perspective

{or nine years married to an optimist and what happens when you truly see everything as a gift}

My husband loves snow. My boys love snow. I am consciously practicing to see snow as a beautiful, exciting phenomena. We awoke the first day of this new year to a fresh blanket of white, snow gently falling from the sky. I concede, it was beautiful.

After scrounging for breakfast  and gathering mittens and hats and boots, we all donned our many layers of warmth and loaded into the car for a sledding adventure. We passed our neighbor out with his snow blower, him dealing with all this cold wet stuff that accumulated over night, and Casey reminded us that perspective makes all the difference in the world.

One can see snow as a burden, simply another thing that requires energy, attention, something else that must be done! And if you see it as such, you will gripe and whine and exhaust yourself and those around you while teaching  those little people watching so intently that inclement weather and its effects, things out of our control and disagreeable to us, are good reason to grumble.

Or, you can see the snow as a gift. On a holiday with daddy home to awake to a few inches of cold, slippery white means that we get to so sledding! We get to play on this holiday with healthy bodies and brothers and friends.

As he expounded, I reflected.

I’ve been married nine years today to this man. I didn’t always appreciate my husband’s disinclination to whining. Not because I like to give ear to whining but because sometimes I like to whine myself and didn’t take kindly to his encouragement to look at the bright side. However, the more I get my mind around the idea that all truly is grace, an undeserved gift from our gracious and compassionate God, the more I appreciate my optimistically-bent man and find myself laughing rather than grumbling.

Don’t get me wrong. I do still whine and grumble. I still have days when I feel like the comfortable four walls we live within are more like cold stones of a prison cell and all I want to do is escape, run!, somewhere.  I had a day like that this week and I know I’ll have more. But as I look at a brand new year stretched out before me, as we embark upon the first day of this tenth year of our marriage, I want to name this year. An action word, a verb, something to do when you realize all you do really isn’t that much and the control you work so hard to maintain is completely out of your control. 

Martin Luther says you have as much laughter as you have faith. I want to trust more in my Father who is in control. Trust in His never-ending love, His all encompassing grace, His sufficiency for every situation and every day of this new year. 

I name this year laugh.

And I ask that God would increase my laughter as He increases my faith in Him in these days and months to come.

 {written on the first of january but just now, a month later, finding its way here. with all the snow on the ground, still, i needed to be reminded.}