Taking Complaining Thoughts Captive…



Today I feel like complaining. Not about anything specific, I’m just irritated. Maybe it’s the urine soaked mattress I must deal with today… maybe it’s the water seeping into the basement that I must soak up with good towels. Maybe it’s piles of laundry I can’t keep up with because towels monopolize the machines. Maybe I just want to complete a thought – a task – without the interruption of a nasally voice every 60 seconds that calls out, “Mom? …MOM!”

Maybe I’ve allowed these minor irritations to fester into a bulging sore that now strains my face into hard lines. Funny, as soon as I commit to becoming deliberately thankful I feel the ache of discontentment. Even the sweet trill of birds brings no relief to the throbbing complaints in my mind. My heart…

As if swaying with hands on ears, I am restless behind this wall that separates me from Him.

Forgive me Lord, for this blasphemy of complaining. I accept this day from your hand, and reject indulgent self-pity. What you’ve given and allowed is exactly what you will use to train and shape me. Help me find joy in it…

Today I will stubbornly choose gratitude – for water flowing from my faucet, for washing machines, for my children’s beautiful faces. 

Instead of grumbling about stacks of plates and mounds of laundry that all must be washed on this last day of sun, I will be glad that I have mobility to do these things – and soap and machines to help me. I will take an hour in this last day of sun

and enjoy it.
and give thanks for it.

I will take this one day – my only offering
break it and give thanks. 

3 comments:

The Unknowngnome said...

I send you a :)

Warren Baldwin said...

Stubbornly choose gratitude ... I like how you present that we can make a choice to be thankful, even when it is difficult. Good post.

From The Heart Online said...

Thanks to you both :)