Skip to main content

Eyes Wide Open


I recently began to read One Thousand Gifts - A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp. I picked it up, not because of the title, but because so many people had recommended it - highly. I'm not sure what I expected, but it's all that and then some. I have to admit that her writing style is difficult for me. I have to weed through her poetic prose to grasp the jewels of truth, but there are jewels sprinkled throughout every page, and it is well worth my efforts. I'm not writing a book review this morning, but I mention this book because it is the reading of it that has planted a new cry in my heart: I want to see.
 
I came home from the office frustrated yesterday. I'd spent two days working on one problem. It felt like trudging through cement. I changed clothes and immediately went to walk out my frustrations. I prayed, "Lord, I want to see. I want to see You in this." Albert Einstein's words sprang to mind, "It's not that I'm smarter than anyone else. It's just that I stick with a problem longer." Whoa. There's God. I may have spent two days on one problem, but the gift is in the fact that I can think, that I can do my job, and that I actually like my job even when I'm trudging through cement.

Generally speaking, I don't think I'm a particularly negative person. I try to remember to look for the good in people, try to find the positive in a negative situation. I don't really need to work on my gratitude attitude - or at least I didn't think I did. I've realized though that I want more - I want to be more grateful. I want to see God's gifts in my life. I want to see God every day, all around me . . . but I don't.

I don't want to have to try to see the good in everything. I want my heart changed so that seeing God everywhere, in everything, is simply part of who I am  - not just a thing I do. So, I think I'm going to keep praying, "I want to see," because I do. I want to live my life with my eyes wide open.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

As A Child

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 Become like little children? Really? Children are definitely cute and innocent, but that pretty much covers the positive qualities. On the negative side, however, the list is quite a bit lengthier: demanding, dependent, self-centered, messy, often smelly, expensive, and embarrassingly honest. So why? WHY in the world would Jesus tell us to become like little children? WHY in the world would He want that? What was He thinking?! Well, He was a thirty-something year-old bachelor. Maybe He didn't really know what He was talking about when He said that. I mean, if we come to Him like little children, it's pretty much guaranteed to be messy. We're likely to be crabby, cranky. We might be downright angry. Prayer-ADD is hard to control on a good day. If we're not on top of it, if we don't have our list in front of us to focus our thoughts, we...
4 comments
Read more

The Hug That Said It All

I witnessed a hug the other day. Big deal, right? People see other people hug all the time. Yeah, but this was a hug that melted my heart. We attended a graduation party in honor of our nephew. It was held under a pavilion. There was quite a spread of food, and each table was loaded with decorations and favors (very nicely done, Ange!). Obviously a lot of work . . . a lot of love was poured into this party. As the evening wound down, many of us hung around to help clean up. That's the un-fun part of a party. The un-fun part of this party became even more un-fun when, in an attempt to dump a drum of trash into a plastic trash bag, wet, gooey, smelley garbage ended up on the concrete floor of the pavilion. It was rank and disgusting, but my sister-in-law (the afore mentioned "Ange.") cleaned up without complaint. When the graduate meandered by shortly thereafter, I jokingly told him, in a scolding voice, that he had better get down on his knees in gratitude for all his moth...
3 comments
Read more

Believing the Lies

My husband and I recently watched The Help - a story about a group of African American women who worked as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the '60s. One of the protagonists works for a woman "who got no b'ness havin' babies." This woman, this family maid and nanny, tells her little two year old ward regularly, "You is pretty. You is smart. You is impor'ant." How difficult it is for us to believe that about ourselves - really, to believe anything good about ourselves. I always try to be my raw self when I write a blog post. Today is no exception. So I confess that I've been drowning in a storm of lies lately. My head knows they're lies, and I could easily tell anyone else in the same place that they're lies, but I haven't been able to get a grip. There have been so many of them coming at me at once. It seems that I just break the surface, gulp some fresh air of truth then get pulled back under. One thing I know: the enemy of our ...
7 comments
Read more