Photo: macaroni.and.drake@instagram
Is it? Is it okay to just accept the gray day? I think so. I think, yes…it is OK to just plain feel… whatever…even if it feels like it’s the end of the world. Since my head injury, sometimes I just forget to feel and be sad. Instead I drag it out as this, well, half-hearted happiness. But I believe the key to this disguised treasure is in my perspective. In this photo, my daughter rushed inside the house and had to show me this “AWESOME” picture she took! To me, it was just one of a hundred or so pictures she’d taken that day, but she persistently begged me to look at it. I was having an overwhelming brain day – spinning – anti-productive – nauseated- …seriously…what could be that awesome? Yet she had to show me….
..This picture, of a gray, gloomy, April day when all us northerners dream of a spring that no longer seems possible! Yes…that’s the picture she was telling me was beautiful!? “Mama, look at the colors. The fog, how it takes over the trees and our lane. The snow, how it imitates the color of the sky. Look at the color of my sweatshirt and my nails against the other neutral colors….” Her list went on, and on and on. And then, I saw it! This day had a beauty only she could see. I didn’t know it, but I needed her to bring life to this day, to light (or life) for me… and she did!
The Lord says that He will never leave us nor forsake us. In my daughter’s photo He intricately crafted the beauty of His nature and showed me what was beyond my initial understanding – that He will meet us anywhere we call on Him. He took the obvious gloom of a cold April day in Minnesota and moved me beyond and ABOVE it. Now I was able to see the gray through His eyes. There is beauty there, because He created it. He showed me the beauty of gray – the beauty to be found in my every-day life of just trying to make it sanely to tomorrow.
Is your situation gloomy today? You’ve taken another step forward and moved two steps back on an escalator moving the wrong way, possibly? Your circumstances haven’t changed – it’s the same old street on another dreary April day. But would you do this? Would you challenge yourself to find beauty in yet another cold, gray day? It’s His April. Gray is a color that He created. There must be some light there. Some life.
As you lie in your bed, feeling the same old pain…
As you get a call from your doctor, hearing the same old news…
As you try to make yourself a meal, and struggle with the same old confusion…
I CHALLENGE YOU!
…what is the hidden beauty that is waiting for you to discover it? Find it… Write it… Post it on your mirror… Leave a note to yourself in your kitchen about the blessings there…. Walk outside and breathe… what blessings are you inhaling? Come back inside… do you have warmth? That’s a blessing. Can you feel the warmth? That’s a blessing. Can you see your room, your chair, your couch? That’s a blessing.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think… to him be glory… throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21
Tell the world your blessings…. and we, too, will be blessed. Please add just ONE blessing you found today in the comment link below…
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tripping UP the DOWN escalator 