Attitude and Challenges

I apologize to all my blog readers that it has been so long since I last posted. The past week and a half have been quite full and I have not spent a lot of time on the computer (which, contrary to what some believe, is not necessarily a bad thing).

Last Friday (November 6th) I took my sister Ice Skating to celebrate her 13th birthday (which isn't until December, but since I won't be here, we had to celebrate it early). We had a blast! There were a couple people on the rink when we got there, but they left while we were putting our skates on, and we had the whole rink to ourselves, the entire time we were there! We had such a great time!

Yesterday Scott spoke to over a hundred students (4-8th grade) at a school. As always, I was amazed at how good my husband is with kids and how well he spoke. I wasn't surprised, but once again, I thanked the Lord for giving me such a good man, for my Husband. I am truly blessed.

If anyone is interested in a 30-day challenge, I encourage you to go to the Revive Our Hearts website and consider taking 1, or maybe even 2 of the challenges there. I have taken the Husband Encouragement Challenge, and the Choosing Gratitude Challenge. Every day I get an email from both challenges with encouragement and goals/challenges for the day.

The Lord has been working in my heart on having an "Attitude of Gratitude." I have no idea how this all started, or even when. All I know is that the Lord has slowly been laying on my heart different things to think about or to work on, and it's brought me to where my goal is to have a thankful heart.

Here are a couple of questions that you can ask yourself to see where your attitude is at:

When something unexpected (or unplanned) happens, how do I respond? Am I able to switch gears, be flexible, and eagerly "go with the flow"? Or do I feel resentment or bitterness that my plans now have to be changed?

When a child breaks something (just by accident), that perhaps was even very dear to you, do you scold them and send them to their room after insisting they clean it up by themselves? Or do you bend over to help them, letting them know that it's okay, you understand it was just an accident, and it's not that important?

Our heart attitude effects how we respond. Look at how you respond to "big" things, and then you'll know how you're responding to little things. I've written more on attitudes here. I have found that it is very easy to let little things bother me, or to let my attitude be effected by the attitudes around me. So I have worked very hard on not being bothered by little things and not letting others determine what my attitude is going to be.

Therefore, one of the things the Lord has been teaching me, is that keeping my focus on Him and on being thankful, taking every situation (even the smallest ones) and finding something I can be thankful for, keeps my attitude, and my heart where it needs to be, with God on the throne!