THIS IS A TEST, THIS IS ONLY A TEST

One of the growing edges in my faith in the last 3 months or so is acting on the belief that God wants me to be more positive, optimistic, and possibility minded. I am more naturally melancholy and sarcastic, so this has taken some openness and effort on my part, and a lot of work by the Holy Spirit on my heart.

My last week has been rough. Jen has had surgery for breast cancer. I got a speeding ticket heading back to Rapid to quickly make it to an appointment with the doctor that came up last minute. Our home phone went out, and we had to have it repaired, and I bought a new phone system because I thought the old one was broken. And due to both higher stress levels and less diligence on following my diet, my weight loss has stalled a little bit.

This lesser amount of diligence continued this morning, when I took the back road along the river, one of my favorite little roads in all of town, to check my lottery tickets and get a Mountain Dew pick me up. As I drove, the city maintainence department was mowing the grass along the river. They hit a patch of asphalt buried under the tall grass. It hit my winshield. 

All I heard was a loud blast. I stopped. My window was ruined. But, I am unharmed.

Now at this point, I have a decision. I can choose my attitude. I can get angry. I can choose to believe that this is just one more event in the last couple of months to prove that nothing really seems to be going right. I have been there before. I have had that attitude before. Or, I can choose to look at things differently. So I began to ask myself a series of questions.

What if the window wasn't safety glass? What if I had the window down and a large rock hit my head with that kind of force? What if the kids had been in the car? Might something have happened to them? Thankfully, none of those things happened. God has blessed me. It could have been a lot worse.

Besides that, the lawn mower was a child of a member of our church. He was a great guy. He was courteous, intelligent, and agreed that my version of events is what happened. He could have tried to deny it was him, asked for proof, etc. Instead he went and gathered up all the pieces of asphalt where the car got hit, looked for more, so that what had happened would not happen again. Here is the pile:

I am safe. Don't even have a scratch. The city is paying to have the window fixed. I got to meet some great new people at City Hall, in the city maintenence department, and at the glass shop. I am blessed, even if today's circumstances were not ideal. 

So I am choosing to be thankful, and see the rays of sunshine through the storm clouds. I know that I am blessed, and some silly freak accident is not going to change that attitude.

That is all.