Perspective

February stretches long and gray around here. March does, too.

If I’m not careful, I can be sucked right into its vortex, down, down, down into a web of “why-do-I-live-here’s” and “if-only’s.”

I find myself irritable and too often looking ahead instead of sitting right here, right now. Making excuses for my behavior instead of looking for ways to improve my attitude.

I know a woman who has, for many years, allowed the weather to control her. She plots her escape, daily. 

She is the most miserable person I know.

How do I not become that? How do I not see days of gray unending and not become a bitter, miserable person? How do I find joy in the gray out my window?

Yesterday, Ann Voskamp wrote this: Everyone gets to decide how happy they want to be. Because everyone gets to decide how grateful they are willing to be.

We get to decide our happiness. God has given us the tools—everything we need is right there in front of us. It’s up to us to choose happiness, joy, gratitude or bitterness, complaint, misery.

I choose happiness.

Because this day, this gray, dreary, cold, rainy day has been given to me to use well. Today I choose to write, to have lunch with friends, to sit with my daughter in a quiet room without distractions.

And on this gray, dreary, cold, rainy day, I visit with a dear friend who is housebound for twelve weeks. Twelve weeks! No weight on her foot. At all.

Do you ever go stir-crazy? I ask.

She smiles her sweet, cheerful smile and says, No. I have plenty to do here. I just figure this is what God has for me right now, in this season.

Does she ever look at the clouds? Maybe, but she chooses otherwise.

She chooses joy.

Ann also says that after choosing happiness, we get to decide how willing we are to be grateful. Still counting, that Ann.

So today, I choose to be grateful.

For my work.

For a quiet office.

For friendships that span decades.

For perspective.