Corrected Perspective

Windows open, a warm breeze comes in.   Birds, enjoying the sunshine and warmer temperatures, are singing in the trees.  A day like this normally finds me with lifted spirits.   But there was something that I just couldn't shake.    No matter how hard I tried, I just could not get past the negative vibes that I was feeling.

It then dawned on me what the problem was.   Perspective.   My day was full of gifts that normally make me happy, however, I was choosing to focus on the "problem areas" in my day.   Because something wasn't going just how I wanted it to go, I was letting it affect my day and my mood.

At one of the Compassion events I worked this week, the speaker was talking about perspective.    He mentioned that we become so focused on ourselves and our needs and wants, it is hard to see anything else and we can easily become depressed and overwhelmed.   However, when we look around at the world around us, and we don't have to look far, we notice that there are people who are in much worse situations than we are. 

During Shaun's visit, he mentioned a young girl he met on one of his trips to India.  After visiting her home, which was smaller in size than an average bedroom in our homes, they headed out to visit the Compassion project she attended.  On the way there, they are walking through streets where sewage runs through, and people are sitting on the roads digging through garbage piles looking for anything salvageable.  The young girl stops with tears in her eyes, and Shaun asks her what is wrong.  (He admits this was an interesting questions because "What's NOT wrong with this picture?")  She looks at him and talks about how happy she is because of what God has done in her life and how He has provided for her and her family. 

Wow.

And I am having a bad day?   Really? 

With this story in the back of my mind, I continue through my day trying desperately to get out of my "funk" when an email shows up in my inbox from our pastor.   The family we had been praying for because their son had encountered some serious head injuries had passed away.   In his twenties, and within a matter of a couple of hours, a young family member is lost. 

Again, I ask myself, is my day really that bad?

Perspective.   When I focus only on what is going on in my life, it is so easy to become self centered and become deceived at how "bad" my situation really is.   In reality, the grieving family and the young girl in India would gladly trade places with me in a minute if all they had to worry about was my "problems". 

Today I am thankful for the perspective given.   The perspective that there is more to this world than just what is happening in my home, more to the world that just what I am struggling with on a given day.   There are needs in my church family and around that world that when I chose to focus my attention on those by praying and helping when/where I can, the world becomes a better place, not only for those around me, but also for myself.