A lot of things had me thinking about the future, and – although I knew I don’t need to know anything right now – I wanted to have it figured out.
I should say that in this blog I am speaking more to myself than to anyone else.
But the minute I realized I wasn’t doing awesome…
which would’ve been about the time I journaled this:
“Have you ever just wanted to scream?
Scream, shout, rant, and run until everything hurts…or nothing does, but at least you’ll no longer feel like you felt when you started. I can’t be the only one who talks. I can’t be the only one with problems, the only one who's weak, the only one who isn’t doing it right. I can’t be the only one who's annoyed or ready to be home or confused or hurt or just REALLY irritated off that my body looks like it does. Everyone else can do it right, I guess. Everyone else can be on time and put together for everything, everyone else can join in together as they gripe about always waiting for me or always helping me or always praying for me or always dealing with my attitude.
Everyone else can be just fine.
That’s fine.
I can’t."
…I had a choice to make:
A few months ago, all 7 seasons of How I Met Your Mother started circling their way around A-squad…
I got almost to season 6 before I stopped – not because I dislike it or think it’s a bad thing – just because, although I secretly think Ted Mosby is super attractive (sorry, I like ‘em a little bit nerdy) – I haven’t had a desire to sit down and watch an episode in about 6 weeks.
But I’ve noticed something:
A-squad now high-fives each other a lot more frequently than we used to.
*Photo Meme compliments of Brianna Danese, Team Legend-Gary and the Glitter Mermaids, A-Squad 2nd Gen.
Those things influence us so much more than I think any of us are consciously aware of.
1 Peter 2:1
We hear that, we’re used to it: Act better. Got it.
But recently, I was studying 1 Peter with my team, and a teammate read it from The Message:
The 7th offered definition from dictionary.com puts it perfectly for the way I’m trying to say it:
“To take in through the senses, especially with eagerness and pleasure”
Doesn’t that sound sweet?
Peter basically tells us to
be consumed by God’s pure kindness!
Those words, put that way, got me thinking about what I do drink in deep:
I’ve been getting consumed with the negative, filling myself with doubt.
But, like I said, I had a choice.
Just like A-squad made the choice to watch a bunch of How I Met Your Mother and now we can’t stop high-fiving each other over every little thing,
the things we CHOOSE to focus on:
to listen to, watch, read, daydream about…
those things change us.
They modify our speech patterns and influence our verbal and emotional responses, they cloud or clarify our judgment the same way what you choose to literally drink does.
“Summing it all up, friends,
We have the same choice every day that I had the day I journaled that embarrassingly emo excerpt from the beginning of this blog, we get to choose what influences us.
We choose what we fill ourselves with and, as a result, what our outlook is.
We choose what lens we're going to view the world through every day – we choose our perspective…
and sometimes we, at least I, make a habit of choosing a crappy perspective.
Unfortunately, that's what's natural to us. We're surrounded by negative (look at our media) and we get caught up in it, it becomes a cycle that continues to feed negative to us.
Filling ourselves with the positive would have the same effect, but it's not what's natural to us, and that's where the choice comes in:
Once we make that choice, we'll crave more of it, the cycle will reverse and we'll be filled with the positive – but we have to make that first choice,
and we have to make it every day.
He’s going to meet us because He's faithful,
so drink deep.
