“This is the day the LORD has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24
I am happy to report that most of the family seems to have fully recovered from our bout of flu! I say most, because my 15 year-old son got hit the hardest and is still regaining his strength, but the rest seem fully back to normal. While I didn’t succumb to the virus myself, I did have a full-blown case of exhaustion. This morning I woke up feeling rested for the first time in many days, and I’m eager to get back into my daily routine.
It’s not a particularly sunny day – in fact it is a “mostly cloudy” day with a chance of rain in the forecast. The autumn colors have faded, and many of the trees are barren of leaves. However, it is amazing how much brighter everything looks when there is strength coursing through the veins and eyelids aren’t being propped open with toothpicks! I may be dragging later in the day, but right now it feels good to just feel good.
While physical issues do have a bearing on how the day is viewed, my attitude is an even more important factor. I may not have a choice in how I feel physically, but I do have a choice in how I respond to the way I feel or to the things that are going on around me. It is much easier for me to rejoice in the day when things are going well than on those days when things aren’t going so well. Yet EVERY day is a “day that the Lord has made”, and I need to do a better job of remembering that. A conscious effort to “rejoice and be glad” will often turn a “bad” day into a “good” day. My attitude really does make a difference, and I’m afraid that it too often is a difference in the wrong direction. A “poor me” attitude automatically darkens the colors and makes it harder to handle the small challenges that are a normal part of a mother’s day. Why is it that it is so hard to remember that I have a choice in how I approach the day, and that things will go much more smoothly if I choose to approach the day with joy?
