Focus
On Friday I drove to Nashville to spend the day with a couple of friends from high school plus friends and sisters of theirs, most of whom have become my friends, too. The drive was breathtakingly beautiful. Fall in all its glory has come to Middle Tennessee.
Altogether there were eight of us wandering around the huge Nashville Flea Market together. Turns out that the third weekend in October is the time to go. I didn’t buy much. I mostly enjoyed wandering, looking, finding out what is new, and, especially visiting.
A day or two later, I had a realization about this group of women. They are so positive. It was like the old cowboy song, “Home on the Range.” You know (or at least I hope you do) — “Where seldom is heard a discouraging word . . .” It was just the shot in the arm I needed.
Yesterday I glanced out a window on the front of the house and noticed that the tree in our yard that is always the prettiest was dressed in all of its own glory. I decided that I had better catch a picture quick if I wanted one from this year. Here’s how she looked as she stood in the drizzly rain.
When I came back inside, I decided to snap one through the door. I took this one first.
Noticing that the curtain was fuzzy, I tried it again, focusing on the curtain this time.
When I downloaded the pictures last night, I thought about how they illustrate something true. Our focus makes a powerful difference in how we view things. We can focus on positive things like my friends did last Friday, or we can focus on negative things like . . . Well, let’s don’t focus on negative things today. Let’s just focus on what is positive or maybe positive things we can learn from whatever is negative in our lives right now.
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.
Philippians 4:8
I kid you not, 2 minutes before I read your post/email I was confronting my own tendency to miss the person behind the discussion and to couch a response in the negative rather than the positive. I’m trying to let grace come first. Hmm more prayer, I guess. Thank you.
Been there and done that more times than I would like to admit! Prayer is exactly the thing.
AMEN!!! I need someone to slap me in the face with that sometimes! It’s so easy to say, but impossible to do without being filled with the spirit. The more I focus on negative, the harder it is to get filled with the spirit because I don’t have the PRAISE GOD DESERVES at all times. It becomes a vicious cycle. I pray not to get like that ever again, but I will because I’m hopelessly flawed. Thank God He is perfect and SOOOOO patient.
You encourage me with your honesty and faith, Stacy!