Have you ever wanted to be influential? Guess what, you really are! You set the thermometer in your home from hot to cold or pleasantly in between. As your morning, begins you have the opportunity to influence your ‘family’s’ day!
I love mornings that begin with peace. I am a morning person—I don’t fight to get up and get moving–but we all have bad days! Days when you get up and stub your toe on the leg of the bed while headed to the bathroom! And hit a pool of cat vomit on the rug just outside that place you were heading, ARGH, try to recompose yourself now! (You may have even let some choice words slip out of your mouth during navigation to get the dampened paper towels! Don’t you just hate mornings like that?
So now what? Did I totally blow my morning? How do I go about to regroup my thoughts and move forward? Here is where if you continue blindly into the next phase of the day (breakfast for the fam?) you must make a decision!
- Continue without realigning your attitude and heart—won’t that help to brighten the day!
- Take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is just the beginning to an interesting day. Or…
- On your way to do whatever is next, take a few minutes to refocus with prayer and praise.
If you continue on (without dealing with the frustration that just happened,) you risk a morning with discouragement or even regret that can be passed on to your household members, be they little people or big people. And what if one of them didn’t wake up all joy-filled? Hmmm, that might heighten the tension just a bit!
Maybe you are on a mission to get to the next phase of the morning and get the breakfast started, so you just breathe in and proceed. Well you may do fine or you might fall prey to another interesting incident in the next stretch, burn the cereal you are cooking, while helping that little one dress a couple of buttons pop off (yikes, then what, you don’t have time to sew them on and the laundry is piled high!
Well, try this…how about a minute or two to where you look away from your stuff and look to the Father. Remind yourself that He is part of your day from the get go! Purposefully redirected your thoughts to the only place where peace can be your covering for the day. Does this mean that something else won’t happen? Of course not! Life happens and our responsibility is to respond in a way that will prohibit our attitude from remaining skewed (or like I say rotten!)
A beautiful place to go to get your mind off of your circumstances and on to the Father would be: Psalm 8:3-4 from the Message Paraphrase…
“I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, Moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?”
Get your mind fixed on truth…God loves you and that is why He is mindful of you and your good or rotten morning. Praise His name for loving you and let Him know you are sorry for your stinky thinking. By praising Him your difficulties will greatly diminish in size so that you will be able to take a deep breath and brave greeting the next leg of your daily journey!
Look, I do it all the time! Often enough that I know the difference that a few moments of God-talk can make in my home, with my family and me!
Remember you are covered and God has a plan for your day! So continue on…you have set your thermometer to a pleasant 70 degrees and that should make the day get off to a lovely start!
If you need more encouragement you can visit Arabah Joy and #GraceandTruth
