed.

“I will praise You, Oh Lord, with my whole heart;
I will show forth (recount and tell aloud) all Your marvelous works and wonderful deeds!”
Psalm 9:1 Amplified Bible

“This is the day which the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it”
Psalm 118:24

For discussion: What do you find helps you focus on God’s goodness throughout your day even when things go wrong?