Look for what is good...

When I was around 14, I convinced my parents to let me use a twin bed instead of my current queen bed. I feel like a lot of kids want a big bed, but I didn't. I wanted a twin bed so that I could move my furniture around and rearrange my room. I also wanted a twin bed so that I could have floor space for projects.

However, my twin bed did not have the bookshelf headboard that my queen bed had. Suddenly my alarm clock was homeless! Thankfully, I remembered that there was a small shelf-like thing in the garage. It was sad-looking, but it seemed willing to please and ready for some love. I attacked it with white paint, and then I introduced it to my room. My creative innards were not yet finished though. I had a Mary Engelbreit page-a-day calendar that year, and I found some of my favorite quotations from the pages. The picture at the top of this post is one of the quotations that I painted onto my new bedside table. My alarm clock still rests above this quotation.

I mention this because these words changed my life significantly. I read it multiple times a day, and its truth sank into the corners of my brain and heart.

When I painted this, I was not terribly good at seeing the good in things. I was critical of myself and others. I complained about life. I was frequently disappointed.

However, I learned to find the good in life by hearing these words in my head over and over again. The challenges of life didn't stop, but the thoughts that I fed myself did. As the years went on, negative thoughts were replaced more often with positive ones.

I think that this is what God wants for us, too. It's so easy to be overwhelmed by pain, anger, sadness, and the overwhelming nature of life. However, I think that by seeing the good, we see God.

Thanks for this lesson, Younger Karen.