The God Filter

It's early still here on the West Coast, but I have to admit that today already has the workings of a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It's actually been percolating in the big coffee pot of my life for several days now, but I'm afraid someone left the top off of the pot this morning, and it's all threatening to spurt out everywhere.

I hesitate to write about this because I don't want to be one of those negative, gripey people who are complaining all the time. I don't want to be a "glass-half-full" person, and I certainly don't want to make others feel bad or unsettled by my mulling over these things out loud. I want my blog to be a positive place, filled with goodness and light, with a fair sprinkling of wit and dry humor on top. However, I think we all would be amiss to think or act like there are no annoying or stinky things in life. I think that a greater good can come from facing adversities big and small and seeing them through the God filter that we've been given. In this was can hopefully shun these minor things that don't matter, and set our minds on greater things, as it were.

Plus, I learned long ago that I personally can get through yucky things better by getting them out in the open, talking (and usually writing) through them, and then going on. I think that my God filter is harder for me to apply when I keep things inside, and almost impossible to use when I try to pretend that everything is just fine. Perhaps it says this on the God Filter instruction sheet somewhere. Something like fine print that says, "for external use only".

It probably also talks somewhere on the God Filter instruction sheet that talking to others constantly about our troubles is not such a good thing, either. Negativity breeds negativity, you know. So, I suppose there is that fine line somewhere, as there is in most things.

Anyway. That being said, here are the things that are on my "Terrible, Horrible, No Good List" for this morning.

1. For some reason, I was convinced that the Open House on our Morgantown house would be very well attended this past weekend, and that it would be the thing that would bring us a buyer. We haven't heard any news about the Open House at all, and I'm assuming that no news is bad news in this situation. We also haven't had any calls about offers from it, either.

2. I think I might need to start job hunting. Today. (See #1).

3. I think I might need to go back to West Virginia to check on the house now. (See #1).

4. All I'm going to say about our current sports situation is that from now on, I'm going to refer to the boys' sporting events as our "Perseverance and Persistence in the Face of Challenging Times" lessons. See, that's putting a positive spin on it, isn't it? (Please notice that I said that they were "our" lessons.) I guess I could also call these events our "Realizing That Our Value Comes from So Much More Than What Happens in a Ball Park or Gym" Lessons.

5. My Ipod touch is no longer charging. Most of you know that this is a piece of technology that I love and depend on for entertainment value, especially during gym workouts. Unfortunately, it costs about $80 to replace an iTouch battery (see #1).

6. Little bugs are eating my beautiful perennial seedlings that I was planning to nurture with love and eventually plant at our new house. It's a bug all-you-can-eat salad bar out there for them. Some of these are seeds that I brought with me from my flowers in Morgantown, so they kind of have a sentimental value.

Now, let me place the God Filter over that...and of course I can see that none of that really matters at all. In fact, with the God Filter over it, I can't really see any of those things at all anymore. For some reason I just see a mental pictures of a spring of water... here is Jeremiah 2 again:

My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that can not hold water.

Today I think I will just pray that God will set my mind on that spring of water - and I'll keep that God filter handy, just in case.