Message of Hope

It's me again!  I absolutely utterly cannot believe that I have not created a post since December 20th.  Even more, I can't believe that December 20th was a full three months ago.  These past three months have utterly flown by.  A lot has happened.  Christmas Day. New Years Day. Valentines Day.  President's Day.  You get the idea.  I've thought about posting often, but at the end of the day, all I had the energy to do was watch two full seasons of Downton Abby (if you haven't seen it, I would recommend it).

Really what the past three months have consisted of (except for a glorious week in January/February where I went to visit my parents in California) is a lot of work.  Work is going well...for the most part.  The hardest thing to tolerate is the work environment.  Things get very tense and stressful which leads to whiney employees, myself included.  I would love to say that I look different in this due to the peace that is offered to me through a relationship with Jesus.  But the truth is that I get sucked right down in there with the rest of them.  After driving away from work one night last week in tears, I started to think about why I am so unhappy all the time, and why I allow myself to be so affected by my environment.  Here's what I came up with:

#1:  I am losing perspective.  I lose the fact that God has put me there, not to get caught up in drama (shocking!), but to be obedient to Him.  In light of eternity and the rest of the world's problems, the things that I face at work are so so so small.  

#2: I am forgetting who I am.  I put so much effort and energy into pleasing other people.  I do this because I feel like I will be seen as a better person by others if I am a hard worker, if I try to make others happy.  This need for approval comes because I forget how deeply and honestly God loves me, even though I am a wretched sinner.  I haven't done anything at all impressive in His eyes, yet He calls me beloved.

So these are a couple of things that I have been thinking about recently.  I'll leave you with this one last thought.  Spring is my absolute favoritest favorite season of all, especially when the trees are getting all dressed up.  It is as if they are visually saying, "See, there is hope!  Despite the world being dark, cold and barren for a time, there is hope!"  I love that message.  I usually try to snap a few pictures of that fleeting period when all the trees are dressed in white.  I'll leave this one with you.  Not the best (it was shot with my phone while I was in stealth mode, traipsing through the yard of an unknown individual who lives across the street from the lady who does my hair), but I love it just the same because of what it represents.