Reviving My Positivity

About eight years ago, I took the Strength Finders Test. My number one strength was Positivity. I have always been a pretty positive thinker, so it was no surprise. There have been times in my past where my positivity pushed me into denial. Being a Pollyanna is usually easier than dealing with the realities of life that aren't so pleasant. It's easier to just stick my head in the sand until "This, too, shall come to pass."

But those eight years have involved some pretty tough challenges: some visible to those around me, and some just between God and me. My faith has been challenged, even shaken to the core. There were times when it felt like it would be easier to just give it up. In fact, I have grown to strongly dislike the phrase, "This, too, shall come to pass." I'm tired of waiting for things to pass! I want to live now! Maybe I took it a little too literally.

Through the challenges of the past few years, I've tried to become more of a realist. But I have often leaned more toward being a sarcastic cynic. And that can be ugly.

The first Sunday in January, our pastor gave us each a small piece of dissolvable paper. He asked us to write something on that paper that we didn't want to take into 2013 with us, something we were choosing to leave behind, whether it was a sin, a bad habit or whatever. I knew immediately what I wanted to leave in 2012: my negativity. You know, those nagging, complaining thoughts that roll around in your head. Some of those ugly thoughts are about myself. Some are about my family members and coworkers... even my friends. And sometimes, I almost enjoyed dwelling on them, using them to make myself look like a saint and everyone else in my life like lazy, spoiled and ungrateful. God forgive me!

In my attempts to revive my positivity, I am memorizing Philippians 4:8-9 in the Message:
Summing it all up, friends, 
I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on these things: 
true, noble, reputable, 
authentic, compelling, gracious--
the best, not the worst; 
the beautiful, not the ugly; 
things to praise, not things to curse. 
Put into practice what you learned from me, 
what you heard, saw and realized. 
Do that and God, who works all things together, 
will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

Wow, to be worked into God's most excellent harmonies! That's what I want to work toward in 2013. I hope that a year's time is long enough for me to put a dent in the number of negative thoughts I choose to allow a parking place in my brain!

The Year of the Lord's Favor

Isaiah 61

Four years ago at this time, I was determined that 2008 was going to be the Year of the Lord's favor for my family--a year of new beginnings. I claimed Isaiah 61 and hung on with all my might. I even sent out New Year's cards with that scripture as the focal point. At the end of 2008, nothing had changed. Actually, some things had changed, in fact, life was getting worse instead of better. I felt completely abandoned by God. I had celebrated with friends and their new beginnings--marriages and new babies. It seemed like everyone I knew was finding favor with God but me, and I felt cheated.

As I wrestled with God through the first few months of 2008, I realized that what I was really looking for was happy endings. In fact, I was so busy looking for happy endings, I couldn't see the new beginnings that were right in front of me. They were not the new beginnings that I wanted or expected. But now, looking back over those four years, I can focus and see that there were new beginnings that year. It's like when my 4-year-old (yes, that's one of our new beginnings--just not the way I expected it) wants me to see something and she holds it about an inch from my eyes. I can't see things that close. I need her to move it farther away from my eyes so that I can focus on it. (And that distance gets farther and farther as I get older!)

My life, and the lives of my family members are still not perfect, and they won't be as long as we live on planet earth, but I'm a little better at seeing the potential of the uncertainties in life as new beginnings. I'm determined to quit looking for the happy endings--those may not come until heaven--and, instead, look at the chaos of my life with hope.

May 2012 be a blessed year of new beginnings, and may we all look at them through the eyes of Unswerving Hope!