New Year, Fifteenth Step

Lest you get the mistaken notion from yesterday’s blog, that I am a math aficionado, I assure you, I am not. I am much too right-brain oriented to qualify as a genuine number cruncher. If my checkbook is balanced (yes, some of us still use checkbooks) with a $10 margin of error, I am good to go. Meticulous precision—over-the-top attention to detail--is not one of my preferred weaknesses; there are far stronger candidates in my life that qualify for top billing in that category. My compulsions and obsessive behaviors are drawn to words rather than numbers. Which word has just the right nuance –walk or saunter, run or dash—in the particular sentence I have been staring out for over an hour? Yes, I can actually spend that long choosing ONE word for ONE sentence—and that one is hidden in the middle of a piece I am writing that will most likely be skimmed over by 98% of its readers. 

I think I approach my writing projects very similarly to the fashion in which I live day to day—helter-skelter, haphazard, at random. In a normal day, I jump from one unfinished task to another and then back to the original one to pick up where I left off--four tasks ago. There is no apparent sequence or order I follow; nor is their rhyme or reason for choosing a given point at which to begin, pause, or halt work during the completion process. As far as topics of conversation for blog posts are concerned, I may have an unwritten plan of action, but it is one that changes from day to day.

I believe that continuity of thought is important; however, I’m never quite sure if my idea of thought continuity resonates with anyone else but me. I move back and forth between topics, transitioning with ease, and in such a way I think makes sense. If that is not the case for my readers, I hope they will try their best to go with the flow and chalk up any non-sense writing to the peculiarity of this writer.

That being said…I heard from two of my sisters yesterday, and though the contents of the communications were very different, I connected both to a theme—or at least a thread of one—that I have been touching on in current blog posts—perspective. While people can differ in temperament and the way in which they tend to handle problems, perspective always plays a critical role in how people are affected by a particular situation. Perspective can constitute the difference between an exhausting, jam-packed day of inconveniences and irritants and one more labor-intensive than expected in requiring unanticipated adjustments in time and attitude. The content of the day may not be under our control, but the context in which we view it becomes our choice.

On those “stuff-happens” days, asking the right question can mean a world of difference; it can make a bad day bearable, and a good day better. The question to ask is not “What am I going to do (faced with this situation)?’ but “What is God going to do through this?” "Greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world." (1 John 4:4) I am God’s problem and my problems belong to Him.