Lesson Learned........Again

One of my biggest fears is being a negative person. You know, the type who always sees the bad in a situation and complains loudly about it. The glass half-empty team. Lately, I fear that describes me more often than not.

Just this morning, the sound of my neighbor snow blowing his driveway woke me at 5:45 (my alarm was set for 7). There I was tossing and turning and grumbling about not being able to get back to sleep. So, I gave in and got up and decided to go ahead and clear our driveway. What a treat I had when I stepped out the door! The full moon sitting just above the horizon in all its glory. (No this is not an actual picture of what I saw; it came from Google. But, it's close.) Thank you, God, for that blessing.

The second thing I noticed was that the newspaper delivery person had driven in the driveway and packed down the snow. More grumbling on my part. "Now there will be places where I can't get the snow off, so it will take days for that snow to melt, and he/she didn't even toss the paper on the porch, just dropped it in the snow, good thing I saw it before running over it with the snow blower," etc... We had rain last night before it got cold enough to snow, so there was ice under the snow on the driveway. Our driveway slopes toward the street. Because of the ice, I had difficulty getting the snow blower up the driveway (even though it's self-propelled). My feet kept slipping--until I stood in the lines of packed snow from the newspaper delivery person's car. Thank you, Lord, for your provision.

"And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord." Psalm 35:9 Thank you, God, for the reminders. Once again, I set out to count my blessings rather than grumble. Here are a few:

1) A snow blower to make clearing the driveway easier.
2) A neighbor who cleared the sidewalks in front of my house as well as his.
3) Good tires on my car that keep me from sliding on the icy roads.
4) A roof over my head, hot chocolate, and warm gloves on a cold morning.
5) The winter wonderland of tree limbs coated in snow with the sun shining through them. It looked like a forest of glistening rock candy.

My glass is definitely half-full. Perhaps I'll jot down blessings here from time to time and watch as it fills to overflowing.