The day after

Here it is, the day after my birthday, and I can't help but to be deep in thought about my life.  The Lord spoke to me today in church, or rather, He disciplined me gently in a way that made me squirm because I knew I had disappointed my Father.  I have a love/hate relationship with discipline.  It certainly doesn't feel good, but I love that He loves me enough to tell me the hard things anyway.

Life isn't what I always hoped or dreamed it would be.  Sometimes it is far greater and exceeds any expectations I may have had, and sometimes it disappoints.  I feel that this is normal and fine, but the problem lies in when I dwell on the less than perfect aspects and fail to see the richness of His glory in all things.  Yep.  I do this.  I get all Debbie Downer and start to grumble.  I grumble about the things I don't like (which I assure you is a lot of things if I dwell here).  I forget about all the blessings.  I forget about the fresh flowers blooming on my table because I can only see the ugly table (you will just have to trust me on this one).  I forget about the joys of having children that I can touch and hold and only the see the fit that is being thrown or the tears that seem absurd to me.  I forget about the man of God that I married (I mean, come on.  He is a minister!  How awesome is that?!) and I only see how often he isn't home.  I don't want to see the uglies this year.  I want to focus on those blessings.  I want to recognize ALL the blessings in my life, not just the super obvious ones.  I want to please the Lord with my thoughts, my actions, and my words.  I want to give Him everything, including the things I really want to hold on to.  I want my mind to reflect His will.  I want to embrace His will.  I want to leap with joy and obedience when I hear Him even when I would much rather ignore Him.  This will sound silly, but I want Jesus to be my cupcake.  I want to spend my time trying to perfect my relationship with Him instead of spending my time trying to perfect the vanilla cupcake.  I want to spend my time looking for Him instead of spending my time trying to find the cupcake that will rock my world.  I want people to know me as that lady who loves Jesus with every ounce of her being.