I was thinking today about my life and all the challenges I have before me right now. I was even starting to feel a little down on myself. We all make mistakes. Sometimes the most difficult thing to do is forgive ourselves. I was experiencing this. I was thinking about my wife and marriage. I was thinking about all the mistakes I had made. How I had left her vulnerable and our marriage in the condition it's in. Though we have been separated and not had contact for a long time there are still mistakes I make even today that have an impact. I hate that so much.
It gets easy to focus on the negative. (I get in this place where I start to think of all the things I could do to make things better. There in lies the rub. It has never been about what I can do. It has always been about what God can do. The best I can do is passionately seek Him and submit to His will.)
As I mentioned I was in one of these moments this morning when God started to work on me.
He is so crafty! I love it! I Love how He knows His child.
I was remembering a moment my wife and I had before our separation. We were still in a place where we were working on things. She was moved out of the house and staying with friends but we were still talking on the phone. At one point in one of these conversations I told her that I missed her. She asked me "What
do you miss about me?". I wanted to give her a real answer so I thought about it for a bit. What came to mind when I dug deeper surprised me.
My wife had struggled when it came to keeping a house. It overwhelmed her. Though I never truly told her, it broke my heart to see her struggle with this. It also, at the time, was painful for me to live in that environment. I was grasping for some semblance of balance and control in my life. Clean and organized gave me a small taste of this.
Here is my point in saying this. I found this trait was one of the things I missed the most about her. It was real. It was her. The woman that I loved. Before that I had only seen the negative. God how I missed it now! There were many others things just like this that had frustrated me at the time but now I would have done anything to have back.
So as I was remembering this God started to speak to me. He showed me that I was doing this same thing again. I was not seeing the things right in front of me I was able to take joy in.
"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you." ~Philippians 4:8-9
God loves us so much! He does not want us to ignore the things we need to work on but he does want us to have peace while we do it. Don't get me wrong, trials and pain are real, but if we can get to a point in our life where we seek the bright spots, irregardless of what we are going through, the race gets easier. His mercy and grace are more than enough. They, and ultimately He, ARE the bright spots. The ugly truth is when we focus on the negative stuff we are focused on something other than Him. Most often this is our self.
I love you God! Please help me to not focus on myself but rather You and the blessings you have given me.
No comments:
Post a Comment